After officiating a college men’s basketball game last month, Roger Ayers wept in the referees’ locker room after learning his 22-year-old daughter, Laken, has thyroid cancer.
“It’s a gut check,” he said Tuesday in an interview at his Roanoke County home.
At an ACC officials’ meeting last week, Ayers cried for a different reason. He learned referees would be using pink whistles and wearing pink whistle lanyards in his daughter’s honor for last Wednesday’s second-round ACC Tournament quadrupleheader at the Greensboro Coliseum.
“Basketball has a way of being pretty cool at times,” he said.
Ayers was part of the officiating crew for the Boston College-North Carolina game last Wednesday night, so he got to use a pink whistle himself.
After officiating Duke’s win over Virginia in the ACC Tournament title game last weekend, Ayers wept yet again. This time it was because his excited daughter had texted him that she and her friends had been watching him on television that night.
People are also reading…
“I’m thinking, ‘It’s taken my daughter’s mind off of the cancer,’” he said. “I went to the back of the arena in Greensboro and cried. I was like, ‘I’m so happy that maybe something I’m doing in a way is giving her some excitement.’”
Future physical therapist
Roger Ayers, a graduate of Roanoke’s Patrick Henry High School, has been a referee for four Final Fours and six ACC Tournament title games. He was hired by the ACC in 1998. This season he has officiated games in the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, Atlantic 10 and Colonial Athletic Association. Ayers, 58, is retired from his sales job.
“I love what I do,” he said of being a referee.
Laken Ayers is a former Cave Spring High School cheerleader. Roger Ayers is divorced from her mother, Cindy Kirby, who also lives in the Roanoke area.
Laken graduated from the University of Virginia last year with a kinesiology degree. She took part in commencement ceremonies last spring and officially graduated in December after taking her final course online.
She is now pursuing a doctor of physical therapy degree at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professionals in Boston, where she has lived since last summer. She will have surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in late April.
“I’m happy that she chose Boston to go to grad school because it’s probably one of the best hospitals in the world,” Ayers said.
Laken has been interested in physical therapy ever since she needed it herself after falling from the top of a Cave Spring cheerleading pyramid.
“If she had not fallen, she probably wouldn’t have wound up at Boston Mass General. They may not have found this cancer and it may have been who knows how long before we found it,” Roger Ayers said.
‘God has a plan’
When Laken returned home from Boston in December for Christmas, she informed her father that she had lost 30 pounds since September. She told him her mother had arranged for her to undergo some tests. She said a colonoscopy and lab work had been negative and that a possible thyroid issue might be behind her weight loss. Her mother and two cousins had had thyroid issues, so the family was not fretting.
After she returned to school in Boston in January, she saw an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her father scrapped plans to officiate an ACC game and flew to Boston to accompany her to the appointment. After she got an ultrasound on her swollen neck, the doctor ordered a biopsy. Roger Ayers looked on as five needles were stuck in Laken’s neck. A DNA test also was taken.
The biopsy results turned out to be inconclusive, so the hospital sought an outside second opinion.
“That was the first time I thought of a red flag,” Roger Ayers said.
The second test also turned out to be inconclusive. So doctors planned to look at the DNA test to see if she had cancer.
“When I got concerned was when the second pathologist said he couldn’t confirm the biopsy,” Roger Ayers said.
On Feb. 16, Ayers officiated Maryland’s home game with Purdue. His daughter phoned him after the game, while he was still in the referees’ locker room.
“She said, ‘I have cancer,’” Ayers said. “I was not ready for that.”
He began crying. He went to his car to resume the conversation with his daughter. Laken told him she had been informed she had thyroid cancer in one nodule, with cancer suspected in a second nodule as well. She would need surgery.
The next day, the head of oncology at Massachusetts General told Laken it was a slow-growing cancer and that the operation could wait until after the April cruise trip she had planned with her friends.
She will have surgery in late April to remove her thyroid and the lymph node behind it. Doctors will then see if the cancer has spread and what sort of treatment she may need.
Roger Ayers plans to fly to Boston next month to be there for the operation and the following week.
“God has a plan,” he said. “I trust Him and I pray every day for her.
“I’ve done a lot of homework on thyroid cancer since then. … If they catch it in time, the survival rate is 95-98%.”
‘I have feelings’
Ayers was not allowed to be a referee for UVa games while his daughter was a UVa student. That ban was lifted two months ago.
On Feb. 22, Ayers officiated UVa’s game at Boston College. Laken and one of her roommates attended the game. BC administrators knew of Laken’s cancer diagnosis and surprised her with first-class treatment.
Laken and her roommate got to sit in courtside seats that were not being used by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft that night. Laken and her roommate also got to mingle in BC’s VIP lounge before the game. BC arranged for Ayers, Laken and her roommate to have dinner at an otherwise closed restaurant after the game.
“She texted me that night about 11:30. She said, “Dad, best night ever,’” Ayers said.
Ayers was in Greensboro, North Carolina, on March 6 for a meeting of the referees who would be working the ACC Tournament that week. Bryan Kersey, the ACC men’s basketball supervisor of officials, announced at the meeting that all the referees who would be working the four second-round games March 8 would use pink whistles and wear pink whistle lanyards. ACC commissioner Jim Phillips had signed off on the idea. The whistles had a cancer-awareness ribbon logo on them.
The whistles and lanyards, which had been donated to the ACC by the Coaches vs. Cancer organization, were then passed out to Ayers and his colleagues.
“I just started crying,” Ayers said.
Because of the pink whistles, Ayers and his daughter were discussed on ESPN’s ACC Tournament telecasts March 8. Ayers was flooded with supportive text messages and phone calls from people who had just learned of Laken’s cancer on TV.
He texted Laken to tell her ESPN had made her famous. Laken told him about the many text messages she had gotten that day.
“To hear her laugh and not cry — she was so happy that somebody was doing something for her and bringing awareness to this terrible disease,” Ayers said.
Ayers said his daughter’s cancer has put basketball in perspective for him.
“I get screamed at every night and cussed at every night,” he said. “Social media’s killing me. And I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got a life. I’m a human being just like everybody else. I have feelings.’”
Officiating has become a welcome respite.
“For those two hours every night, it kind of takes me away from that outside world,” he said.
He will next officiate in the NCAA tournament Friday. Laken will be watching on TV.
“She’s all excited about March Madness. She said, ‘Dad, where are you going? When are you working? I can’t wait to watch. I’ll be telling my friends when you’re on TV,’” Ayers said. “Maybe it’s taken her mind away [from cancer], too.”
