'It was tough'

– Mason Brandt's journey from a \ Leipsic senior going viral for an alley-oop dunk on the SportsCenter Top 10 to the leading scorer and rebounder for the University of Findlay has been one to watch. As Brandt has grown and developed his body and his game, he has turned into one of the more prolific athletes in Division II basketball, with 23 dunks this season and plenty of 3-pointers and defensive highlights to match. Behind the scenes, however, there's been much more to Brandt's time as an Oiler.Brandt came to Findlay as an extremely thin, 180-pound freshman, just months removed from becoming Leipsic High School's top scorer. He appeared in 24 games that season for UF, scoring just under two points per game in eight minutes. In the following two seasons, Brandt increased his scoring to 5.6 ppg. and then 6.4 as a junior, albeit with a fluctuating role. When his senior season began, however, it was clear things had drastically changed. He was much bigger and stronger, and that translated to his play. From Findlay's opening-night exhibition, Brandt looked like a transformed player for the Oilers. Scoring 11 points with seven rebounds and slamming home a pair of dunks, Brandt practically oozed confidence as a starter. In the Oilers' first official game of the season, he put up 20 points and six boards, knocking down three shots from beyond the arc and establishing himself as Findlay's top scoring option. The key to Mason's emergence was his ability to, for the first time, start to understand and control the disease that was slowly taking over his life. Mason has eosinophilic esophagitis, or E.O.E., a disease where the esophagus gets irritated and swollen due to an excess of white blood cells, called eosinophils. Mason doesn't have the ability to eat tough foods, and spends most of his free time eating small meals of soft, mostly liquid foods like mashed potatoes, noodles and eggs. This, as one could imagine, has made it nearly impossible for Mason, who is naturally tall and lanky, to build the muscle and strength needed as a starter on one of the country's most high-octane programs. Mason has always had issues with chewing and swallowing foods, but it took a long while for him and his family to understand what was causing him to struggle. "He never ate a lot," Mason's father, Kevin, said. "You know, when you have young kids, they usually eat quite a bit, especially young boys. He never had a huge appetite. We'd see his friends come over and see what they eat, and I'm a teacher, so I see what kids eat. It was always kind of different with him."While it was clear that Mason's eating habits were on a much slower pace than other kids his age, it wasn't until the seventh grade that the Brandts started to become concerned. As he got older, Brandt's body was growing, but his appetite was not. Following a basketball team trip to Findlay to watch the Oilers play, and a stop at McDonald's that saw his teammates finish eating while he still had over half his meal, Mason's family decided to have him checked out by a doctor. "We saw an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor), and they diagnosed him with a chewing disorder called pocketing," Sarah, Mason's mother, said. "They did some scopes and stuff, but they never diagnosed him with EOE. So, we went through physical therapy to learn how to eat differently, to chew differently, but it didn't really make much of a difference."Mason went through the rest of high school, and even the first two seasons of his Oiler career, without knowing what he truly was going through. During his sophomore year, the effects of his EOE started to greatly impact him not only mentally, but on the basketball court. Brandt started the first 16 games of the season, but then his play began to diminish as the year went on, and he transitioned to a reserve role. The change in his play went hand-in-hand with his EOE, and just how drastically it had begun to affect him daily. "As a parent, it was scary to see him like that. His sophomore year, it was up and down," Kevin said. "He started the first 16 games, the last half of the year, his play declined. We just thought, mentally, he was going down because of basketball. When we found out it was so much more, it was scary. It was scary for us to see him like that. He's never been like that. He's a quiet, confident kid, and humble, and all of a sudden he was at a spot we've never seen.""Sophomore year is where I kind of got in a pretty low place mentally," Mason said. "Just because I knew that I was behind physically, and in order to reach my potential, I would have to put some weight on. I just felt like there was no possible way for me to do that. It was a pretty low place mentally, and I didn't know how to fix it. There's really no way to eat faster with this, and that's one way to put weight on. It was tough, I didn't know if I was ever gonna get over that hump."During the offseason after his junior year, all of Mason's issues came to light. While at work over the summer, Mason choked on a peanut, which led to an hours-long standoff with his throat and finished with an after-midnight procedure