GEORGETOWN, Texas - - Bill Robertson’s surgery had removed a foot of his colon, 30 lymph nodes and a portion of his bladder, but it hadn’t taken away an ounce of stubbornness from the ball coach.

When the nurse told him he could ring the bell to mark the removal of the cancerous tumor, he said he didn’t want to. Robertson was a grown man, a high school football defensive coordinator. In his mind, he didn’t need a participation trophy for a battle he hadn’t won yet. He still had 18 rounds of chemotherapy to go.

But just as he tried ducking out of the room past the nurse, the doctor intercepted him like a second-level defender and gave Robertson a lecture that would’ve made any football coach proud.

“That doctor turned around and grabbed me by the shirt and said, ‘You’re gonna ring that bell,’” Robertson said.

Robertson was greeted by an ocean of people when he walked into the lobby. Everybody in the practice must’ve been there - the doctors, nurses, receptionist and even accountants. They were all crying.

“That’s when I realized that you’re not ringing the bell for you,” Robertson said. “You’re ringing the bell to remind all those people who are having to deal with patients every day that there’s hope. People will make it out of this.”

Robertson describes the day he was diagnosed with Stage 3B colon cancer at 43 years old as a bomb going off in his life. But as he’s searched amongst the rubble to rebuild himself, he’s noticed his ego shattered into pieces. He does not coach for himself anymore. That’s one silver lining of this terrible disease.

Over the past seven years as the defensive coordinator at Prosper and A&M Consolidated, Robertson coached a state semifinalist and five quarterfinalist teams. With that success came a certain caliber of head coaching job he felt he deserved but was never chosen for when he interviewed. He knows now he wasn’t ready for that opportunity, no matter what his resume said.

“My heart wasn’t in the right place,” Robertson said. “It was for me. It was because I wanted that ‘head coach’ title next to my name. I wanted to check that box. I wanted my wife to put on Facebook that her husband was a head coach. It was an ego-driven deal.”

This cancer battle has prepared Robertson to be a head coach by reminding him why he was called to coach.

This offseason, Robertson got his first head coaching job at Georgetown East View. Opened in 2011, the school has never won more than seven games in a season and hasn't made the playoffs since 2020. The Patriots have never reached the third round of the playoffs, which was the earliest exit Robertson experienced in the last seven years.

Robertson lived in Central Texas from 1996 to 2017, first as a student at the University of Texas and then for 17 years as a high school coach in the Round Rock area. His mother and some of his oldest friends live here. Robertson guesses he’s driven past the school 500 times. But he never actually saw the opportunity here, until now.

“When an oncologist tells you there’s a 32 percent chance you won’t be alive in five years, that changes everything for you,” Robertson said. “It’s not so much about ego anymore. It’s not about building some massive reputation, winning hundreds of games and state titles, because you don’t know how long you’ve got.”

Robertson attacks every second that comes because he knows the next one is not guaranteed. He established the mantra “Do Hard Things” in his first team meeting with the Georgetown East View players.

For this season, the ultimate hard thing is making the fourth round of the playoffs. It may seem like a stretch for a team that went 5–5. But the Patriots lost by two to Cedar Park and to Lake Belton in overtime. Senior Tieson Ejiawoko, a Texas Tech commit, will play outside linebacker, a position that Robertson has coached to a District Defensive MVP award in three of the last five years.

“He (Robertson) came in with a goal in mind,” Ejiawoko said. “I kind of liked that about him, the sense of urgency. He let us know that he was going to work as hard as we would.”

That’s because, for Robertson, “Do Hard Things” is a choice we make every day. It’s about giving your absolute best, whether you feel 100 percent or are hiding a wound vac medical device under your shirt at your daughter’s birthday.

This Thursday’s season opener against Round Rock Stony Point will be the first test. It’s a fitting start to Robertson’s first head coaching tenure. Stony Point was his first job out of college, the place where he met his wife, Kim. But more than winning this game, or any game, this fall, Robertson hopes his players learn how to face something that scares them and fight without fearing failure. Because that’s what he’s done every day since his diagnosis.

“Bill had to endure some hard times so that he could ask his kids to do those things for him, and not ask them to do anything that he hasn’t already done,” Kim said.

…

When Bill woke up from the colonoscopy, Kim was crying at the foot of his hospital bed.

“Well, how did I do?” Bill asked.

“You didn’t do very good, man,” Kim said.

Kim says it wasn’t the best way to tell her husband he had cancer. Then again, there’s no best way to break the worst news. Cancer wasn’t a possibility until the doctor had called Kim in from the waiting room 30 minutes into Bill’s procedure and had her look at the tumor that prevented him from operating further. Bill was 43 years old, and colonoscopies aren’t covered by most health insurance providers before the age of 45. He had no bleeding, weight loss or family history associated with colon cancer.

But he had experienced abdominal pain for over a year. At first, Bill thought it was gas pain from not living right during the stress of football season, eating more and sleeping less than he should. Prosper was playing into December every season. By the end of the 2022 season, Prosper’s players and coaches were used to Bill doubling over in pain once or twice a day. The agony would last five seconds, then pass. He’d gone to the doctor for pelvic scans, and they’d brushed it off as colitis.

