Taking Flight: A Man and his Stories

This is one of three columns submitted that took third place for column writing in the 2011 Minnesota Associated Press Sports Association Awards for dailies under 20,000.

There are few things better in life than hearing a good story.

It’s why we love movies and books and television shows and newspapers. They all tell a story.

On Saturday afternoon, with sweat pouring down my brow, I had the pleasure of sitting with Buck Burkhartzmeyer for the first inning of a Faribault American Legion baseball game.

Almost all interviews follow a monotonous trend. I ask questions and people answer them in a couple sentences. Every once in awhile they say something interesting. Mostly, they recite cliches. (I also seem to start every interview I’ve ever done by saying “Alright, so...”)

But sometimes you know an interview will be different. As I sidled up to Buck, I knew this one would be.

“Alright, so I know you guys have been friends a long time, did you meet playing baseball?”

And that was it. I let Buck go. He told me stories and I listened. I didn’t even know Austin had scored a run until the next inning.

“Dale has always been a close friend of mine,” Buck began. “We had a lot of fun.”

Buck told me about how he and Dale met in high school. About how they double dated.

He told me how after he would visit his wife at St. Lucas he would go see Dale at Pleasant Manor. Invariably, Dale would be watching the Twins with his Timberwolves cap on and a wood puzzle in his hands. He told me about how Dale loved to play euchre and dance.

He told me about how Norma Bosshart worked at St. Paul Clothier in downtown Faribault and on her noontime lunch break she would sometimes wander into the Burkhartmeyer Shoe Store on Central Avenue.

“I said to her one day, I said, ‘Norma, I think I’ve got a blind date for you.’ She accepted and from there on you can see what happened. They raised a pretty nice family.”

He didn’t tell me, but I already knew Dale and Norma were married for 57 years before she passed away in 2008.

He told me about how they weren’t good enough to play for the Faribault semi-pro team so they joined up with a friend on the Elysian Legion team. During their first game, they both committed an error and the crowd started to boo them. Someone yelled out “Send them back to Faribault!” He told me they were not deterred.

During our entire inning-long conversation I only asked two more questions. I didn’t have to ask. Buck had enough stories to tell. And I’m sure I only took a paring knife to the top of that iceberg.

Making a name for himself

This story took second place among weeklies under 1,500 circulation at the 2012 Minnesota Newspaper Awards.

Peder Sviggum's pre-athletic chapter didn't last long, but it did feature a cape.

Sviggum has just a few months left in his storied three-sport career for Kenyon-Wanamingo High School, but when his basketball coach looks back at his first memories of the senior, it features more Peter (Peder?) Pan than jump shots and tackles.

But Peder's life without athletics didn't last long. By second grade he was playing baseball for the Steelers - trying to take down those pesky Sliders - and joining in on Saturday open gyms led by his dad, Jim.

Jim Sviggum was a star Kenyon athlete in his own right, a quarterback for the football team, guard for the basketball squad and shortstop on the diamond before he graduated in 1971. He spent countless hours in the backyard tossing baseballs or in the driveway shooting hoops with Peder. Jim was also Peder's coach for most of his youth teams.

"He really made a big deal to go out for sports and be the best you can," Peder said.

From an early age, Peder's athletic acumen was obvious to those around him, but the pressure he mounted on himself - while trying to live up to his extended family's sporting successes - at times derailed him.

"He would wreck kids on the basketball court," said Blake Johnson, who has been friends with Peder since kindergarten. "Peder basically led the team. He was good."

"He's always been one of the better ones at every sport," said Oakley McLain, who became friends with Peder after moving to Kenyon in third grade. "He's really good at everything."

By the time he reached middle school, it was obvious that Peder was headed down a path toward high school athletic stardom. If he could contain his own emotions.

"He used to get really frustrated when he didn't do well and that hurt his performance," K-W baseball coach Randy Hockinson said. "That's something young kids go through."

