Tami Fitzpatrick-Chauncey (Grant, 1996)

Tami Fitzpatrick-ChaunceyTami Fitzpatrick-Chauncey

Tami Fitzpatrick-Chauncey (Grant, 1996)

December 2024 ~

Armed with the knowledge that Tami Fitzpatrick-Chauncey (Grant, 1996) grew up with athletic siblings, a reasonable person might assume it was their influence that motivated her to take up sports herself. Then again, most reasonable people also know what gets said about making assumptions.

So, while it didn’t exactly not matter that brother Todd and sister Tyanna were involved in plenty of young-jock activities ahead of and around her, the primary influence in Tami’s decision to sign up for Kenton Little League was a little more…specific.

“Honestly, I was drawn to softball because I wanted a uniform,” she says, with a laugh.

Uniforms wind up being a recurring theme in Chauncey’s story. As does humor. As does North Portland. That’s where she was born, where she grew up, where she was educated -- before and after high school, at least -- and where she lives now, in the same house in which she first tried on her fancy new athletic wear back in the day.

Chauncey attended Holy Redeemer Catholic School and Ockley Green Middle School, where her athletic involvement -- and wardrobe -- grew to include volleyball and basketball in addition to softball. She was either playing or practicing sports year-round.

Though Chauncey lived in the Jefferson High district, she applied to Grant in hopes of taking advantage of a unique science and math program that Jeff didn’t offer. While she got into Grant, once there she found herself facing the initially uncomfortable reality that she would now be teammates with athletes she’d been fiercely competing with up to then.

“When I was at Ockley, Beaumont and Fernwood schools were our arch enemies, and they were in the Grant district. So, when I turned out for these teams that were filled with girls that I’d kind of been on the outs with before, I felt like I kind of had to do the walk of shame,” Chauncey cracks.

Once she settled in, Chauncey thrived with the guidance of a group of coaches “who made an everlasting imprint on my sports memories,” she says, crediting Cathy Benedetto (basketball), Debbie Englestad (softball) and Brick Street (volleyball).

Her sports accomplishments at Grant included four basketball letters, three softball letters and 1st Team All-PIL honors as a senior shortstop and catcher plus three volleyball letters and 2nd Team All-PIL honors as a junior.

Chauncey’s volleyball awards were achieved despite her having to compete in attire that clearly didn’t impress her as comprehensively as that first softball uniform.

“It was bun huggers and huge knee pads; we looked ridiculous,” she says, with another of her frequent laughs.

In addition to her playing achievements, Chauncey was named team captain in all three of her sports a total of six times, won Grant’s Vern Butts Best All-Around Athlete award as a senior, was a Rose Festival Princess and a member of the National Honor Society.

Notably, one of the honors Chauncey did not leave high school with was Grant Comedian of the Year, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. She had to be reminded fairly routinely, she says, that practice was for honing her athletic skills not her stand-up routine.

“I was always the class clown,” Chauncey says. “I’d find humor in a lot of things when maybe I should have been more focused. Coach Benedetto, my volleyball coach, used to get so mad at me. I remember one game against Cleveland when I tried to get the team fired up by doing this pep talk with an ankle wrap around my head. She was not happy. Even to this day I use humor as coping method, I guess.”

Chauncey says she worked as hard in the classroom as she did in sports because “I wasn’t from a wealthy family, and I knew going to college was going to depend on me getting a scholarship.”

While her athletic and academic skills had attracted the attention of a small college in Texas, tragic family circumstances kept Chauncey from wanting to stray too far from home.

“My biological father was diagnosed with lung cancer, so, I knew I wasn’t going to go away to college,” she says. “He died on my 17th birthday.”

Instead of leaving for Texas, Chauncey accepted a scholarship offer to attend nursing school at the University of Portland, enacting the plan she had made years earlier to pursue a career in healthcare.

“In high school I volunteered as a candy striper at Emanuel Hospital and really enjoyed that,” she says. “And after my dad was diagnosed, he had an LPN (licensed practical nurse) as his long-term caregiver, and I was always just mesmerized by her stories and by anatomy books. I felt fortunate that early in my life I knew what I wanted to do.” (Here it must be assumed – again despite what is said about assumptions – that it is merely coincidental that nursing is a career that features uniforms.)

So off she went a few blocks from home to the University of Portland, graduating with her bachelor’s degree in nursing in 2000, though Chauncey says it took longer than she expected to decide what she was going to do with it.

“Toward the end of my schooling when I was doing all my specialty rotations, I was getting scared because I wasn’t drawn to any of them” she recalls. “But my last rotation was pediatrics, and at that point I knew that was the discipline for me. I had finally found my calling.”

At that point, if Chauncey was thinking her competitive days were behind her, the state of the workforce she was trying had news for her. She graduated right at the end of a prolonged nursing shortage, meaning unemployed nurses were plentiful, and jobs were not. Fortunately, she again found herself on the winning side of a heated competition.

“I applied at Emanuel and was one of 50 applicants for only two jobs,” Chauncey remembers. “But I got one of them.”

And with that she had gone full circle, going to work at the same hospital where she was born in the neighborhood where she grew up and never really left. Chauncey eventually moved from Emanuel to Oregon Health and Science University, where she now cares for women with high-risk pregnancies as lead registered nurse for the Center for Women’s Health-Perinatology.

Foremost among her many accomplishments, which include three nominations as OHSU’s Nurse of the Year and her 2011 induction into the Grant High Hall of Fame, Chauncey has raised son, Kaden, and daughter, Kennedy, her 19-year-old twins.

She was inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2018.

“That was so flattering,” she says. “When you’re in the moment, playing, it’s just what you do. I loved sports, I was having fun, I was making friends, and I guess I was pretty good at it. But as the years go by, sports go from such a big part of life to, now, nothing. And that takes some getting used to. But getting into the hall of fame was a real honor and very humbling.”

Chauncey says she remains “super active. I still run quite a bit. I like to ski in the winter and I’m considering taking up pickleball. With my kids grown, I’m excited to see what my next chapter is and where it takes me. I know I’ve decided I’m going to be a ‘yes’ person. If people ask me to do things, I’m going to say Yes, and I think by doing that I’ll probably have a good story at the end.”

Note: click on a photo to see its caption.


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