In the midst of one of the most trying times in his life, Paragould baseball Coach Dakota Weatherley has sports on his mind.
The 28-year-old is locked in a battle against one the most serious forms of skin cancer, but to those who know him, Weatherley's thought process is not surprising.
HELPING HAND
To support Dakota Weatherley and his family, visit gofundme.com and type in “Dakota Weatherley” in the search function.
Also, a Zoom devotional meeting is held on Sundays at 7 p.m. in the family’s honor to help raise awareness for melanoma and skin cancer. For an invite to those meetings, email Shane Fullerton at sfullerton@harding.….
"This is a guy that called me the other day talking about next year's baseball season," said Shane Fullerton, who's won three state championships during his 10 seasons as Harding Academy's baseball coach. "He was on his way back from St. Louis after meeting with an oncologist, where they were getting a plan together on how they're going to attack [cancer]. I'm sitting there asking him questions, and he was calling me about working with pitchers who were two-way guys.
"He's like, 'Hey coach, what do you think about this, what do you think about that.' That's just who he is. His faith in God is so strong. Dakota's just on the attack."
That self-assertive nature is what Fullerton believes will help Weatherley combat melanoma, which according to the World Health Organization affects more than 130,000 people yearly.
"Me and my wife are expecting a baby girl in June, and we're certainly excited about that," he noted. "This fight is just something I've got to go through. I teach my guys to kind of focus a lot on the mental side of baseball as much as the physical side.
"If you go in thinking you're about to go 0 for 3 against this guy that's supposed to be good on the mound, then you're going 0 and 3 because you've already put it in your mind that you have no shot. You've got to say positive, and on this journey, I always try to keep positive thoughts."
This particular journey started three years ago when a peculiar spot was discovered on his abdomen. The blot, which was eventually removed by his doctors, turned out to be malignant melanoma. The promising aspect about that prognosis was the melanoma was contained in the area where it was detected.
But that was just the start of a round of treatments and consultations for the Rams' third-year coach.
"I had surgery to remove a larger spot on my stomach, then had a lymph node biopsy," Weatherley said. "The lymph nodes came back negative, and the pathology report from my abdomen showed they had removed all the melanoma. So there were very frequent dermatologist visits, eye doctor visits because your eyes are a popular spot for melanoma.
"I had check-ins once a month for a while, then once every three months."
All seemed well for the former all-state baseball standout from Bald Knob.
Weatherley began re-shifting his focus toward baseball. Paragould had struggled during his first two seasons, but the Rams were confident they could contend for a postseason berth behind a strong junior class.
"Honestly, this was one of the years we were looking forward to," said Weatherley, who's also an assistant wide receivers and defensive backs coach on the football team. "When I first got to Paragould four years ago, I volunteered with the junior high baseball program, and the juniors that I have now were eighth-graders on that team. The next year, they were ninth-graders, and that's when I got the head baseball job.
"That group, as freshmen, I had six of them that started every game, sometimes seven, in a tough 5A-East Conference. This year, I had only two seniors as well so we had realistic expectations to compete for a playoff spot."
Those aspirations were dashed when the season was canceled after a handful of games because of the coronavirus pandemic. That alone was damaging enough, but Weatherley was thrown another curve.
"I had a lymph node that had swollen, and I could feel it," he said. "It kind of felt like a muscle strain at first. I went to my doctor and did a run of antibiotics, which didn't do anything. We went to my surgeon, and he just went ahead and took it out.
"When he tested it, it came back positive for melanoma, and that meant I had to go have some scans done to see if maybe we'd gotten it all or if we didn't.
"Turns out, we didn't."
The scans also showed that the melanoma had spread to his liver, lungs and two separate areas on his spine. Those results led to a Stage 4 metastatic melanoma diagnosis.
"After I got off the phone with Dakota when he told me what was going on, I just sat there and cried," said Fullerton, whom Weatherley considers a mentor. "He was understandably distraught. I've known him since 2012, and we'd lost touch somewhat until he became a high school coach, but he's a guy who I remembered respecting so much with the way he conducted himself on the field as a high school player.
"He's the guy who wants to do things right and wants to do right by his kids on his team. That was endearing to me."
Fullerton, along with Baptist Prep baseball Coach Eddie Stephenson, reached out to coaches from around the state and alerted them about Weatherley's situation. Neither could've imagined what happened next.
"Fullerton said, 'Hey, we should just go up and see him,' and I was all for it," said Stephenson, who is also the president of the Arkansas High School Baseball Coaches Association. "At the time, we were thinking maybe have some of the coaches give gift cards or put some money together, just do something to help out. But less than 48 hours later, it blew up because so many people wanted to help.
"Me and Fullerton talk to our kids about being selfless and looking to serve others. As a coaching community and in the position I'm in, I've got to live that, too. It was a no-brainer once we found out what was going on with Dakota."
Stephenson said he received a huge donation from his players' families as well as one from a businessman in Sherwood who he didn't even know.
The two coaches, along with a number of their counterparts, recently drove to Bald Knob for a gathering to present Weatherley and his wife with a monetary boost as well as gifts for their expected daughter, Avery Kate.
"That really meant a lot to me," Weatherley said. "My family was there, but to see all of the coaches, even some that I'd never even met before. Just the show of support ... it was really moving."
Weatherley, who recently underwent his first immunotherapy treatment at Washington University in St. Louis, knows he's still got a long way to go to take down his melanoma, but he's not planning on shying away from it.
"I try to practice what I preach to my players," he said. "We're going to fight this thing just like we battle on the baseball field."
Sports on 04/28/2020