"If I didn't do something right it would be tough for me not to be able to do what (my dad) wanted me to do," Peder said.

So there he was, the gifted athlete that coaches drooled over. But he still had one last hurdle to clear, that pesky last name and the weight it carries.

"It's always just been there," Peder said. "I've always tried to make a name for myself and not rely on the Sviggum thing."

There was no lightbulb moment. But over time Peder learned to live equally with his success and failures.

"Knowing that he had a lot of people who were really pushing him, he found a nice balance," K-W basketball coach Matt Addington said. "He made sure he could do the best he could, while not playing for anyone but himself."

"What's been a real pleasure is the last couple of years he's become relaxed and he doesn't act frustrated," Hockinson said. "It's that maturity."

Three-sport star

There was never any point where Peder wasn't going to play three sports. In basketball he often played up a level, joining Brady Anfinson and Brandon Quam on the older teams. But by seventh grade he was playing with his own classmates, and the team went 19-4, a record he can rattle off without a second thought.

In football he and McLain teamed up to go 33-3 from fifth grade through ninth grade, with Peder at quarterback and Oakley doing just about everything else.

"He's got a strong arm, he's accurate, he runs hard with the ball," McLain said.

On defense he played safety and in baseball he pitched and played middle infield, but none of those would last.

Reaching Knighthood

Peder may be a quarterback, and is comfortable shooting 3s from the perimeter, but he doesn't look the part. His shoulders are expansive, loudly announcing his upper-body strength. That comes courtesy of a weight-lifting regiment he began in ninth grade.

"I always thought lifting weights was a good thing to do," Peder said. "You can't rely on being skilled all the time. Lifting weights and getting stronger, it gives you a little bit of an edge."

"His physical strength is a real obvious part of him and his game," Addington said. "He's so much stronger than most guys he played against. He had a real relentlessness and a crazy pursuit to rebound the ball."

In baseball his strength became evident as he became the first Knight to hit more than two home runs in a season - he swatted four - in eight years.

"The ball just bounces off his bat," Hockinson said. "He's always had a really great swing; a sweet, natural swing."

That strength allowed him to move from safety to linebacker between his junior and senior seasons.

When he was younger, the joke went that the coaches thought he couldn't tackle, but he threw enough interceptions to prove he could tackle. But by his senior year he led the Knights in tackles.

"He was our dominant defensive player and all over the field and played a relentless linebacker," Hockinson said. "He really showed his physical toughness on the football field."

"He's not like a normal QB," McLain said. "He'd like to take a hit more than anyone else."

Peder was named to the Hiawatha Valley League All-Conference team for football after leading the team with 686 passing yards and 11 touchdowns and a team-high 448 rushing yards and eight scores.

"I wouldn't want to have anyone else," said Johnson, who played wide receiver. "He was probably one of the best QBs in the conference for how small our line was."

His combination of strength and speed also moved him to the outfield in baseball, after it became evident he wasn't quite quick enough getting his throws off in the infield.

"He's gotten really good at left field," said McLain, who plays center. "He's just had fun going out and playing the outfield. It wasn't too hard for him to switch."

Replacing the B&B Boys

In his senior basketball season, Peder had the dubious task of replacing 1,000-point scoring seniors Anfinson - who he also replaced as starting QB - and Quam.

"They were great leaders, always pushing us and themselves to get better every day at practice," Peder said. "They knew basketball was a special thing for them and they wanted to keep it that way and leave a good legacy."

By the end of the year Peder was named All-Conference after averaging 11.5 points per game and 9.1 rebounds as the Knights advanced to the sub-section semifinals thanks to a buzzer-beating 3-pointer Peder sunk at the end of the first overtime against Belle Plaine.

"He played with those kids a number of years so he's played a lot of different roles, but he stepped into it really nice for us," Addington said. "He probably didn't have the talent or experience around him but he embraced the fact he had to be that guy. It was evident when we went into tourney time and he had to take on more of a load."

