April 19, 2024
I’ve never, ever had a reason to root for Purdue. Saturday night the Boilermakers earned my fandom simply because they were playing Ohio State. The other reason came through Tyler Trent.
Like many, I was introduced to Tyler’s story that morning on ESPN’s College Gameday through Tom Rinaldi’s wizardry of making me cry like a leaky bucket. When he was 15 years old Tyler broke his arm throwing a frisbee. That, he and his family learned, came through the cancer eating at the bone in his arm. That arm bone, between the shoulder and the elbow, was eventually replaced with titanium. Since then, Tyler has also had to have his pelvis and hip replaced due to the cancer spread.
Tyler ended up attending Purdue while undergoing cancer treatments. In addition to cancer being a presence in my family, maybe I felt a kinship with Tyler over the fact he was a sportswriter. Tyler used those skills to write a column on Purdue’s Hammer Down Cancer game Aug. 30 against Northwestern.
A month after writing the column, he posted this to Facebook:
update: I'm sad to say I will not be making it back to #Purdue.
