Archbishop Spalding (Severn, Md.) football head coach Mike Whittles will not be on the sideline tonight when his team faces
Calvert Hall (Baltimore) in a key Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association "A" Conference game.
It will be the first game the coach has missed since being diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer last January.
Archbishop Spalding coach Mike Whittles
Photo by John Middlebrook
Whittles has been undergoing treatments, which have caused him to miss practices but never a game until tonight. When contacted at the hospital this afternoon Whittles reacted as one might expect - talking about the game first and foremost.
"I know we are prepared for Calvert Hall and I know the players understand the magnitude of this game," Whittles said in a text message. "We are playing one of the top teams in the state and must bring our ‘A' game. The players and coaches know that as long as everyone does their very best, good things will happen. All week the football team has prepared for tonight's game and all I expect is their very best effort."
As if an afterthought, Whittles, in his 13th season at the helm of the program, then responded to the fact that he would miss the game: "It is very bothersome for me not to be there, but I will be on each player's shoulders tonight offering words of encouragement."
Offensive coordinator Brian Propst, who has been on Whittles' staff from the beginning, will serve as head coach.
"I've got a real big knot in my stomach today," Propst said this afternoon in a phone interview shortly after hearing the news that Whittles would not be at the game. "We'll be in touch with him all night long by phone from the hospital and plan to involve him in key decisions. Everything I've learned in the past has been under his direction. Tonight will be like he's there, just through my body because I've learned everything I have from him."
Since finishing 10-32 during his first four seasons at Spalding, Whittles has led the Cavaliers to over 70 wins and four of the last six "B"
Conference championships. He's taken the private school from being a
regularly-scheduled homecoming opponent to the most feared team in the
conference.
So feared, in fact, Spalding moved up to the "A"
Conference this season.
Tonight is just another chapter in a book that started last January when Whittles began experiencing pain in his lower back and abdomen. Initial tests were negative, Whittles said, and he was cleared by a cardiologist and a urologist. But when the pain didn't subside, he then went for more tests at Johns Hopkins, where his worst fears were confirmed.
Spalding athletic director Lee Dove said the school and community support for Whittles, a 1971 graduate of
Our Lady of Good Counsel (Olney, Md.), has been overwhelming.
"Everybody has rallied behind his efforts to
battle this disease," Dove said. "Last spring when he first announced it the players
started going to morning chapel services on their own and continue to
do so. (Whittles) is one of the guys who gets it. He does the
right thing and everyone appreciates that and they want to be there for
him now during his time of need."
Since his diagnosis, Whittles has undergone chemotherapy and will soon begin radiation to shrink the tumor in his pancreas. The treatments sometimes leave him too tired to attend practice, but until tonight the determined coach had not missed a game.
"I keep telling him it's OK to miss a game, we'll be OK," Dove said earlier in the week before it was known Whittles would miss tonight's game. "But he insists on being there for his kids."
The first game he almost missed was on Oct. 1 when Archbishop Spalding traveled to Gilman for a clash against the "A" Conference opponent.
On that night the Gilman coaching staff presented Whittles with a check from the entire school community for $10,000 and fans wore T-shirts emblazoned with the words: Keep Fighting Coach Whittles. The fact an over-matched Spalding team lost the game was irrelevant. The team fought passionate for four quarters.
"What can you say," Dove added about that special night. "Poggi (Gilman head coach Biff Poggi) is an institution in his own right for doing the right thing and he got the community rallied and turned an alumni event into a Gilman community effort. It was just a classy thing to do. To see another coach rally his troops at the behest of one of our leaders was really touching."
Another tribute to the popular coach happened when the Cavs took on McDonough.
Many of Whittles' former players came back to help raise money for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. At a recent home game, the St. Mary's booster club made a $2,500 donation to pancreatic research, a touching gesture from the local rival that triggered Whittles' sense of humor.
"Coach turned to me and said, ‘Just when you think they truly hate you they turn around and do something nice,' " Dove recalled.
Whittles' coaching goals have obviously changed since the diagnosis. Double-digit win seasons and championships aren't so much the priority.
"To coach my one-year-old grandson someday," is perhaps Whittles No. 1 priority.
Time is indeed the No. 1 priority for Whittles, who calls himself a "5-percenter," referring to the number of people who survive stage four pancreatic cancer. His e-mail signature is "MAKE EVERY DAY COUNT!"
On this day, before their big game without him, Whittles had one last message for his players before they take the field:
"I love them and miss them and cannot wait to see them next week."
Jon Buzby is a sports columnist for the Newark (Del.) Post, a freelance writer, and on the broadcast team for the 1290AM The Ticket High School Football and Basketball Games of the Week. You may reach him at
jonbuzby@hotmail.com.