One season left

Now Peder is down to his final few months suiting up for the Knights. He's not sure what he'll do next year, although he's considering attending St. Mary's University in Winona and plans to walk onto the baseball team. He hopes to go into a career in criminal justice.

But before all that, there's a baseball season to be played with many of his teammates from the Kenyon American Legion team that reached the state tournament last summer.

"That was a great experience and going to state in baseball was a blast and won't ever be forgotten," he said.

Baseball is also the sport where Peder can be his jovial self in the dugout, cracking jokes as his hearty laugh echoes across the field.

"He's the kind of guy who will always make you laugh," McLain said. "He's really funny. He'll keep a smile on your face."

"He's got credibility with his teammates because he cares about his teammates," Hockinson said. "He'll involve his teammates. He keeps them loose. He likes to joke around and have fun. He's always talking. He's kind of like his dad in that way."

But not exactly like his dad. He's worked hard to earn that. He's Peder.

Morrissey named FHS boys basketball coach

This story took third place for spot news story in the 2011 Minnesota Associated Press Sports Association Awards.

Twenty minutes after Scott Morrissey found out the interim tag had been removed from his title as Faribault High School boys basketball coach on Friday, he struggled to find the words.

"It's very exciting," he said exuberantly. "It's been a long waiting process and it's all worth it. It's hard to put it into words. It's a dream come true for me, actually and a wonderful opportunity for me professionally."

 

Morrissey took over for Steve Lansing before the 2010-11 season after four years as an assistant coach. While the season was bumpy, and ended in the first round of sectionals with a 6-20 record, it did nothing to discourage him from going after the job he had in his sights since he turned down the head girls basketball coaching job at Bethlehem Academy five years ago to start coaching at FHS.

"It's very fitting," Morrissey said. "I believe everything happens for a reason."

Morrissey's first step is working to create a feeder system to keep youths playing basketball from an early age up through high school. The new program, called Little Falcons, will start in the fall.

"Right now, we have basically nothing in place so we're excited about starting," he said. "We need to get our basketball players younger and make sure they're playing basketball at a young age. We're really excited about catching up to the other sports. Wrestling and hockey have done a nice job of this."

Morrissey's dedication to building a sustainable program is part of what encouraged FHS athletic director Ken Hubert to offer Morrissey the job.

"Scott did some really good things this past year," Hubert said. "He worked to develop relationships with coaches at all levels. He's working with those coaches to start the Little Falcons program, doing things to build long-term. That's one of the things we really want to see is someone who can develop a total program."

Hubert's search started with 24 candidates, although several dropped out when there wasn't a teaching position in the district to go with the coaching opening.

"Our school district isn't in a position to create a teaching position because we want someone to coach," Hubert said. "That's one of the challenges you face."

Morrissey is a special education teacher at Lincoln Elementary. He has also worked at Divine Mercy Catholic School and the Rice County Day Treatment Center. He was co-interim softball coach in 2010 when Tricia Johnson was on maternity leave. He has been an assistant boys basketball and softball coach for four years at FHS. Before that he was head softball coach at BA for eight years, turning around a program from a one-win season to a Gopher Conference championship. He was also assistant girls basketball coach at BA under two head coaches.

"Scott is very qualified and we believe a coach who brings many positive things to the table," Hubert said.

Morrissey's first task will be starting a rebuilding process after losing much of his scoring from last year when Michael Emge and Chad Hansen graduated.

"I want people to be patient," he said. "We're definitely rebuilding. We have some nice young classes coming through the system. We're going to be developing basketball players and having a lot of fun."

Morrissey has his team running a dribble-drive offense, but he is adamant he will change schemes depending on the talent he has each year.

"You have to have the right players," he said. "Right now, I think we do. We have three or four guards who can get in the lane and create. But we will run some flex, some motion. What we're really lacking is a big man. We don't have a 6-foot-6 Chad Hansen. We might have to have a 6-foot-2 post player. We're really going to have to be creative with our offenses."