During spring break in 2023, the Robertsons drove to College Station to start the next chapter of their life. Bill was following head coach Brandon Schmidt from Prosper to A&M Consolidated. Their house was on the market, and they were off to sign the contract and go house hunting.

Then Bill got the call. A recent CT had shown an enlarged colon. The doctor ordered the colonoscopy that would uncover the cancer.

Just as there’s no good way to break cancer news, there’s no good time to have it. But this was objectively the worst timing for the Robertson family. With the job switch, they were in danger of being caught in between health insurance plans at the exact moment they needed coverage the most. The family is forever grateful for both Prosper and A&M Consolidated. Prosper allowed Bill to stay on as an employee on medical leave through the end of the school year, while Consol Principal Gwen Elder called Bill to tell him that he would be a Tiger whenever he was able to get there.

Bill was in the hospital for seven days after the surgery. He returned home for one day, developed an infection in his stitches, then returned for another six-day stint. Kim calls those hospital days the hardest they’d ever experienced as a family. It was the first time Bill’s children, Payton Reese and Walker, realized their superhero was mortal.

“He’s always been the guy that’s provided for us,” Kim said. “He was always our strength, and he didn’t have it in those first few days. It was brutal to watch him lay there. He was in so much pain.”

Bill has to stifle tears when he remembers that hospital room. The pain he felt as the nurse dug into his incision to clean it pales in comparison to the fact his children saw it.

“My kids have seen stuff that they shouldn’t have seen, especially my daughter,” Bill said. “She’s dealt with stuff that no little girl should have to see her dad do. There are times in there I wasn’t providing an example for anybody. They were providing an example for me.”

Maybe he’s right that his kids shouldn’t have seen him like that. But there is a reason they did. And whenever the parents have wrestled with why, the kids have reminded them.  

In the fall of 2023, the Robertsons were living in a VRBO in College Station. Bill’s surgery had been successful, and he was in the middle of chemotherapy. But the house’s air conditioning was out, and Bill was burning up. Then Payton Reese, a sophomore, came home one day.

“Mom, I know why we moved here,” Payton Reese said.

“Please do tell, because I’m wondering,” Kim said.

“I met a girl at school whose dad was just diagnosed with colon cancer,” Payton Reese said. “I’ve got to be there for her.”

She’d been in school for five weeks.

“I think God knew that we were strong enough and able enough to use this for good, to share it with the world,” Kim said.

Bill was offered to ring the bell for a second time after he finished chemotherapy, and he didn’t hesitate this time. But when the nurse pointed over to the wall where it hung, his heart sank.

The infusion center is a big room with a bunch of cubicles. Each has a television set and two chairs, allowing a friend or family member to visit with the person receiving chemo during the sessions last five to six hours. Bill thought he knew every inch of this room.

“I’ve been in this room, I don’t know - hundreds of hours,” Bill said. “I’ve never heard that bell before. I didn’t know it was on that wall.”

Bill didn’t hear the head nurse as she announced to the room what ringing the bell meant. He didn’t hear the applause, or the bell’s chimes as he shook the rope. All he could think about was the 70-year-old grandmother with Stage IV lymphoma and the 12-year-old kid with leukemia he’d entered this room with months ago, and how he was the only one who would leave.

“I told my wife, ‘We have to get out of here,’” Bill said. “Because I knew what it meant that I was ringing that bell. But I also knew what it meant that I never heard that bell before.”

Bill has never asked why he was the one to contract colon cancer. But he has asked why he was the one who is surviving it.

Bill loved his time in College Station. He calls A&M Consolidated coach Brandon Schmidt his best friend. Families dropped off meals at his door before he’d even met them. During the games, one of the football dads would drive him from the locker room in a golf cart.

But Bill failed a blood test a year ago. His oncologist always warned him his cancer would almost certainly recur. He has a CT scan every three months at MD Anderson, and the doctors can’t locate the cancer because it’s so small and growing slowly. But it is there, a ticking clock inside his body. He became a head coach so he could have a larger platform to shout his story from, for however much longer the Lord has given him.

Colon cancer is among the top three most common cancers for both men and women. Regular colonoscopies can prevent it by identifying precancerous polyps that can be removed. Bill likens the process to that of a dermatologist. The dermatologist scans your body, identifies a spot they don’t like, freezes it off, and you move on with life. Most don’t get scared about these checkups, but they do fear colonoscopies.

“Where people get in trouble, particularly men, is because they’re stubborn and prideful and don’t want everything the colonoscopy involves,” Bill said. “It’s not a big deal. It’s the best hour-long nap you’ll ever take.”

While raising awareness about colon cancer is important, especially as cases increasingly turn up in people younger than 50, Bill also wants to show his kids, both biological and on the football team, how to carry yourself when adversity strikes. In all probability, few will contract colon cancer. But they will all deal with hardship. And when they do, he hopes they remember what he used his cancer battle to teach them.

“The example I hope I give is that you can do hard things,” Bill said. “It’s OK. It was important to me that my kids saw that I would show up every day to the best of my ability. And that would look different every day. But I would show up to school, and practice, and their lives.”