at the emergency room to remove it. This event led to the Brandts finally being told the name of Mason's illness, and began his road to tackling it."We didn't know how bad it was for him," Kevin said. "He came home at the end of basketball season and pretty much had a breakdown and told us how much he was struggling. He was getting up early, staying up late to eat. He was doing everything he can to put pounds on, to put muscle on to help this team and help himself. It was a really big slap in the face for us, like, 'oh my God, this is a lot worse than what we could have ever imagined.'""It was becoming an obsessive thing for him, trying to eat enough and trying to eat more calories," Sarah said. "You're staying up late, you're getting up early. We didn't understand that it was interfering with that much of his life, just trying to eat enough calories to gain weight.""His fiancée kind of filled us in on some things, too, that were going on," Kevin added. "Obviously, he's here at college. We were just kind of dumbfounded. We knew it was a problem, but we didn't know it was affecting him mentally."After his sophomore year, when he and his family finally discovered the name of his condition, Mason broke down and told members of the Oilers basketball program, including head coach Charlie Ernst. "At that time, coach Ernst didn't know," Brandt said. "He didn't know until junior year. He's been really good about it ever since. He's been really good about it ever since, and really encouraging.""The hard part about this for him is, being an athlete, he wants to put on weight," Kevin said. "That was difficult for him, especially when he got here. The coaches, and rightfully so, pounded him about his weight. And everybody thinks, 'Geez, Mase. Put some weight on, put some weight on,' He's working his tail off, but there's so much more to it."Mason's inability to eat hard foods or dairy makes it nearly impossible for him to put on the pounds. He's up around 200 pounds now, but gaining muscle has been a long process. Mason has had to learn over time exactly what his body needs to get stronger, and it has finally begun to show on the court. One of the things that finally helped Mason take that leap and begin to add strength was getting help from Jim Steffen, a local fitness trainer and owner of XT Fitness in Findlay. Jim's unconventional approach with Mason has been largely beneficial to his body transformation as a senior. "I needed a different type of lifting," Mason said. "The lifting I was doing before just wasn't working. I was doing the average lifting stuff, bench, squat, all that good stuff. Jim is more body weight type of stuff. Push-ups, pull-ups, a lot of stuff with the big tires. That was really good for me, to just have a different perspective on that and a different way of going about lifting. It was really impactful for me."Another important thing for Mason has been acupuncture. He started doing acupuncture once every couple of weeks and now goes once a month. Doing acupuncture was Mason's choice over steroids, choosing the more natural option to help him try and combat this disease. That choice has yielded very positive results, as he hasn't gotten anything stuck in his throat since beginning the procedures. "The main reason why we wanted to do this, is to get it out there that you can still be a high-level athlete with this," Kevin said. "I think the acupuncture thing is something that's very under the radar. It may not help everybody, but if there's somebody out there that's struggling with this as well, hopefully they can see this and say, 'Let's try this out. It worked for Mason, who knows?'"As a senior, Mason is posting averages of 12.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 1.3 steals, shooting 45% from long range on over three attempts per game. Those numbers are good enough to lead the team in points, rebounds, and 3-point percentage, while he's also cracking the top three in steals. "With this disorder, I'll never be huge and bulky, and I've never been that way my entire life," Mason said. "So, I've kind of learned how to play as a skinnier kid. Now that I have a little bit of strength to go with it, and the knowledge of playing before with not a lot of strength, it feels really good. Just the small things. Being able to guard the post, getting extra offensive rebounds, the small things that you don't know you need some strength for until you get to college basketball. It's really nice to know I'm almost at my full potential, strength-wise."Mason has turned into one of the most important players for the Oilers. From a skinny freshman playing eight minutes, to playing the second-most minutes per game and guarding the opposing team's top scorer every night, Brandt's development in spite of his condition is remarkable. "People need to understand what he goes through as a college athlete," Kevin added. "It's not just getting yourself in the gym, it's not just getting yourself in the weight room, it's not the normal mental beating that college athletes take. He has a little bit more on his plate. He has a lot more on his plate, both literally and figuratively."