The boys basketball position was the last head coaching vacancy at FHS. Earlier this summer, Steve Gravgaard was named girls hockey coach, Mark Bongers was named boys cross country coach and Jessica Swenson was named girls tennis coach.

An Unfamiliar Thing

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

bburnett-kurie@faribault.com

From where Khadar Siyad is standing, the grass, bright as a painting, stretches across three fields before it is interrupted ever so briefly by a concession stand, restrooms and a small parking lot. Then it picks up again, flat like a green sheet laid across the countryside, radio towers as a backdrop and a small retaining pond demarcating the end of openness. Beyond green is a small collection of trees, then farmland as far as the eye can see.

This is the first unfamiliar thing.

In the whole of this green viewscape mixed only by the perpendicular white lines of goalposts, Siyad is the only person. On a muggy, overcast day with the gentle sound of birds chirping in the distance, he is but one man on acres of pitch, slowing setting up a dozen small, orange cones in the shape of a long rectangle. By the post of one goal he has poured the contents of his small backpack — orange, red, yellow pinnies tumbling out.

It’s nearing 6 p.m., and soon he won’t be alone. Before long cars are lining up along 17th Street and from them emerge dozens of young men, in small groups or alone, some wearing jeans and some wearing shorts, some wearing shirts of the team they support (Man U or Arsenal or Real Madrid) and some wearing thrift store T-shirts from some indiscriminate road race halfway across the state. They all wear shoes.

This is the second unfamiliar thing.

They laugh and yell in a sharp, fast language, then flock to the man with the camera, excitedly jabbering in a mix of English and Somali. They want their picture taken. They want to know if it will be in the newspaper. They want the man to know about the game against the local Mexican team the next day. They wonder if the lines will be painted on the field in time.

Then another man arrives, an average 50-something white guy with a moustache and puffy, unkempt gray-white hair. He’s the Paperwork Man. The organizer, the money man, the one with the answers. They ask him about the lines.

This is the third unfamiliar thing.

The Familiar

It all started from the most familiar of places with the most familiar of things. A schoolyard and a soccer ball.

Terry Gersemehl, the Paperwork Man, has been substitute teaching at Faribault Middle school for less than a year and everywhere he looks, the local Somali children are playing soccer. In the courtyard. In the snow. In the lunch room.

Gersemehl, who still remembers that “Just for Kicks” was the theme of his 1966 Faribault High School senior prom, has been around the game for 30 years. It started in North Oklahoma City where he maintained 15 pitches and assigned referees for the in-house program that ran 80 games every Saturday. After a stop running Forest Lake’s in-house program, he came to Northfield where he took over field maintenance duties from Jeff Amerman.

He works full-time in IT support for Corelink, a company that provides services for Blue Cross Blue Shield. On the side, he subs. That’s where he met Abdirahin Abdullahi, an eighth grader.

That’s where the road from familiar to unfamiliar began.

The Creation

Abdullahi was one of those boys who couldn’t stop playing soccer. It’s the game he grew up playing in Somalia and it’s where he finds comfort.

Gersemehl stopped Abdullahi one day, “Do you have a team?”

“No,” Abdullahi said.

“Do you want one?” Gersemehl asked.

He did. So Abdullahi started asking his friends. He asked his friends to ask their friends. They started meeting in a room above the library. Soon there were eight players. Then 14. Now 22.

“These kids don’t play organized soccer,” Gersemehl says. “They’d never played in an organized game.”

Now they had players, but it takes more than that to be a team. Gersemehl found a coach, Khadair Mohamed, who has lived in the United States for nine years and had helped coach an older Somali team made up of 17- to 24-year-olds called the Faribault Eagles.

“Everywhere I saw a lot of players on the fields,” Mohamed says. “But we didn’t have a team. They were too young to play with the older team, but we said, ‘You guys can be a team.’”

