Comeback article.

[JRutledge]

I thought this would be interesting to the board.

Getting his day on court
Barry Temkin
On High Schools

April 1, 2005

Larry Welton's basketball career is almost indescribable, so let's allow the facts to speak for themselves:

- 1997-98: Welton is cut from his junior high basketball team as a 7th-grader.

- 1998-99: Ditto for 8th grade.

- 1999-00: Welton makes the freshman B team at Thornwood, mainly on potential.

- 2000-01: Welton is a sophomore team reserve.

- 2001-02: Welton makes Thornwood's varsity but rarely plays.

- 2002-03: Welton misses his senior season because he is fighting cancer.

- 2003-04: Welton misses his freshman season at Aurora University for the same reason.

- 2004-05: Welton starts, and stars, for Aurora, wins a boatload of honors and tops it off by being named a finalist for The V Foundation for Cancer Research's annual Comeback Award.

Welton didn't get the V Foundation award, whose winner was announced Tuesday, but that probably was fitting. A comeback award, after all, should go to someone who succeeded before stumbling.

Welton's basketball career was a series of almost unending stumbles until this season. His award should be for perseverance, if not downright stubbornness.

"I just wanted to play ball," he said Monday, sitting on a bench near Aurora's gym, "and everything finally worked out for me."

Welton has almost always loved basketball, so he was devastated when he couldn't make the team at McKinley Junior High in South Holland and ecstatic when he survived the cut as a 6-foot-3-inch freshman. Through Welton's first three years at Thornwood, coaches saw him as a tall, scrawny kid with a decent shooting touch who might be valuable if he could ever add weight and strength.

"We always thought he had a lot of potential," said Thornwood coach Bob Curran, who responded with "Wow" when he heard a list of Welton's recent accomplishments. "He was just so skinny and weak.

"We knew if he ever stuck with basketball and someone gave him a chance, he could be a late bloomer."

Welton hoped his senior year would be his chance to star, but about a month before school started he began to have severe pain in his left knee.

Everyone believed it was just soreness from basketball, but then a spot turned up on an X-ray, and the next thing Welton knew, an oncologist was telling him he had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system.

"I was scared," Welton said. "People die from cancer all the time."

So he wasn't thinking about basketball, not even when his doctor said his chances of recovery were good. Soon he did start to think about hoops, though, but an upcoming year of chemotherapy meant his high school basketball career was over.

Welton figured he was done with basketball, period.

"I felt crushed," he said. "I thought all my work had been for nothing.

"I was thinking of playing college ball, but I thought, `It's over now. I've got to move on.'

"I thought it was a done deal."

His mother, Lorynda Taylor, wasn't so sure. Through 15 months of chemotherapy, many of them in-patient treatments, through the nausea, the vomiting and the loss of Welton's appetite and hair, she told her son he still would play basketball.

"She kept saying, `You can play again,'" he said. "She's the one who kept me focused."

Welton, though, graduated from Thornwood with no specific college plans. He got a summer job, and a co-worker who attends Aurora told him to check out the school, which has an NCAA Division III athletic program.

"I had nothing to lose," Welton said. "It was August. I had nowhere to go."

He enrolled at Aurora even though he had never talked to basketball coach James Lancaster. Lancaster heard about Welton but didn't think much about it until he was picking up his mail in the athletic department office one day, glanced down through a window at the gym and saw Welton dominating a pickup game.

"If you saw Larry on the court for two seconds, you could see he had talent," Lancaster said.

Welton had three months of chemotherapy left, so Lancaster advised him to sit out games that season as a redshirt. Another year on the sidelines was hard for Welton to deal with.

"Everything I was trying to do to play basketball was not working," he said. "I was ready to quit. I thought maybe basketball was not for me."

Instead of quitting, he worked extra hard last summer lifting weights and playing basketball. He played so well, in fact, that a junior college coach tried to get him to transfer, saying it might get him a Division I offer.

Lancaster traveled to South Holland to recruit his own player, and Welton decided to stay put.

"I liked the coach and a lot of the people I was playing with," he said.

His decision looked pretty good this season, when the 6-5 left-handed forward averaged 20.1 points and 7.6 rebounds per game for Aurora (23-5), including a 40-point outburst against Beloit.

He was a National Association of Basketball Coaches' all-district pick and was both the newcomer of the year and player of the year in the Northern Illinois-Iowa Conference.

"I was optimistic he'd be good, but he certainly exceeded expectations," Lancaster said. "I'm sure sometimes it's surreal to him."

Welton appreciates the plaques and applause, but all he really cares about is that he finally . . . finally . . . is getting a chance to play.

"Man, I didn't know I'd be that good," said Welton, who said his health is fine now. "I wasn't trying to score 20 or win awards. I just wanted to hoop."

Lancaster expects even bigger things from Welton in the next three years, especially if he works hard to develop his body and his overall game, which the coach calls "raw."

"I think he has just scratched the surface," Lancaster said. "I think his athleticism and work ethic will carry him a long way."

Not any longer than the road Welton has traveled so far.

"I just want to keep playing ball as long as I can, stay healthy and keep having fun," he said. "All my hard work paid off.

"I'm good now."

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Copyright © 2005, The Chicago Tribune

[dblref]

My congratulations to a young man that has tremendous tenacity. Not many people would have stuck with it to overcome what he did.

[rainmaker]

Jeff --

THanks for posting this. It's always nice to read about kids who can overcome adversity and win through to their dreams.

[mick]

Thanks, Rut.