Beyond the Playbook: Will Francis’ cancer journey and return to the ice
In the midst of COVID-19’s peak of March 2020, UMD men’s hockey player Will Francis was dealing with his own health news – Francis had leukemia.
Since then, Francis has beat leukemia twice, and is now back on the ice for the UMD Bulldogs.
His absence didn’t go unnoticed though.
“He’s kind of that guy in the room, on the ice we know him,” said Scott Sandelin, UMD men’s hockey’s head coach. “He brings the size and a little bit of that edge to his game, but you know he’s trying to find his groove too, he’s missed a lot of hockey.”
“Will is one of my really good buddies, so we lived together last year, it was tough having him in and out of the house a lot, him not being able to be with us at the house even or in the locker room,” said Owen Gallatin, a senior defenseman.
Now, Francis is back, and the routine of school and even better, hockey, has felt pretty good.
“It’s exciting, just getting back into routine of school too,” said Francis. “Everything all together, back into a routine, all the days look similar. I feel like last year, I was always in between here and the [Twin] Cities, thinking ‘When am I gonna have to go back?’ Now its just nice to have some consistency.”
Some of the consistency and the reason Francis is back on campus is due to his 15-year-old brother, who was a 100 percent match for a bone marrow transplant.
“Everyone that I talked to kind of told me I had a golden ticket opportunity to get a bone marrow transplant, which, it was a tough decision,” shared Francis. “Going into that, I never knew what life would look like, I didn’t know if I’d play hockey again, I didn’t know if I’d be here again just with the realities of what a bone marrow transplant might include. I had the golden ticket opportunity, my brother was a 100 percent match, no detectable disease at the timing of the transplant, and there’s a super good outlook on that sort of thing.”
While many viewed Francis’ journey as brave and courageous, Francis thinks the same of his little brother.
“It was really courageous for a 14-year-old kid at the time, who doesn’t understand the impact that it has, I think with time he’s gotten to understand kind of more and more what it really meant to me and what it meant to everyone in my family,” said Francis.
Of course with brothers, there’s always gonna be some jabbing.
“He always jokes around saying like, ‘if you ever make it to the NHL it’s my blood, not yours!”
Francis is expected to be a strong part of the Bulldogs defensive rotation and graduate in the spring.
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