Thus this summer a second incarnation of the Faribault Eagles was born, a 13-17-year-old group that plays under the Faribault Soccer Association umbrella and so far has competed in U19 tournaments in Apple Valley, Lakeville and Rochester.

“They really have fun,” Mohamed says. “They really enjoy it. They have good energy and they hope to be a better team.”

The Love

Somalia and soccer are inextricable. In 2010, the Washington Post sent a reporter to Mogadishu, the capitol city, for a story on the country’s Under-17 team.

“The players practice in mismatched attire for a match against Egypt,” Sudarsan Raghavan wrote. “Their field is a forlorn, uneven patch of earth covered in mud, rocks and rusty cans. There are no goal posts.”

Three years later, Mohamed is standing on the edge of Warren Field at the Faribault Soccer Complex trying to answer a question about the difference between soccer in America and Somalia. He keeps looking at the ground, but can’t come up with the word. Exasperated, he asks Abdullahi in Somali.

“Grass,” Abdullahi translates.

With word in hand, Mohamed continues, “The field is not grass there because people steal the grass and animals walk all over the fields.”

“So the field is dirt?”

“Yes, but some people steal the sand to build their houses. But here, no one can take the grass out.” Mohamed beams.

Abdullahi pipes in, “Over there we don’t play with shoes. Here we have cleats.”

As practice starts, Mohamed — dressed in a white khameez with a koofiyad on his head, sandals and dark sunglasses, looking like a movie version of an Abu Dhabi banker — talks about the pasts of the 22 young men he’s coaching. He says many of them were in the same refugee camps, but never met until they arrived in Faribault. Most had never watched a professional game before; the closest they had come was huddling outside a theater that charged between 10 and 20 schillings to watch EPL or World Cup games and swarming people as they came out, begging for any information they could get.

Now, they gather at local Somali grocery stores to watch games together. Each supports his own team, since the Somalia National Team has never qualified for the World Cup (it has only attempted to qualify five times) and has never been ranked higher than 158th in the FIFA standings (it’s currently ranked 202nd).

Despite experiencing the game only in its most basic, natural state, as a pick-up game played among friends, family and neighbors, they love the sport.

“Everybody plays,” Abdullahi says. “It’s like America with football.”

Now, in a strange land where most of the Somali boys have lived for less than four years, they come back to it, not only as a way to remember, but a way to stay out of the pitfalls of their peers.

“It keeps me out of trouble,” Abdullahi says. “I’m not wasting my time, I’m not going downtown or doing other stuff or getting in trouble.”

The Team

After forming less than two months ago, the Faribault Eagles have had a rough entrance into the competitive world. It started with an 0-3 record at the Apple Valley Tournament and continued with losses in their first two games of the Lakeville Tournament.

But then on June 16 it started to turn around. The Somalis beat Alexandria 2-0 and dedicated it as a Father’s Day gift to Gersemehl.

“It was a hard-fought game,” he says. “It’s taken us a while to work as a team. After enough practice and talking about what we need to do they put it together on Sunday afternoon. That was a great to see.”

“We were so happy we got the win,” says Siyad. “We worked hard and we played well and we made a lot of improvement.”

No one can doubt their natural ability. They have the speed, endurance and, for the most part, the on-the-ball skills to excel. What they lack are teamwork and a solid grasp of the rules.

“We have some great skills and we’ve been told that by all the other coaches,” Gersemehl says. “Even though soccer in an individual sport in some ways because you’re 1-on-1 with the ball, it’s a team sport and you have to work as a team. It’s learning how to play with their teammates and not just trying to dribble up the middle and hoping to get a shot on goal.”

Early on, Gersemehl gave Mohamed a book on coaching soccer, which he hungrily ate up and has been trying to pass along to his players.

“Every day we do different exercises,” he says. “We practice every day.”

As teamwork grows, so does their understanding of the rules. To them, off-sides was an esoteric idea. In their first scrimmage against an FSA team (they eventually won two and tied two) the Eagles were called off-sides at least a dozen times.

