For former Maryland punter Anthony Pecorella, overcoming cancer ‘like winning the biggest game of your life’

This fall marked the first time since he was a fifth grader that former Maryland punter Anthony Pecorella did not play football. For someone who grew up playing football, baseball, basketball and soccer and had practiced karate, the inactivity was an alien concept.

“It was pretty much the first time in my life that I was told to sit on my [butt] and do nothing,” he said. “I felt like I was out of my norm.”

There was a good reason for Pecorella’s hiatus. In July, the 22-year-old New York native was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma. On Nov. 29, he rang the bell at Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, New York, signifying that he was cancer-free.

“It’s like winning the biggest game of your life because you know how much time and effort went into it and your family members and friends and doctors and nurses that were there for you every day for your every need,” he said.

Although Pecorella, a graduate student, has since transferred from Maryland to Stony Brook, his battle and triumph were closely celebrated by his former Terps teammates and coaches.

“It just means that our prayers have been answered,” coach Mike Locksley said of Pecorella’s clean bill of health. “To see him go through the things he went through and to see him battle, we’re not surprised.”

Pecorella has been playing football since he was 5 years old but began as a quarterback whose favorite NFL player was New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning. When a coach on his youth football team was looking for a volunteer to kick extra points that were worth two points instead of the usual one, Pecorella raised his hand.

At a camp at Penn State during the summer before his senior year of high school, the Nittany Lions special teams coordinator at the time pulled Pecorella aside and informed him he had the skills to be a punter in the Big Ten.

“It was a brief conversation, but the fact that he told me out of 100 kids about that, I was like, ‘Whoa, I’ve got to do this,’” he recalled.

At Maryland, which he chose in part to be near his twin sister Alessia, who enrolled at Catholic University in Washington, Pecorella ranked fourth in program history in career punting average (42.2 yards) and punting average for a single season (44.0 in 2021) and was tied for 12th (42.1 in 2020).

After graduating with a bachelor’s in finance and choosing to play at Stony Brook, which is just a 45-minute drive from his parents’ home on Long Island, Pecorella went home in June for a physical, which revealed a golf ball-sized tonsil in the back of his throat. A swab of the tonsil and a sample from his lymph nodes came back clean, but another doctor recommended a more thorough exam.

On July 26, a doctor summoned Pecorella and his mother Marisa to his office where they were informed it was Burkitt lymphoma, a rare but fast-growing cancer that — if untreated — can affect the central nervous system, bowel, kidneys or jaw.

“I knew I should put football aside, but football is such a huge part of who I am that the thoughts going through my mind were, ‘Oh no, the season. I really want to play,’” he said. “But I also knew that this was something I didn’t want to run from. It was something I wanted to run through.”

During the car ride back home, Pecorella called his father, who is also named Anthony. The younger Pecorella was encouraged by the way his dad took charge of the situation and promised to get through it together, but the elder Pecorella admitted he was blindsided by the news.

“That’s what you’re saying on the outside, but on the inside, you have your own concerns and challenges, but you don’t show that,” said Anthony Pecorella, a 59-year-old former right guard at Hofstra who was inducted into the Semi-Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007. “You have to show a strong front.”

The younger Pecorella breezed through the first two rounds of chemotherapy without losing his appetite or his personality. He joked the most difficult part was giving up Italian hero sandwiches.

But the third and fourth rounds of chemotherapy sapped Pecorella of his hunger and left him more fatigued. His father said the only food his son could hold down was PB&J sandwiches.

Spending as much as a week at the hospital before returning home for two weeks and repeating that cycle, Pecorella said he often watched Maryland and Stony Brook games at the same time with the Terps on television and the Seawolves on his laptop.

Pecorella said coaches and players from both programs checked in on him regularly. He said Locksley and his wife, Kia, reached out to him personally, the team sent him a card signed by every player and coach, and the special teams unit set up a fundraiser that pledged to make a donation to the American Cancer Society for every successful field goal.

“Anthony did some great things for us here,” Locksley said. “He played a part in helping us create the foundation here. So any time you see a family member go through some tough times in health crises like the one that Anthony just faced, it’s important for us to support them.”

When Pecorella rang the bell, the first person to hug him was his father. The elder Pecorella said he has noticed a difference in his son since his battle with lymphoma.

“I don’t think he’s letting it define him,” he said. “I think he’s using it to make him a better person. He’s always had a lot of empathy for people, and now he’s even more understanding and he just wants to help more.”

The younger Pecorella said his plan is to rejoin Stony Brook for spring ball and continue chasing his dream of punting in the NFL. He said he will always remember a 3-year-old girl he befriended who also battled lymphoma.

“She’s such an inspiration for me every day, and I will carry that memory with me when I’m going through a workout now,” he said. “I’m like, ‘What am I complaining about now? She’s going through hell right now, and I’m just working out.’ It’s just a newfound perspective for life and everything.”