Don’t expect Cheryl Meany ’02, G’06 to take much of a step back when she is honored at two upcoming West Genesee (NY) High School volleyball meets during 2025’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. She will be on the sidelines as usual, serving as assistant coach of the Wildcat’s girls’ varsity team just as she was throughout her aggressive treatment for breast cancer.
Her tireless work as a mother, teacher, and coach provided not only diversion and wellness during her fight but inspiration for her students, colleagues, friends, and community.
West Genesee’s Pink Ribbon Classic takes place at the high school on Saturday, October 11. This tournament—featuring seven other teams—is a fundraising for Cancer Connects, a Syracuse, NY-based non-profit that provides wellness, mentoring, transportation, and other supports for cancer patients.
West Genesee’s annual Dig Pink game follows on October 14 against Syracuse-area rivals Westhill High School. Both teams will hit the court wearing pink for awareness and fundraising proceeds will again go to Cancer Connects.
Triple Responsibilities
Also an English teacher at Baldwinsville (NY) High School, Meany was diagnosed with cancer in November 2024, a personal blow just before Thanksgiving. What followed was—to use a volleyball term—a multiple offense combination of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, from late 2024 through July 2025.
“I was either going to be at home thinking about my diagnosis or out living my life.”
“It’s been crazy,” admits Meany.
Although she is still wearing her signature head wrap, as of her most recent scan, she is cancer free, her hair is returning, and she has embarked on a new regimen of preventative medicine.
To say that Meany kept active throughout this tumult is an understatement. Apart from a few days to rest after each chemotherapy treatment, she took no significant time off from her triple responsibilities and continued to serve others, even “digging” herself out of a few more challenges along the way.
For instance, as a mother to three girls—a West Genesee sophomore and twin fifth graders—she has had to adjust her family’s schedule to accommodate her husband’s work. A respiratory care specialist, Jason Meany develops training materials for Scuba Divers International, a job that often takes him on the road.
Then, as a Wildcat assistant volleyball coach, she has helped manage the team’s step up to class AAA competition. The trainers must be doing something right because this promotion only seems to have propelled the blue-and-yellow forward. As of this writing, the team has a perfect 10-0 record and recently swept local AAA powerhouse Baldwinsville, Meany’s alma mater.
Even her current teaching assignment—Government, Economics, and Literature—is not for the faint of heart. Introducing high schoolers to concepts in society and democracy through texts such as 1984 and Lord of the Flies is no mean feat during a contentious political moment.
Finding Balance
“Teaching seniors was a special situation because they understood my diagnosis,” explains Meany. “I told the class when my chemotherapy started, and I said that if I’m here, I’m well enough to be here, so we can be normal and have our normal relationships.”
“I was either going to be at home thinking about my diagnosis or out living my life,” continues Meany, who even found the strength for a school trip with 17 students to Portugal between her third and fourth chemotherapy sessions.
Staying active, she says, was a choice: “Everyone was on board with it. I needed to stay busy. There were side effects, but I could manage them if I didn’t think about them.”
Meany says her students took care to recognize when she was having an off day, and when her body said to rest, she listened, even if that meant occasionally missing her eldest daughter’s evening wrestling matches.
A double SOE alumna, Meany has kept in close touch with her literacy teacher and mentor, Dean Kelly Chandler-Olcott. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the pair mentored student teachers, and she has assisted with the research phase for Chandler-Olcott’s next book—a collaboration with Sarah Fleming G’16—on equitable assessment.
“Cheryl was an exceptional undergraduate who turned into one of SOE’s staunchest collaborators once she had her own classroom,” notes Chandler-Olcott. “She’s mentored many teacher candidates who became strong practitioners in their own right, and she has modeled for all of them what it means to be a collegial professional committed to continuous learning. I’m so grateful for her continued commitment to all things Orange.”
So, in her 25th year of teaching and having bested breast cancer, what special advice does Meany have for young teachers embarking on not only their professional but their life journeys too?
“You are going to have challenges,” Meany observes. “We teachers tend to put their students, families, and others above ourselves, but my cancer diagnosis made me take a step back from giving of myself to taking care of myself more. I needed that balance, and now I have found it.”