“You probably could have called more than that,” Gersemehl admits. “Off-sides is a big deal. Nobody had ever called them off-sides.”

Several things Americans are taught by the age of 10 and take for granted are still a struggle. In their first game the Somalis were whistled several times for illegal throw-ins. They simply didn’t know they had to keep both feet on the ground.

“Now we rarely get called for throw-in errors,” Gersemehl says. “Occasionally, but not very often. But we still get called for off-sides.”

The Future

With three tournaments now in the rear-view mirror, the team has turned to raising money to compete in a tournament in Duluth. Originally, the team had hoped to compete in the Schwan’s USA Cup in Blaine, even holding a car wash earlier this month, but ended up merely breaking even after struggling to even attract their own parents as customers.

It’s a thread that has wound its way through the brief history of the team. From the beginning, parents didn’t show up at the initial meetings in Buckham Center. When it came time to provide birth certificates and sign medical releases signed, Gersemehl called it “like pulling teeth.”

Eventually they managed to get releases for all 22 kids. But entering tournaments and coming up with uniforms cost money. An $1,800 diversity grant from the Minnesota Youth Soccer Association and reduced fees from the FSA went a long way, allowing them to purchase shirts, shorts and green socks for each player. Many of them are so proud of the uniforms they wear them to practice.

“That brought the team together,” Abdullahi says. “That was awesome. We were so excited when we got jerseys.”

But Gersemehl also wanted each family to “have a little skin in the game” so he asked each player to pay $25 as a participation fee. He’s still trying to collect from many of them.

He says he’s trying to teach more than soccer; he wants to imbue responsibility. At their last game players were swapping shirts as they subbed in and out because half the kids didn’t have their uniform.

“These are the things you don’t think you have to deal with but you do,” he says. “I think having fun is No. 1, but they’re also learning responsibility. Being responsible for themselves and to show up on time and have their equipment ready. Those are all issues we’ve had to deal with.”

He pauses, trying to find a balance between his frustration and his optimism.

“But they’re a good bunch of kids,” he finishes.

When sports really matter

The story of a family that took the fight of sport into a series of battles against cancer, and came out stronger and closer

By BRENDAN BURNETT-KURIE

bburnett-kurie@faribault.com

The coach beckoned from the sideline, and as Kyle approached, he handed him a card signed by the entire varsity team.

Logan skated off the ice at regionals and looked into the stands, staring at the empty space where his dad should be sitting.

Noah, just 5 years old, cried.

On a refrigerated, snowy February day nearly five years ago, everything changed, never to be the same. Kyle made sure Noah did his homework. Made sure dinner was served every night. Made sure Logan got to practice. Slowly, it got better. Briefly, normalcy returned.

Now, four years later, it begins again. Noah takes the dog out for a walk; feeds it. He sets the table. Logan brings him to practice; takes him to games.

In between they play. They run and throw and shoot and hit and crash and jump and fling and smile and swear and yell and laugh and do everything else that all the other boys, the ones without this weight on their shoulders, do. There, in a world protected from what they know all too well — the worry and the crummy hospital food and the anguish — wrapped up tight in a cocoon, that’s where they go to be away.

In life, they live. In sports, they escape.

*****

The Murphy’s are, frankly, sports nuts. They play sports and talk sports and live sports. Noah can quickly spurt off his favorites: Football, baseball and hockey, in no particular order. Kyle piled up four letters in baseball and basketball. Logan will soon have six.

As kids, Troy coached them. In cub football and community center basketball he showed them the basics. Tackling form, boxing out, how to throw a spiral.

One day, Troy went on a business trip and had trouble catching his breath. He’d never smoked, but after three more weeks of aggravation, he had a doctor check it out. From there, he was transported to the hospital by ambulance.

On Feb. 14, 2008, the diagnosis came back: Lung carcinoma. A malignant tumor in the third lobe of his right lung.

