Preseason ASU Physicals Find 2 Bay Linemen Ailing

When former South Bay high school football standouts Pat Fresch and Mike Alexander underwent preseason physical exams at Arizona State University last month, neither lineman expected to return home until Thanksgiving, at the earliest.

But X-rays of Fresch and Alexander told Arizona State doctors that neither freshman should play football this season, and both were sent home before school started.

A chest X-ray--a procedure added just this year to ASU’s physical exams--led Sun Devil team physician Dr. Richard Lee to believe that Fresch, who graduated from Palos Verdes High last spring, has Hodgkin’s disease in its early stage.

The disease is considered one of the most curable forms of cancer and is found mostly in young people, according to Dr. Eddie Hu, a staff hematologist at USC’s Norris Cancer Center.

“It’s picked up almost by serendipity, usually,” Hu said.

Fresch’s doctors decided on chemotherapy to eradicate the disease, a treatment Fresch said he’ll undergo every two weeks for about three months.

Alexander was diagnosed with a defect in a bone at the base of his back that could be related to a stress fracture he may have suffered late last year in his senior season at Banning High.

Lee said Alexander’s problem is not uncommon among young football players and probably will heal with rest.

“It’s an evolutionary process and it’s healing now,” Lee said, “but of course football is not the correct prescription.”

Fresch and Alexander, who first met on a recruiting trip to Tempe, Ariz., last year, were sent home within days of each other. They roomed together while there.

“I thought it was a jinxed room or something,” Fresch quipped soon after leaving.

First-year Arizona State Coach Larry Marmie said he hopes that Fresch and Alexander can return to Tempe in January to begin school and participate in spring practice. On their return, Marmie said, both players’ scholarships would be honored and both would retain four years of eligibility, meaning each could still redshirt next year and begin playing in 1990.

Both were disappointed but found consolation in the delay.

“The time off could almost help me in a way because I probably would have missed my first season as a redshirt,” Fresch said. “Now, if I come back next year in better shape, I might not have to redshirt.”

Added Alexander: “I’ll take some classes at junior college and get what units I can, and I’ll work out so I can be in better shape by next year.”

Named honorable-mention all-state by Cal-Hi Sports and second team all-Pacific League last year, the 6-3, 237-pound Alexander could have been called on to play this season, according to Marmie. Usually freshman see little or no action, but youth and inexperience along ASU’s defensive line had Marmie thinking this summer that Alexander might be needed at defensive end.

“We weren’t counting on him,” said Marmie, a former assistant coach under John Cooper, who left to become head coach at Ohio State last year, “but we thought we had to take a close look at him.”

Alexander said back discomfort did not restrict his performance last year. Now, he said, he feels a little pain if he moves aggressively.

“It all seems kind of weird,” he said, “because last month I was thinking that I am all ready to start college and football, and now I’m back in L.A. I don’t want to get depressed about it, but it might be hard. Then again, not playing is for the best because there really is no use messing myself up more.”

Like Alexander, Fresch is a wide-body at 6-6 and 306 pounds. But he works the trenches on the other side of the ball, and he’s a surprisingly mild offensive tackle off the field. He is aware of his illness but doesn’t appear fazed by it.

“They (doctors) said there is something in my chest, but they haven’t scared me yet,” he said. “I’m not real worried about it. I’m not going to get gray hairs from this ordeal.”

Doctors at Arizona State told Fresch that his illness would have seriously fatigued him in a few months. Night sweats and weight loss are also possible in the second stage of the disease, Hu said. However, Lee said all complications should be avoided thanks to X-rays that detected a widening compartment between Fresch’s lungs and a small mass in his neck, indicating Hodgkin’s disease.

Lee said the compartment suggested two possible problems: a structural defect of the coronary artery or an enlargement of the lymph nodes, indicating a lymphoma, also known as a malignancy of the lymph nodes, which can include Hodgkin’s disease. Lee suspected Hodgkin’s and sent Fresch back to L.A. for conclusive tests.

Lee and other university doctors said Hodgkin’s often is detected without chest X-rays but that the procedure makes early detection probable if it attacks lymph nodes in the chest, as it has with Fresch.

In an effort to develop a program that could identify athletes who might be risking unexplained death while performing, Lee and his staff asked the athletic department to include chest X-rays and blood tests in physical exams.

An informal survey of other Division I schools indicates, however, that the use of chest X-rays in physical exams is not typical, and thus suggests that the early discovery of Fresch’s problem might not have occurred at another school.

Fresch said he feels lucky his illness was detected early. And he probably can find further consolation in the case of New York Giants right tackle Karl Nelson. The offensive lineman who helped the Giants win Super Bowl XXI was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s last August. He was about to have surgery on an unstable shoulder when an exam that included a chest X-ray detected a tumor in his chest.

Nelson had no symptoms, according to Giants trainer Ronnie Barnes, but soon underwent 42 radiation treatments and is back with the team this year.

“They really caught it early,” said Barnes. “Now it’s a dead issue. I think there are more risks with his shoulder than with the Hodgkin’s.”

Nelson’s example notwithstanding, Fresch isn’t concerned about reaching the National Football League. “I’m more worried about getting through my freshman year,” he said.

Becoming an NFL lineman does cross his mind, though. But now, being sick, it’s harder for him to think about Super Bowl rings and sky-high salaries.

“You know how you always see some guy on Monday Night Football who recovered from something and you hear about it every five minutes and you get sick of hearing it?” Fresch said. “I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want people saying, ‘He’s pretty good, he had to come back from that awful disease.’ ”

Fresch was voted first team all-Bay League as a junior and second team all-league as a senior. Palos Verdes was league champion both years.

Arizona State contacted Fresch in his junior year and maintained interest until he graduated. Film of Fresch showed ASU assistant coach Frank Falks that Fresch’s footwork was sharp enough for a lineman his size and the ASU scholarship was offered.

Now, Falks is looking for muscle growth. Fresch acknowledged that strength is his main weakness.

“He weighs over 300 pounds, but once you get him and he grows muscle-wise, that 306 could become 290 of exactly what we want, or 300 with everything in the right place,” Falks said.

Fresch will return to Palos Verdes High this season as freshman offensive line coach, a volunteer position he indirectly trained for by working with the varsity line coach in the school’s summer football program.

He hopes coaching will occupy his time because “I’ve got a lot of it to fill now,” he said.