During a summer hockey practice in 2021, Lucy Solheim awkwardly leaned over to pick up a puck off the ice.
It was a normal, run-of-the-mill day for the Bemidji seventh grader until her dad noticed something was off.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I’d been having nerve pain before that practice, but he saw I was bending down weird,” Solheim recalled. “He called a doctor and we got an appointment set up. When I had an MRI a few days later, they found a tumor.”
Solheim was diagnosed with myxopapillary ependymoma. It’s a rare, slow-growing type of brain or spinal cord tumor that originates from ependymal cells, which line the central canal of the spinal cord.
The initial test revealed one tumor, which she compared to the size of a sausage. After meeting with a doctor at the University of Minnesota, a separate test showed a second smaller tumor lodged in her spine.
Solheim had four tumors in total, with two more in her brain. In a matter of weeks, she felt the consequences of life’s most unfair circumstance. At 12 years old, Solheim was a cancer patient.
Since that practice in July 2021, Solheim has undergone two surgeries to remove spinal tumors, while the other two in her brain sit idle. She powered through a six-week radiation treatment and suffers from permanent nerve damage in her left leg.

In sports, time is undefeated; it catches up to every player eventually. Cancer and time worked together to take hockey away from Solheim before she was old enough to attend high school.
“I was never told I had to stop playing, but it just got to a point where I physically couldn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t keep up with anything anymore. I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore and it was hard for me. I’d been playing my whole life, and making that decision was really tough.”
ADVERTISEMENT
However, Solheim decided to take hockey back.
After hanging up her skates following her eighth-grade season with the Bemidji High girls hockey team, she transitioned to the role of manager. Solheim also found a way to keep competing on the ice in the form of sled hockey.
The road often traveled
The Solheim family put a lot of miles on their car in 2021.
After pushing through her first surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester on Aug. 13, Solheim was told on a Google Meet session with her doctor that she needed radiation. It’s a process intended to shrink and slow the growth of the remaining tumors.
“The worst part is losing your hair,” Solheim said. “But I thought it was going to be way worse than it was. I have a great community around me that helped me. At school, I could wear a hat. I knew nobody would make fun of me but I was still nervous. I was the girl that didn’t have hair at school, and that scared me.”
It’s also a process that required her to be at the Mayo Clinic for six weeks. Meggen Solheim, Lucy’s mother, drove her to Rochester every Sunday night for a month and a half. They rented an apartment and stayed until Friday afternoon each week before driving back to Bemidji.
Despite the circumstances, Lucy was given the leeway to keep playing hockey during her radiation treatment. Meggen reached out to a 15U girls hockey team in Rochester and asked if she could skate with them during weekdays.
ADVERTISEMENT

“We knew she’d have a lot of downtime even after her school work,” Meggen said. “We just wanted to give her something to look forward to and something she felt she was a part of. We found an email for the team in Rochester on their youth hockey home page, and they were amazing. Their coach told us to bring her whenever she wanted.”
Once her treatment ended, Lucy returned to Bemidji and rejoined her 12U hockey team. But she couldn’t hide what cancer had done to her playing ability.
“My leg just wasn’t right after surgery,” Lucy said. “I was limping a lot, I’d trip a lot and was really weak in my leg. I played the rest of my last 12U season — the season we went to state — and it was a really hard year for me. Skating was really hard. I couldn’t skate fast, I couldn’t skate backward that well. It wasn’t painful, I just couldn’t do it. I was just weak, I couldn’t run or jump anymore.”
Lucy stuck with it for one more year. But once the sport became something she couldn’t keep up with, she felt like she had no choice but to stop.
“We were really sad,” sophomore teammate Bailey Rupp said. “Like it’s hard for all of us, but super hard for her to hear that she can’t play anymore. But we knew she’d always be a part of our team and be our manager because we wouldn’t be a team without her. We need her with us because she’s such a huge part of our team.”
Prior to her freshman year in high school, Lucy embraced her new role as the Lumberjacks’ manager.
“My sister was still playing, and I have a lot of friends on the team, too,” Lucy said. “I figured, why not be the manager so I can still be with my friends and my sister, right? Last season, I didn’t miss it that much. But this season, not being able to play and watching my friends play, it just made me want to be out there so bad.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Tough sledding
In just a few weeks after her managerial debut, Lucy approached her parents with a new proposition.
While at Top Shelf, Bemidji’s local hockey retailer, Lucy saw USA sled hockey world champion Chloe Kirkpatrick, who was a senior at BHS at the time. While they didn’t officially cross paths, Lucy felt inspired to give sled hockey a chance.
Her parents came in contact with Hope Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit organization in the Fargo-Moorhead area that provides family-friendly sporting and recreational opportunities critical to the health and development of children and adults.
Kirkpatrick got her start in sled hockey with Hope Inc.
“We made one phone call and it took off from there,” Meggen said. “They went above and beyond to get us on a call and get us to Moorhead that weekend. They wanted her to join, and it’s been arms wide open ever since. Her coach helped her get a grant to help pay for her sled. We’re still new to it, we’re still rookies, but they get us anything we could ever need.”
Lucy’s first sled hockey practice was in October 2023. Since then, she’s traveled to Moorhead nearly every Saturday to play.
“It’s weird because you don’t use your legs at all,” Lucy said. “You have to use your arms to push yourself around everywhere, and it’s really hard to learn at first. Your arms are burning because you’re so tired.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Lucy said it took one practice to get over her trepidations about playing for a new team in a new sport. She also said it took five or six practices to feel comfortable playing on a sled.