“We were devastated,” Murphy said.

“I was really shocked,” said Logan, who was in seventh grade at the time and is now a senior at Faribault High School. “You go there and you see him hooked up to machines and it’s different. It’s not normally how you see your dad.”

Not a dad like Troy Murphy. Not the dad who coached Logan’s sixth-grade cub football team to a perfect 7-0 record. Not the dad who held the clipboard for Kyle’s youth basketball teams and took Noah into the William’s arena locker rooms to visit his idol Seth Helgeson, who grew up just five houses down from the Murphys.

“I didn’t really know anything about it,” said Noah, now 10 and playing three sports. “But I thought since he was in the hospital it must have been bad.”

Eleven days after his diagnosis, Troy had surgery to remove the lower lobe of his right lung.

“The surgery was textbook,” Troy said. “Went perfect.”

But suddenly, three days after the surgery, Troy developed an infection that spread into Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.

“(I) wasn’t supposed to survive through the night,” Troy said. “Many don’t.”

Troy fell into a coma.

*****

For 30 days, Troy’s body fought to stay alive. On the 31st day he awoke.

His wife, Renae, spent her days at the hospital, watching over her husband as he clung to life. In her place was Kyle -- using a work ethic he said was honed through sports -- quickly transformed from high school freshman to man of the house.

“Kyle didn’t complain when he had to take care of his brothers, he just did what he had to do,” Troy said. “Kyle and Logan had to grow up really fast.”

While friends, family and neighbors brought over meals and checked in on the boys, near the top of Kyle’s priority list as patriarch was making sure his brothers got to their practices and games.

“It helped them get their mind off of things,” Kyle said. “They were staying active and I tried to help them get through their day with a normal routine.”

“It was probably a tough job keeping us in line,” Logan will admit. “He really took on the big brother’s role.”

*****

In between those practices and games, the Murphy boys spent endless hours sitting at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. They would come and tell their dad about the games they’d won, the goals they’d scored or the new move they learned.

For many of those trips, he couldn’t hear them; but the words came easily and quieted away the beeps and whirs of the medical equipment. They would read to dad as he was “sleeping.”

“You walk into ICU and he’s hooked up to all these cords and you just want to talk to him,” Logan said. “There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s really hard.”

Talking was important. So was continuing to play. For the boys, it was a time to escape.

“It helped a lot, especially the guys I was surrounded with,” Logan said. “They made it easy to take your mind off things. My teammates have always been there for me.”

Those were the stories they would tell their dad. Like the time Kyle was practicing with the B-squad basketball team and varsity coach Steve Lansing pulled him off to the side to give him a card signed by the entire varsity squad.

“That helped a lot,” Kyle said. “That was pretty cool that some of the older guys knew and cared.”

When Troy was awake, he would revel in the stories his boys told him; joy at their successes winning the battle over the regret that he couldn’t be there to watch.

“It probably killed him inside,” Logan said. “But what can you do?”

“It always made him happy if we came and visited and we had a good game,” Kyle said. “I think it helped him realize that we’d tried our hardest while he tried his hardest.”

Three boys and hours spent roaming the halls brought about a few lasting memories. In one, they invented a basketball game in the lobby involving a trash can. In another, Noah still talks disdainfully of the “Abbott McDonald’s” their not-so-ironic labeling of the cafeteria.

“The food there is kind of gross,” Noah critiqued.

*****

As winter turned to spring, winter sports transitioned into baseball season. Troy was finally home after a 36-day hospital stay. He wasn’t as spry as he once was, still going through rehab, moving slowly and learning, in his words, “how to walk, breath and be on the move again.”

Soon he was back at their games, easily noticeable from the field with his camera alternately covering his face or slung over his shoulder.

“It makes me really happy because he takes pictures and videos of me and he’s not in the hospital anymore,” Noah said.

