URI's Dan Rhault, of Lincoln, a leukemia survivor, hsa been singled out as one of the nation's top college shortstops.

Journal photo / John Freidah

SOUTH KINGSTOWN –– Some of the lessons students learn in college hit home more than others. And sometimes life lessons, as members of the URI athletic community have discovered, hit home even harder.

This lesson is about how fragile life can be, and also how rewarding it can be. It involves members of the URI football, baseball and soccer teams, and it involves leukemia.

The school’s new football coach, Joe Trainer, is behind it. He formerly worked for eight years at Villanova under head coach Andy Talley. Talley is a strong booster of national registry for the marrow donor program that assists leukemia victims. He has his teams take part in a program to get on the national registry.

“He does it to encourage people to sign up, to increase the awareness of the need,” Trainer said. “In the last three to five years, it is has really taken on a life of its own, which is a good thing.” The program has spread to schools in the Colonial Athletic Association, the Patriot League and the Ivy League.

When Talley called to congratulate Trainer on becoming the head coach at URI, he told him to get his new team involved.

“It’s painless. The cost is nil,” Trainer said. “It’s like being an organ donor. You’re crazy not to get involved.”

Trainer had seen firsthand how the program literally can save a life. He made sure his team knew this was not just an exercise, but something real.

“I told my players that there is nothing we will do in the next year that will be any more important,” Trainer said. He contacted the national registry and was told there were five people who live within 12 miles of the URI campus who need bone marrow transplants right now.

An official from the program, as well as one of the patients awaiting a transplant, visited the team. Before the team held its blue-white game ending spring football, the players signed up people for the registry. There is only a 1-in-80,000 chance of finding a match, but Trainer knows it is possible. Four years ago, when Villanova had its players sign up, one of the players was a match.

“Joe Marcoux, from St. Benedict’s (High) in New Jersey, one of the players I recruited, was a match,” Trainer related. “There was a person in California who was close to dying. Joe ended up missing three games. He went and donated. He saved a life.”

It turns out the story and the need for help in the fight against the disease hits even closer to home. Dan Rhault, the starting shortstop and leading hitter on the URI baseball team, is a leukemia survivor.

Rhault, a senior from Lincoln, over the weekend was named co-MVP of the URI team that leads the Atlantic 10 and is ranked in the top 40 in the RPI among 301 Division I baseball teams. He is hitting .386 with six home runs and 49 RBI. Just last week, he was one of 37 players nominated for the 2009 Brooks Wallace Award as the top shortstop in the country.

The 6-foot-2, 190-pounder was diagnosed with leukemia when he was 4 years old. He did not need a bone marrow transplant, but spent four years undergoing intensive treatment.

“I was in the hospital literally for a full year,” he said. “My mother (Kathy) didn’t work and stayed with me all the time. My dad (Mike), he’s kind of a strong guy. He did all the work and took care of my brother (Pat).

“The whole treatment process is impossible. Spinal taps all the time. There’s a lot of medicine, a lot of chemotherapy. You can’t sleep because you have to wake up at 3 in the morning to take medicine. You get shots all the time. I still don’t think I can bleed from my fingers because of all the shots I got. I’ve still got marks all over my body from where I got shots,” he said.

“When you’re that young, you don’t really realize what’s happening, but now that I look back on it and do research on it, I realize what a tough disease it is. I can’t believe I beat it.”

Rhault is not the only living example of how lives can be saved. As part of the program to register as many people as possible for the marrow donor program, Trainer spoke with John O’Connor, the men’s soccer coach. O’Connor agreed to get his team involved. When he told his players about it, freshman Erkko Puranen said he could not take part. He explained that he is a leukemia survivor, too.

“We didn’t know anything about it,” O’Connor said.

“It was when I was 12,” said Puranen, who is from Vitasaari, Finland. “You get so many needles. You spend so much time in the hospital. It’s hard. It’s not constant pain all the time, but with all the medicine, you feel tired all the time. You have to swallow so many pills.”

Puranen, who led the Rams in goals this season with nine, and was named second-team All-New England, remembers not only what he went through, but with others dealt with. He was at the hospital so much he made friends.

“They didn’t all make it,” he said.

Even before learning about Puranen’s experience, the Rhody players already had been made aware of the horrors of the disease. The team held a fundraiser to help Andy and Marcia Williams. Andy Williams might be the best soccer player in the URI history. He has played Major League Soccer for the last decade and still plays for Real Salt Lake.

Marcia Williams is battling an acute form of leukemia and is very ill. The Salt Lake community has jumped in to assist the Williams family, which includes two children. A Web site, soccerunitesutah.com, has been set up to allow everyone to keep up with events. Even other MLS teams have joined the drive to have bone marrow tested.

At URI, classes are finished for the semester and the final exam period is just beginning. For those who have been involved in assisting in the fight against leukemia, some lessons already have been learned.

“Going through what I did has made me a better person now and a better person for the future,” Rhault said. “I appreciate what I have. I realize that when I don’t do well in a test or in a game, it’s not the end of the world. There are more important things. When I’m out on the field, I can’t believe how great it is to be here.”

“If we can give our kids a better perspective, then we’ve done something,” Trainer said. “A lot of times there’s a sense of entitlement. I’m entitled to being a college athlete. I’m entitled to happiness. I’m entitled to success. I’m entitled to a championship.

“No, your not,” Trainer added. “You have to work for all those things. And you have to realize there are people outside your little fishbowl that don’t have all the opportunities you have. Selfishly speaking, I know it’s going to help our kids in the long run. I hope there is a sense of appreciation for the gift of health and life they have for the opportunity to play college football. When you have that healthy perspective, you work harder and appreciate it more.”

pkenyon@projo.com