Mike Whittles coached high school football for 14 years. He used his cancer as a life lesson for his team.

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My name is Mike Whittles and I’m 58 years old, turned 58 on 11 11 11. My diagnosis is I have stage four pancreatic cancer. We’re self employed. We have a Cerro Pro Cleaning and Restoration business which is a national franchise. My spare time I like to coach high school football. And that takes up a lot of my time.

And frankly, that’s what I’m doing now. I’m going into my 14th year of coaching high school football at Spalding. The nice thing about the football program is it’s a distraction. It takes my mind away from the things that are going on inside my body. And as far as the football team goes I really think they learned a lot about love.

This year and we’ve always preached it, but this year when they got the news that I was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, they immediately went to the chapel every day at Archbishop Spalding and every day they go to the chapel to pray that afternoon. I went up to the school because my concern was I don’t want them to think that.

Oh, my God. Coach is dying. Okay. I just look at as long as I got a life to live, I’m gonna live my life and I’m gonna do what I can do while I’m here. And that’s the message I’m sending to them that, we just don’t give up. We don’t quit. Football taught me a lot about what I’m going through in football.

Sometimes you’re gonna go play against somebody who’s just gonna be bigger. stronger, faster and tougher than you and you got to just suck it up and because there’s no place to run, there’s no place to hide and you just have to toughen up yourself and man up and just do the best you can. And that’s one of the lessons that I’ve been able to carry with me through this journey that when I’m feeling down I’ve got to toughen up and I just have to shake.

Like I said, get that devil off your shoulder and get those bad thoughts out of your head. I tell my kids all the time if they’re getting half as much inspiration from me as I get from them because of their efforts, they’re getting a lot because I draw from them. I’m drawing a lot of my strength from what they do.

So it’s, it’s a win win for everybody.