Leaving Cancer in the Dust: Former Olympian and Cancer Survivor Karlie Kisha Runs for Research

Field hockey is serious business—just ask the battle-scarred shins of any player who’s dared to brave the field. Karlie Kisha (née Heistand) wielded a stick for the U.S. Olympic Field Hockey team in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. But as if competing on the world stage weren’t enough pressure, Kisha was heading to the Paris games having just undergone surgery for papillary thyroid cancer. 

Living without any cancer recurrence and coaching for the Villanova women’s field hockey team, Kisha continues to live the fighting spirit of field hockey, which she’ll be bringing to the AACR Philadelphia Marathon Weekend this year as a Runner for Research in the 8K on Saturday, November 22nd. In advance of Cancer Research Catalyst’s live coverage of this year’s Marathon Weekend, Kisha sat down with us to share her story and talk about why she’s running this year. 

(Come back on November 22nd for Cancer Research Catalyst’s live coverage of the AACR Philadelphia Marathon starting at 7 am as one of our writers—this post’s author, Steve Schneible—details his experience running the half marathon.)

What drew you to field hockey specifically?

For me, it all started with my mom. She played in college, and then she coached for more than 30 years, so it makes sense that I followed in those footsteps. My sister and I began playing field hockey when we were kids.

And did you always want to go pro?

I definitely always wanted to be an Olympian. Even in elementary school, I’d see Mia Hamm or Michael Phelps (I was also a swimmer as a kid), and I’d think, ‘I want to be like them’—so the dream to go to the Olympics was a lifelong thing. The sport wound up being field hockey just because I fell in love with it as I played.

Right after I graduated from UConn, where I played on the college team, I applied for the job I have now, coaching at Villanova. I’ve always admired Villanova’s field hockey program. Philadelphia is actually quite the hotbed for field hockey, so when that position opened up, I jumped on it. I had to work from afar for a bit while I was on the national team, but I’m retired from that kind of competition now, so I’m back here coaching.

Can you walk us through what it was like to receive a cancer diagnosis right before you went to the 2024 Paris Olympics? 

I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer while I was training with the U.S. team down in Charlotte, North Carolina, during April of 2024—so a couple months before the games. On the one hand, getting the diagnosis then felt really unlucky and quite devastating, because one of the first questions that came to my mind was whether this was going to make a lifetime dream impossible.

But on the other hand, I have to say I was extremely lucky, for a few reasons. Obviously, nobody wants cancer, but if you’re going to receive a diagnosis, thyroid cancer was, to me, one of the ones I’d rather get. And then, as inconvenient as the timing was, because of my training regimen, I was dealing with cancer while at a peak of physical fitness. I was training right up until the day of my surgery just to reduce my recovery downtime and the fitness loss that would come with it, but biologically, I felt like that situation gave me a big advantage. It’s hard to say if the Olympic training regimen helped me recover faster, but my surgeon was so supportive, and I was really lucky to have someone who understood how important it was for me to get back on the field ASAP. 

When you get surgery for thyroid cancer, they leave a drainage tube in around the incision area to make sure that blood and fluids don’t accumulate there, and we left that tube in for a few extra days just to make sure that exertion wouldn’t cause additional fluid drainage from agitation. It was pretty uncomfortable, but when all was said and done, I was back on the field after about two weeks.

And then you were all set for Paris, just like that?

I actually wasn’t medically cleared to compete until just a few days before we left for the Olympics. After I got the surgery and recovered, I also received a course of radiation, and preparing for the radiation while training was probably one of the most challenging aspects of my experience. 

Before you get treated with radioactive iodine for thyroid cancer, you’re eating a low-sodium, low-protein diet so that the starving cancer cells suck up the radioiodine in large quantities and die. But practically, that meant I was training at max effort in the heat of summer in North Carolina while on a restrictive diet without many electrolytes. I never passed out, but I came close!

Was that brush with cancer in your head at all, or did you lose yourself in the competition?

As an athlete, I’ve always tried to approach life, but especially competition with a sense of gratitude. In this case, I felt so thankful for all the support I’d received—from my husband, my friends, my family, my teammates, my doctors—but also generally, in life and in sports, you never know what hand you’re going to get dealt. You can only do your best in preparing. 

There I am at the Olympics, so lucky to be able to compete even though I had this unlucky diagnosis so recently—but then one of my friends and teammates injures her ACL, which means she can’t compete. In both cases, there’s just no sense of control whatsoever, so I think you’ve just got to learn to be thankful for whenever you get the opportunity to throw your all behind a competition. Because you don’t always get to do that. 

Now you’re competing again, this time as a Runner for Research in the 8K on Saturday the 22nd. What’s your motivation for running this race?

Well, I’ve always run as part of general conditioning for field hockey—obviously, you’re doing a lot of running on the field—and in high school, I ran track, where I specialized in the mile. But I’ve never done a distance race like this before, so it seemed like an appealing challenge. Initially, I’d wanted to do the full marathon just to say I’d done it, but I’m actually about six months and change pregnant, which is why I’m running the 8K this time. The marathon will have to wait!

Now that I’m retired from pro field hockey, it feels natural to go after running seriously, as it’s always been my bread and butter. My husband, Josh, will be running with me, and we have some friends and family coming to support us, so that should be good. What with the baby on the way and all, I’ll be perfectly happy with a nine-minute mile pace. 

Congratulations on the baby!

Thank you! With the radiation, CAT scans, and all that jazz with the cancer, we had to wait a bit, but luckily, no cancer recurrence has been observed at any of my follow-ups, and we’re very excited. 

What are your hopes for the future of cancer research? 

I suppose I’d like the same as everybody: more progress. By the time I was diagnosed, I was a massive beneficiary of medical progress that had been made years before. I’m still amazed at how fast and seamless the process was—being back on the field within a month was just amazing to me. 

A big part of that, of course, was the fact that I had a cancer that was fairly easy to treat, but my experience shows me what we can achieve. I’d love to see us get to the point of treating cancer where every patient’s experience is like mine, regardless of what kind of cancer they have. The confidence of having a straightforward plan of attack against cancer is such a mental boon, and with more research, I think we can get to a place where patients have that kind of confidence—that treatment is clearly defined and effective. 

Any closing thoughts you’d like to share?

I know I talked about it before, but I really feel like I can’t emphasize the gratitude element enough. My student athletes maintain gratitude journals, which I’ve started to do as well, and I think it helps with that sense of perspective. 

Our lives, our bodies, the most mundane things—these are tremendous gifts. A diagnosis with a serious illness like cancer might make that feel a little bit more relevant, but the truth is that life never stops being an opportunity that I think we should be grateful for. I’ve traveled the world, I’ve achieved some dreams, I’ve made friends, I’ve won, I’ve lost—and I think to myself how lucky I am to get to experience any of that, let alone so much of it. Even when (and maybe especially when) you’re aware that life can just stop, I’ve found that being grateful for all of it lets you push through whatever challenges and continue to live to the full.