Troy running back overcomes cancer

TROY — Maurice Greer knew something was wrong after he took a hit to the groin in a practice before his second year in junior college.

Turns out, the hit may have saved his life.

“I just knew something wasn’t right,” said Greer, a junior running back who will suit up for Troy this year. “I told the trainer, he said to ice it for 20 minutes, and if the swelling hadn’t gone down, we’ll take you to the emergency room.”

At first, it seemed simple. He had a surgical incision on the lower part of his stomach where some tissue was removed. Doctors told him after the surgery that he could just heal up and be back in two or three weeks.

But on his way home from that surgery, doctors gave him bad news.

“They told me my right testicle was cancerous, and they’d have to remove it,” Greer said. “I was in shock. I cried like a baby. My mom and stepdad took it harder than I did. My mom almost fainted.”

That was in the fall of 2006. Today, the former Mr. Football in Colorado will realize his Division I-A football dream, when he takes the field for Troy, which opens practice today.

But it wasn’t an easy road. Greer signed with Colorado in high school, but his test scores weren’t high enough so he enrolled at Garden City Community College in Kansas. He was poised to have a big sophomore season before the cancer was discovered.

He went home to Denver and underwent chemotherapy and radiation. It got to the point where he couldn’t look himself in the mirror, because he had lost all of his hair and ballooned to 260 pounds because steroid injections during radiation were required to maintain any kind of strength.

He was nauseated, and broken down from the chemo.

“It was disgusting,” Greer said. “I had to keep my spirits up, because it keeps you down.”

That fall, Greer helped coach his brother’s little league football team. His jersey hung up in his bedroom, reminding him of his road to recovery.
In December, he found out he was cancer free, though he still has checkups every three months.

The next spring, he went back to Garden City. Still at 260 pounds, he worked his way down around 225 and played at that weight in 2007.

He wasn’t the Maurice Greer of old, the 195-pound multi-purpose back who ran for 2,186 yards and 30 touchdowns his senior year, but he was still good enough to get recruited by major colleges.

He committed to sign with Minnesota, with the intent of passing 21 hours in the fall while playing football, to enroll in the spring.

But he knew he’d fall one class short, and asked Minnesota coaches if he could still sign but delay enrollment until May.

“At first, they said yes,” Greer said. “Everything was good, but then they turned their backs on me.

“It hurt, because I had been through a lot and I was constantly getting smacked in the face over and over. I kept praying about it, and my family told me to keep my head up, stay positive and something would happen.”

That’s where Troy came in. Defensive coordinator Jeremy Rowell had recruited the Kansas junior colleges for years and had been interested in Greer. He made an official visit and committed in late January.

Greer said he’s around 217 pounds now, trying to get back to his comfortable playing weight of 210.

He’ll compete with sophomore DuJuan Harris for the starting job.

“He’s a north-south guy,” Troy head coach Larry Blakeney said. “When he makes a cut, he makes it work. He’s not a guy who will dance around.”

But the big question is this — will Greer be able to play at the level he did before cancer struck?

“The way I look at it is this,” offensive coordinator Neal Brown said. “He was pretty good last year, but he wasn’t the same player he was before. If he’s what he was last year, he’ll help us. If he’s as good as he was his freshman year in JUCO or as a high school senior, now he can help us a bunch.

“Then it’s a bonus and we really stole one.”

But the way Maurice Greer looks at it, where he is now and what he’s able to do is already a bonus.