Since then, Lucy has competed in a sled hockey tournament with Hope Inc. Last weekend, she played in a jamboree.
Hope Inc. also played in a sled hockey game against the North Dakota State football team before taking the ice against the North Dakota men’s hockey team at the Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks, N.D.
“It gave her a chance to play the sport she loves and play it competitively,” Meggen said. "She just couldn’t skate anymore like she used to. She still can’t lift that left leg. There are times when she feels she’s missing out on something, but she’s still part of the team. But sled hockey is her thing now, and it’s amazing.”
Lucy officially met Kirkpatrick at a BHS practice earlier this season.
“She told me all about her (experiences) playing sled hockey,” Lucy said. “She told me about how she puts her blades in her sleds and how she cuts her sticks. She’s been a big role model for me.”
Second scare
Lucy was approaching the third anniversary of her first surgery last summer. She thought that chapter of her life was firmly behind her.
ADVERTISEMENT
Every four months, Lucy received regular testing to monitor the three remaining tumors in her body. While the two in her brain hadn’t grown, the smaller one in her back had.
The news of a second operation looming was a shock, to say the least. Lucy did not feel pain of any kind prior to the examination.

“We were blindsided when we found out she had to have another surgery,” Meggen said. “We knew the tumor was there, and you’re always kind of on your toes. Every appointment she has comes with nervousness, but you have to get through it because you don’t want her thinking she can’t do it. You have to be strong for yourself, for her and your whole family.”
Despite having gone through the process once before and being three years older, Lucy feared the worst was yet to come.
“She took it really hard because she knew what she went through to get everything back that she lost after the first radiation treatment,” Meggen said. “We were in a really good stage, but we were so nervous that it was going to set her back and make it hard for her to walk. She was worried she was at ground zero again.”
Luckily for Lucy, she avoided another radiation treatment. She now receives spinal scans every four months and brain scans every eight months.
Prior to her second surgery, Lucy was granted a Make-A-Wish. The Solheims took a trip to Hawaii. The day they returned home, they drove back to the Mayo Clinic for her operation.
“My parents — my whole family, really — are so special to me,” Lucy said. “They’ve supported me so much. I’m just so grateful to have that in my life. To have good parents like that to help you go through this is amazing.”
Team embrace
Despite the Bemidji girls hockey season ending on Feb. 8, the Lumberjacks have continued practicing at the BCA. And for the first time since trading her skates for a sled, Lucy is playing hockey with her lifelong friends.
“She wasn’t sure how to introduce her sled hockey life to people,” Meggen said. “Everybody had questions, everybody was so supportive of her. They all wanted to know when her next game was and how she played. Just the embrace she felt from her friends was so special. To know Lucy is to love Lucy, and those girls love Lucy so much.”
Her battle with cancer has given her teammates a new perspective.
“Lucy is just Lucy,” Rupp said. “She has the best personality. We all love her, and she’s such a good person. She’s always been our best friend. She’s our glue because of the energy she brings to the rink every day. She reminds us of everything we have.”

Meggen noted that she had reservations about how Lucy’s diagnosis would change things in her social life. However, she was immediately reminded of the strong bond between Lucy and her friends.
“That group played 8U, 10U and 12U together, and they’re rock stars,” Meggen said. “Their families have been amazing to us and so welcoming. They helped us through some really tough days, but we’ve always done everything together. Those kids have never treated Lucy any differently. They treat her like the same Lucy they knew when they were 8 years old.”
Meggen has also found solace in the support system the local hockey community provided her family.
“Man, there were some long and tough days,” Meggen said. “You don’t know what’s around the corner for you and your family. You can wake up and think everything is fine, and then it’s not. We are so lucky that Lucy has so many tight friends, and that comes with parental support. For us, it’s leaning on our friends, family and faith.”