One day, while shaving, he noticed it — a lump on his neck.
Not long after, Chris Coll, 51, learned he had throat cancer and his battle against the disease began.
“It was a little bit overwhelming. It was a shock to the system and puts you back on your heels a little bit,” Coll said.
Coll, who is a physical education teacher and football coach at Franklin Community High School, decided to look at his diagnosis from a perspective he knows well.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
“Once the initial shock wore off, it was more about, for me, dealing with another piece of adversity. You talk about learning life lessons through sports, and I really felt like all the stuff I’ve been through professionally and personally prepared me to deal with this in a positive manner,” Coll said.
For seven weeks, Coll underwent five days each week of radiation treatments lasting about 10 minutes each.
Each Wednesday, he had a three- to four-hour chemotherapy session at St. Francis Cancer Center in Greenwood. Doctors put Coll on a high-calorie formula to drink daily, so the coach never lost more than five or six pounds throughout treatment.
Coll missed two weeks of work. But his wife, Deena, and the couple’s three sons ages 17 to 23 worked together to get through treatments.
His son, Cody, 23, who is also one of the Grizzly Cubs’ football assistant coaches, stepped in as often as possible to oversee weight training class in his father’s absence.
“They all just took care of their business, really. Just making sure things were taken care of at home and in their own personal lives. They’re very independent, responsible kids anyway,” Coll said of his sons. “I didn’t have to worry about what they were doing. That’s just the way they are,” he said.
“(Deena) missed a lot of work, too, taking me to appointments and taking care of me at home. She was unbelievable.”
Clayton Coll, a senior linebacker for the Grizzly Cubs already offered five college scholarships, said not having his father at full-strength during the start of the recruiting process was difficult.
“When he first told me, it was more, ‘Wow, am I going to lose my dad?’” Clayton Coll said. “You always hear and see stories about it, but you never think it’s going to happen to your family.”
Now, Chris Coll looks and sounds good. He’s excited to start preparing players who’ll be part of Franklin’s football team for the upcoming season, he said.
On July 11, he will have a scan to determine the effectiveness of recent radiation and chemotherapy treatments.
“Everything has gone well. (Doctor) likes what he’s seeing,” Chris Coll said. “The scans will be the final determiner.”
“There are people who deal with a heck of a lot worse than what I’ve dealt with. I was ready to get back and be around the kids here in the building. It was just about getting back to life and doing what we do.”
Once word of his diagnosis spread, two schools, football programs and communities rallied to help the Coll family.
At Tri-West High School in Hendricks County, Chris Coll is the hometown boy — a successful coach and devoted family man that many of the locals have known since he was a little boy playing in the fields outside of Lizton. Many at Franklin were still in the process of getting to know the new coach.
Deena, also a Tri-West graduate, used Facebook to keep family members and friends updated about her husband’s status.
“To be honest, it was like a punch in the gut,” Deena said of finding out Chris had cancer. “I knew we had to tell our kids and Chris, he’s that guy who never gets sick. He’s a rock. Always positive. From my perspective, they all handled the news like their personalities are.”
Cody was the most emotional. Casey, 19, a sophomore wingback for the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne and the personality clone of his dad, was more, as Deena puts it, go with the flow. Clayton, meanwhile, couldn’t mask the agitation that his father was ill.
Both Tri-West and Franklin set up websites that raised more than $8,000 to help the family with medical costs not covered by insurance.
“That’s probably the part, yeah, that hit me pretty good,” Chris Coll said. “It still does. The way people have reached out to us, supported us and been there for us. I’m very touched. Very humbled.”
Chris Coll is a 1985 Tri-West graduate and former football player who returned to his alma mater to lead the Bruins’ gridiron fortunes for 11 seasons from 2006 to 2016. The program won the Class 3A state championship in 2014.
Three years later, he would be lured from his comfort zone to be Franklin’s coach.
“Being in the Tri-West community for a lifetime, I knew what kind of community it was. You always rally around whoever needed support. And from the time we got down here a year ago, people always supported us,” he said.
Those who know the coach said he’ll do everything in his power to beat cancer.
“I’m worried about him because he’s one of my favorite guys. But if anyone can beat it and stay positive about it, it’s Chris. I just love him to death,” said Mike Gillin, Chris Coll’s longtime friend and mentor, who was his football coach at Tri-West and the Indian Creek coach from 2002 to 2016.
“I hope I see him on the sidelines next year, and I’m sure I will.”
Hearing Chris Coll had cancer was jarring, Franklin athletic director Bill Doty said, but as he talked more with him, he learned the cancer was definitely treatable.
“It starts to make you feel a little better, and that’s what he was able to do is let everyone know it’s going to be fine. That’s what he’s like,” Doty said.
“In the short period of time I’ve gotten to know Chris, he is a genuine person. He cares about his players, cares about his community and it was heartbreaking to hear that news.”
