On the day before volleyball practice began in January, Hall of Fame coach Michael Boehle spoke to his players at Loyola High to let them know about expectations for the coming season.
“One of the things we talk about is cancer within a team and how there are times when cancer can really affect a lot of things and it’s not curable and it spreads,” he said. “We use that analogy talking about bad teammates.”
Players had no idea what was about to come out of their coach’s mouth.
“Unfortunately, today, I’m here to tell you your coach has cancer.”
As if that wasn’t shocking enough, then came a warning.
“You have to stay patient with me. I don’t know if I’m going to be missing practices, games or be gone for a month,” he said. “All I can ask you to do is say an extra prayer for me. Coach is a fighter. That’s all I got. See you tomorrow.”
Boehle grabbed his water bottle and put his head down. There was silence. When he finally looked up, he saw players lined up in a single file offering hugs and telling him, “We’re going to win this battle together.”
Boehle, 58, found out he had prostate cancer after a routine physical and blood test last October alerted his doctors to investigate further. An MRI scan just before Christmas revealed a spot on the prostate. Then came a biopsy in January to confirm a cancer diagnosis.
Since it was discovered early, the prognosis is good. Surgery is scheduled for July after Boehle is finished coaching club volleyball.
As the Southern Section playoffs begin Wednesday and the Mission League-champion Cubs seek their eighth Division 1 title under Boehle, he agreed to discuss the emotions he went through and to encourage others to be checked for a disease that is second only to skin cancer in affecting men.
He remembers the day after his cancer confirmation coming to school, shutting the door to his office and just crying.
“I was scared to death of spread,” he said. “I went down the rabbit hole and started looking up all the different cancers.”
In February he underwent a scan that uses radioactive tracers to see if it had spread. He’ll never forget the day his doctor interrupted his practice with a phone call to reveal the results.
“I’m not supposed to know for about a week,” Boehle said. “And it’s my doctor. I ran out to the pool deck. He says, ‘Michael your report is back and, as we suspected, there’s no metastatic disease.’ I literally dropped the phone on the pool deck. I ran back in and my son, Davis, was there and must have seen what I looked like because he asked, ‘Did you get bad news?’ I said ‘Don’t have a spread. It’s just in the prostate’ and gave him a big hug.
“I was so relieved. That was the biggest news out of my cancer diagnosis, hearing it had not spread. That’s what I needed to hear. I was in a bad place. I needed to hear that.”
With support from his family, players, friends and coaching colleagues, Boehle has been able to move forward and accept the judgment of his doctors that everything will be OK. He’s eating better and working out to be in the best shape possible for his surgery.
He wants to make sure others understand that even though there’s been no cancer in his family, having a routine blood test is a must to help discover problems before they become worse.
“The support and love I got from the volleyball community has been outstanding,” he said. “My message was I was in great health. Just because you don’t have that in your family doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get tested. A lot of people aren’t doing physicals. It’s a real easy test.”
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