With surgery behind her, Jaclyn Sabol embarks on a new career and commitment to fundraising for National Brain Tumor Society
It seemed that nothing could slow down the career of Jaclyn Sabol, a 2004 Rutgers graduate with a degree in broadcast journalism. She was the video host for the New Jersey Nets basketball team, star of her web show, “Jac of all Nets,” and emcee for NBA Nation’s summer tour.
With the move of the Nets to Brooklyn planned for later this year, this multi-talented journalist had everything in place. The last thing she ever expected was the diagnosis of a massive brain tumor.
Three weeks after the end of NBA Nation tour in 2010, she was invited to go to China for six weeks as a judge for a reality dance show.
“There were no symptoms then,” said Sabol. “I was just very tired and draggy, which for me was unusual because I am always doing a million things.”
At first Sabol attributed her fatigue to the stress of travel or jet lag. But after visiting her boyfriend, an American basketball player who plays in China, Sabol started to get terrible headaches.
“The day after I got home I couldn’t get myself out of bed that day and called into work sick,” Sabol said.
When the pain in her head started making her throw up, she knew it was time to see a doctor. He prescribed a painkiller.
“That night I ended up in the emergency room, and the very first thing they did was a CT [computerized tomography] scan,” she said. “They immediately saw that I had a tumor in my right frontal lobe.”
Sabol, who lives in Paramus, was admitted to the ICU and had brain surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in September 2010.
With the successful surgery behind her, Sabol returned to work five weeks later. But she soon learned she needed radiation and chemotherapy to prevent her tumor, an astrocytoma, from coming back.
“It took me months to say the word cancer," she said. “I could not even verbalize it because I thought to myself: Is it going to affect my speech, my sarcasm, the things that made me who I am and the reason why I have the job I have?”
Sobol, a Pomona, New York, native, started her career soon after graduation when she went from performing with the Rutgers dance team to dancing for the Nets. She came up with an idea for a fan-motivating web series in which she would be host. It became "Jac of all Nets."
“Right away we started shooting and before you knew it I was covering everything,” Sabol said.
Sabol’s success with the Nets led her to become the first female to host the NBA Nation’s Summer Tour with previous host Michael Garcia. She enjoyed meeting fans across the country.
“I’m used to interacting with only New Jersey or New York fans so for me it was so cool to be in Denver, Phoenix or L.A.,” she said. “To be a woman in the business and to be invited to something like that really meant a lot to me.... I had the time of my life!”
A year after the cancer procedure, Sabol was able to get back to host the NBA Nation's 2011 Summer Tour, but after six years with the Nets, left the team in November.
She is now working as an account executive at Condé Nast Direct, an advertising company in New York, and fundraising for the National Brain Tumor Society. She plans to participate in the New York Brain Tumor Walk in June.
“I never let a day go by where I forget how lucky I am,” Sabol said.
This article first appeared in Alum-Knights, published by Rutgers' School of Communication and Informaton