A Sweet life: Robert Morris-Penn State exhibition more than just a game for RMU's Matt Sweet
Some days the last thing in the world Matt Sweet wanted to do was eat.
Anything. At all.
But applesauce? He could do applesauce. One container of applesauce.
Other days, the only thing he felt like he could possibly do was lie in bed.
But a short walk? OK. Get up. Take a short walk.
And if that was progress for the day, then the day was positive. A step toward the refrigerator. A few steps outside. That also meant steps to recovery from the cancer that he had been battling.
A whirlwind seven months after an initially grim diagnosis, Sweet was declared cancer free last month.
Now Sweet is back where belongs — on the basketball court, the director of basketball operations on Andy Toole’s staff for the Robert Morris Colonials. By any measure, after finding out he had a rare form of lung cancer back in March, being involved in Friday night’s exhibition against Penn State was going to be special for him.
However, now the night is also going to be special because of him and his battle.
All proceeds from the game against the Nittany Lions in Moon (UPMC Events Center; 7 p.m.) will go toward Coaches vs. Cancer in honor of Sweet.
The news
For weeks after last season ended in early March for the Colonials, Sweet had been dogged by a cold and cough that wouldn’t go away. Initially, it was believed that he had pneumonia. It turned out to be much worse.
“It got bad again at the end of March,” Sweet said. “I was back in the hospital. Symptoms of a cough and chest pain. They came back and said they thought it was cancer. I was in the hospital for a few days. They did a biopsy to get the DNA and details of the tumor that I had.”
The diagnosis wasn’t good. Sweet had NUT carcinoma. For a 28-year-old non-smoker without a significant history of cancer in his family, Sweet was confused and concerned.
“Not a great diagnosis,” Sweet said. “If you went and looked it up, it’s not going to say a lot of good things about it on the internet. Very rare, only a few hundred cases a year. But my doctor, the day I met him, told me I had a path towards a cure.”
Taking the path
Fortunately for Sweet, for as rare as his condition was, he also had a precise treatment plan designed by Dr. Dan Petro at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. The tumor, which was originally the size of a softball, was attacked by a combination of drugs including Nab-paclitaxel.
“Combining it with immunotherapy up front is sort of how the paradigm is shifting to help get more patients to have what we call pathologic complete response, which is essentially no residual cancer when the surgeon goes in there and takes it out,” Petro said. “That data is more recent. It’s been published. We’re combining chemotherapy with immunotherapy. He’s one of those patients that’s responding greatly to it.”
Petro said while the treatment plan, research and medicine are key, Sweet’s dedication to his physically draining fight against the disease was also a huge factor in getting him back to the team so quickly.
“I love sports. You just encourage patients as a coach does, as an advocate. I tell my patients to nurture their mind, the body and the soul,” Petro said. “Everyone does that differently, but you have to push forward in order to overcome the side effects of treatment. The more positive mindset that you have, the more driven personality you have, those patients do better and they’re out there able to overcome things. It’s just humbling to see these patients do that in the face of the greatest adversity in their lives.”
Toole’s biggest concern was if Sweet was going to push himself back on the floor too quickly.
“He tried to do too much. That’s kind of his personality. He’s an incredible worker. He’s deeply engaged and cares about our program and our players. His mind is always working. He’s always active. He’s always doing something to try to help move the team and the program forward. That didn’t change once he was diagnosed,” Toole said.
But now Petro says that Sweet is cancer free and with another year’s worth of follow-ups, he hopes to keep him that way.
“With a rare tumor type you have to think outside the box,” Petro said. “You have to put together a lot of data from other patients’ experiences. You hope and pray that it’s going to work.
“These are just rare tumors, and you don’t have that large clinical data set to work from. And it’s just so rewarding to see him where he is in his journey right now and we need him to keep going.”
The game
The idea to stage a charity fundraising game in honor of Sweet’s battle came from one of Toole’s assistant coaches, Dave Fedor. When Toole pitched the idea to head coach Mike Rhoades at Penn State, Toole said Rhoades embraced the concept immediately.
“When Andy and I were talking late summer, I thought it would be a great opportunity for our guys to go play on the road and get ready for this season, but also to help Matt and his family in their battle against cancer,” Rhoades said during his season-opening press conference Monday.
From Penn State’s side, the game is also being played in honor of Alex Peavey, the mindfulness coach on Penn State’s staff who has also battled cancer.
It was Toole’s hope to keep the game in Sweet’s honor a secret and surprise him with the news not long before it was set to be played. But keeping an event for the basketball team quiet from a director of basketball ops is a pretty tough task.
“Matt does everything in our program,” Toole said. “He knows everything about our program. He runs all the day-to-day logistics of our program.”
Attempting to keep the secret was difficult, but they were managing to do it, until a question came from one of the arena managers about the Penn State exhibition game.
“That kind of blew the whole surprise,” Toole said with a laugh. “We thought it would just be a great way to rally around Matt. To honor Matt. To bring awareness. To raise money. It’s a great idea by Dave.”
When Sweet found out, he was moved — especially by Rhoades’ willingness to make the trip to Pittsburgh.
“He’s a great guy for doing this,” Sweet said. “To sacrifice a day in your schedule with a brand-new team early in the season to do something for this. I can’t say enough good things about how much I appreciate him coming out — to have a type of brand like them come into our building for a great cause.”
After the emotions surrounding the event Friday night end, the grind of the regular season begins. For a guy in Sweet’s position, that means from November until March when those weeks and months tend to feel like one long day that just gets broken up by the occasional cat nap.
For Sweet, though, it’ll be time on the court that he cherished like never before.
“You ask yourself, ‘Why me? Why do I get to survive this?’” Sweet reflected. “When I asked myself that, the answer is that there’s a lot of people — everybody who did clinical trials and experimental treatments — who went before me that crawled and walked so that someday, someone like me could come along and run and have a chance at the rest of my life.”
It wasn’t running at first for Sweet either. It was short walks.
And applesauce.
Now it’s running back to basketball, and into the season.
Tim Benz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Tim at tbenz@triblive.com or via X. All tweets could be reposted. All emails are subject to publication unless specified otherwise.
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