Aaron Vehling

Like many college football players, UW-Eau Claire junior center Devon Disrude gradually had to work his way into the starting lineup.

However, Disrude faced a much bigger obstacle than most players.

One morning during spring break in 2001, Disrude went to a doctor in his hometown of Milton to check on a pain he was having in his abdomen. That evening, he was in Madison, having surgery to remove a lump that was testicular cancer.

“It happened so quick, I didn’t have time to comprehend it,” Disrude said. “I went in that morning, and I was supposed to leave on a ski trip that afternoon.”
Doctors originally discovered a lump in his abdomen. When another one was discovered on his testicle, he underwent surgery.

The surgery to remove his testicle was the first step in a treatment process that lasted through fall of 2001, forcing him to miss what would have been his freshman year of football after he redshirted in 2000.

The recovery process
After having surgery on a Friday, Disrude began chemotherapy treatment that Monday, going for two or three hours a day for five days. After that, he returned to Eau Claire for school, where he underwent one half-hour treatment a week for two weeks.

“I was a lot more tired after the five days,” Disrude said. “I didn’t really notice it too much. It sort of built up after the five days in a row.”

The first three weeks were the start of a 12-week treatment program for Disrude. He repeated the three-week cycle three more times.

After the 12-week cycle, he had to have another surgery to remove the lump from the back of his abdomen. The lump had shrunk and doctors feared it could travel through the lymph nodes to his lungs or brain.

Disrude went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to meet with surgeons before his second surgery. Since this procedure involved a much greater risk – there was a chance they would have to remove a kidney if the lump was too close – the clinic wanted him to be comfortable with the surgeon who would be operating on him.

After the surgery, Disrude still had elevated tumor markers in his blood, so he had to go to Mayo for more treatment, going for six days in a row on three separate occasions.

Getting back to the game
Once the treatments at Mayo were complete, Disrude began trying to get back into playing shape for football. He said he didn’t feel like doing much while he was going through the chemotherapy.

After the end of the first 12-week treatment, Disrude estimates that he weighed between 185 and 190 pounds, down nearly 70 pounds from his playing weight of 255. He said it took him three to four months to start getting his weight up again.

“The biggest thing was getting back into the lifting,” he said. “Most of the time, I just sat around because I was pretty tired.

“I would go out and rollerblade when I could,” he said. “I just tried to stay as active as I could.”

After missing the 2001 season, Disrude returned in 2002 to play on Eau Claire’s junior varsity team. That season, the Eau Claire coaches moved him from defense to offense and he started playing center.

Disrude said the five games he played on junior varsity helped him get ready for when he moved up to Eau Claire’s varsity team.

“JV is a good stepping stone for any player,” he said. “Most universities don’t have (junior varisty teams), so you don’t get game experience until you make varsity. Some players don’t play until their sophomore or junior year.”

Head coach Todd Hoffner described Eau Claire’s junior varsity team as a good feeder system for the varsity team.

“Players can develop and learn to play our schemes,” he said. “It’s not a big transformation from JV to varsity.”

Besides snapping the ball to the quarterback, the center is responsible for calling out blocking assignments for his fellow offensive linemen at the line of scrimmage. Disrude’s coaches agreed he has done a good job leading the offensive line so far this season.

“Our center has to be the brains of the operation,” offensive line coach Glenn Caruso said. “He’s done a fine job putting the other four linemen in the right position.”

Hoffner agreed, saying Disrude does a good job despite his quiet, laid-back personality.

“I can’t imagine him yelling out the calls at the line,” Hoffner said, “but he does an excellent job.”

Moving on
Disrude still goes back to the Mayo Clinic for periodic checkups, but those appointments are now four or five months apart. Right now, his cancer is in remission, though he will continue to go back for checkups until he has been cancer-free for five years.

He said he hasn’t been changed too much by what he went through, and sees this as more of a bump in the road.

“I don’t take as many things for granted as I used to,” he said. “It’s something that happened, and I just have to move on.”

Caruso said Disrude is a more mature person after everything he’s been through.

“If there are problems on the football field with our schemes or with blocking problems,” he said, “they pale in comparison to what he’s been through.”