Baseball was the only sport all three boys played – Kyle didn’t play football for long and Logan and Noah chose hockey over basketball – and all that time spent in lawn chairs alongside diamonds across town quickly emboldened Troy’s spirit.

“That was probably the best physical therapy in the world,” Troy said. Often he would bring Noah, who while not understanding the gravity of what was happening with his dad, knew he was a little less confused and a lot happier when watching his older brothers at play.

“It was fun to watch (Kyle)’s basketball and baseball games and, Logan, his hockey games are really fun to watch and so are his baseball games,” Noah said.

The calm wouldn’t last long. More bad news awaited the Murphys as spring turned to summer.

*****

This time it wasn’t Troy. It was Kyle.

During a routine checkup between his freshman and sophomore years, doctors found a swollen lymph node and sent Kyle to Children’s Hospital in St. Paul to see a specialist. Half his thyroid was removed and tests came back showing it was cancerous.

“I would have traded my life for his in a second,” Troy said. “Just months after my ordeal how could this be happening again?”

They kept Kyle’s condition close to the chest. He continued playing VFW baseball as the original specimen was sent from the Children’s Hospital to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

“It was hard because I knew what my dad went through and I worried about him so I knew my family members were worrying about me too,” Kyle said. “I stayed positive because I knew my dad was always positive and my mom was positive. That helped me get through things.”

For three years, Kyle went through batteries of tests, scans and checks before doctors gave him a clean bill of health. Now a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Kyle has been cancer-free ever since.

*****

It’s a story of a family that looked tragedy in the eye, stood tall, didn’t back down and lived to stare it down again. Finally, after getting dreaded news twice in just eight months and fighting through a pair of lengthy recoveries, the Murphys felt they had emerged victorious. Family life returned to normal. Boys were boys again.

Then the cancer came back.

It was June 2012, time for another routine check. Troy headed to the doctor as his first-born got ready to head off to college. He told his doctor he hadn’t felt so good in more than four years. The doctor read his most recent scans. Staring at him were two growing spots in Troy’s lung. This time, doctors had to remove the middle lobe of his right lung.

“I don’t know if there is ever a good time to tell your kids that you have been diagnosed with cancer, especially for a second time,” Troy said. “But we did.”

Noah took to praying for his dad every night. Logan assumed Kyle’s position as big brother, making sure his little brother got to practices. Noah is always on the lookout for things he can do to help: taking out the trash, walking the dog, setting the table, or, most recently, wrapping presents.

“They’re little things, but he’s just trying to help out,” Kyle said.

There was no coma this time, no quick-spreading infection. But there was something that brought its own mix of malaise: chemotherapy. In typical fashion, Troy refused to let the cancer win, even if it was just a small battle. Before he lost his hair, he took control and shaved his own head. If you don’t know him, you’ve seen him at hockey events, the ball of energy with the tan fedora on, likely a camera and tripod in one hand and Blue Line Club info, of which he is the only two-term president, in the other.

When Kyle came home for Thanksgiving, he brought a surprise wrapped in a woolen hat: He had shaved his head for his dad.

“Never a prouder moment as a dad,” Troy said of seeing Kyle and his glistening globe. A month later, Kyle was back for Christmas and the family was reunited again for the holidays.

“It was good to have everyone home for the holidays and the brothers are happy to be home and reminiscing about the good times we’ve had in the past,” Troy said. “It may not be a perfect world, but it’s our world.”

But what is a perfect world? Logan is in the midst of his senior year at FHS, starting for a hockey team just finding its footing. Noah is happily playing youth hockey. Kyle is enjoying school and they all bring home good grades. Most importantly, dad’s on the sidelines watching, not relying on hastily recounted stories to re-live his children’s exploits.

“I know he always loved coming to watch us,” Kyle said. “When he’s there, it’s nice because you know he’s OK.”

So as long as they hear that faint click of the shutter and see that hat bobbing through the crowd, they’ll always know they can still be boys playing a game.