Photo taken by The562 student-intern Victor Lao.
The end of gymnastics in the Moore League was just the beginning of the bad news for Millikan coach Ashleigh Ferguson.
At the age of 46, Ferguson was diagnosed with liposarcoma last May. Liposarcoma is a rare type of cancer in the tissue connected to organs.
“They didn’t know what it was attached to all the way up until the day of surgery,” said Ferguson, who was at risk of damage to her major organs. “It was super scary.”
Ferguson underwent surgery in July that removed several organs and a rugby ball-sized tumor, then underwent an intense seven months of recovery. She was eventually cleared and came back to work a month before her sick pay was up, returning just weeks before the start of her program’s final season of gymnastics.
“For the last 16 years these girls and this program have been a part of my life, so there was no way I was gonna miss this last year,” she said. “No way.”
Ferguson’s return marks the beginning of her 17th and final year coaching at Millikan for what will go down as one of the most dominant coaching tenures the school has seen. Ferguson helped bring Millikan its first Moore League gymnastics title in 22 years during her first year coaching in 2009, and is now looking to go out with her 16th title to end her coaching career.
The Bad News
Ferguson is a teacher in Millikan’s math department, and there wasn’t much on her mind towards the end of the 2024 Spring semester besides getting to summer. That was where her head was at on a May school day as she began her final exam review–before she was given the call mid-class of her diagnosis.
“All they said was, ‘You need to see an oncologist. You have cancer,’” Ferguson said. “That was it. I started crying. I went to [Megan] Berger, my JV coach, knocked on her door and she just rubbed my back while I cried for 30 seconds. Then I went back into class and I continued teaching. I thought, ‘What else am I gonna do? Worry about it?’”
Given the size of the tumor and its aggressiveness, Ferguson was threatened by the possibility of severe damage to one of her major organs and she feared for her life in the month and a half leading up to surgery.
During that six-week span, Ferguson says that she grew angry, wondering how much life she had left to live and why this had to happen to her. She says she even wrote death note letters to her family and friends, and was specifically angered at the idea of leaving behind her two adopted children.
“My husband and I adopted both of our kids from foster care, and I felt this weird thought like, ‘Wait a minute, these kids are going to have to go through this trauma even though they’ve had so much trauma in their life?’” Ferguson said. “It was a really hard month of just thinking about what the heck was going on.”
Even her doctors were uncertain about how the surgery would go, and when Ferguson told her surgeon that she was nervous the day before surgery, he replied, “Me too.”
“I was so nervous,” she said, “He told me that this was a huge surgery. The tumor was so big and it wrapped around my organs and just kinda grew inside. That’s what made the surgery so hard was that they had to try and take it off of my organs.”
On July 9, 2024, Ferguson underwent surgery that removed one of her kidneys, part of her colon, and the rugby ball-sized tumor in what ended up being the best-case scenario. The surgery was enough to kill all cancerous cells which meant chemotherapy wasn’t needed.
The Road to Recovery
Ferguson was unable to fully walk for the first few months of her recovery and dealt with pain as her body struggled to adjust to life post-surgery.
On top of it all, Ferguson’s mother, Marie, passed away just a month after the procedure.
“That tumor had been in there for over a year so I think my whole body just was not adjusting,” Ferguson said. “[And I think my mom passing away] made the healing take even longer than it should’ve because I had to plan the funeral and take care of my dad, so it was like this crazy crazy time in my life.”
But it’s safe to say that Ferguson’s community showed up for her when she needed it most. Members of her church, Grace Long Beach, took turns delivering meals two to three times a week during her recovery, and the Millikan community also joined in and offered their support by bringing her meals as well.
“It was pretty crazy to me how they stepped up,” she said.
While still regaining her ability to walk, Ferguson made her first appearance back on campus during the Fall of 2024 at a Millikan football game. To her surprise, Ferguson was swarmed by students with tears down their faces, crying in an outpour of excitement to see their teacher for the first time in months.
That moment meant the world to Ferguson, who was at a loss of words while recalling the emotional state of her students.
“I forget [the impact that you can have on them],” she said. “Not every kid likes me, which is totally okay. But the kids that like me and the kids that I’ve been able to invest in, it’s beautiful. There’s kids that I’ve maintained relationships with and I feel like I have a place as a mentor.”
While still struggling to recover months after surgery, Ferguson started to realize that she didn’t have enough sick hours to cover the amount of time that she needed to take off.
“Once my hours were depleted I thought, ‘Okay I’ll be able to go back to work,’ but there was like no chance. No way. I was in so much pain and I couldn’t fully walk. My whole body was still adjusting,” Ferguson said.
Again to her aid, Ferguson’s coworkers in the school district donated their sick hours to give her more time to recover. Ferguson says she even had enough hours donated to be off through March, but she pushed to come back a month earlier just in time for the final season of Millikan gymnastics.
The Legacy That’s Left
Even since returning to work in February of this year, Ferguson says that the outpouring of support hasn’t stopped.
“The kids have been so great, not even just my gymnasts,” she said. “They’re always making sure I’m okay and it’s pretty incredible watching these kids. They’re just so wonderful so it’s been so easy to come back.”
Ferguson’s JV gymnastics coach, Megan Berger, took over for her while she was out during the semester. Ferguson credited Berger for making the return even easier. Berger was once a gymnast at Millikan under Ferguson, and began coaching alongside her the year after she graduated in 2012.
“During this whole thing she was a big support,” Ferguson said of Berger. “She took over the whole team for a semester and she was texting me every day checking in on me. She is just incredible and that’s one thing I will miss; I will miss doing this with her. That was part of [why I came back], too. I wanted to work this last year with her.”
Ferguson is now returning to finish her 17th and final season as a high school coach, marking the conclusion of a dominant era for Millikan gymnastics.
Since she started teaching and coaching at Millikan in 2009, Ferguson has led her Rams to 15 Moore League titles, falling just once through the 16-year span in 2016 when she was forced to forfeit all of her meets due to an ineligible gymnast. The Millikan gymnastics program had been without a league title for 22 years before Ferguson’s arrival.
But for Ferguson, it hasn’t always been about winning; in fact, it never has. Ferguson has always prioritized the memories with her gymnasts over just winning, and this year will be no different. After all, she seems to have found a pretty successful formula.
“We’re just going to enjoy the time together,” she said. “For the first time I feel okay. I’m not worried or stressed about winning. We’re gonna go out there and have a good time. If we win, we win. If we don’t, that’s okay. It’s been a long journey.”
