Abilene High football coach Mike Fullen keeps battling after cancer diagnosis

These days when people ask Mike Fullen how he’s doing, the 51-year-old Abilene High football coach has a pat answer.

“I just tell them I’m still battling,” Fullen said this week. “If I say more than that, I’ll have to go into the details and that’ll take forever.”

Fullen thinks his pat answer keeps him from becoming a distraction – something he has never wanted to be while battling colon cancer over the last 16 months. Even after surgery and chemotherapy, he’s still considered high risk. Now, though, he has occasional scans and receives medication through a port in his shoulder.

“I go to work early,” said Fullen, a former Sonora High School and Angelo State University player. “We have our athletic period just before lunch, then I take an hour or so break before practice in the afternoon.

“I still get fatigued, but I’m pretty much back to a normal work schedule.”

Little has been normal for Fullen since he was diagnosed with cancer in July 2020. He had just two weeks to prepare the Eagles’ coaching staff for his sudden absence. He had surgery Aug. 20 and wasn’t able to return until Oct. 16.

“The hardest part of cancer is battling it because you’re battling chemo,” Fullen said. “Chemo fatigues you so much because it kills the good cells along with the bad cells. I didn’t lose my hair, and I didn’t throw up. But I had severe numbness in my hands and feet, and everything I ate tasted like metal.”

After he returned to coaching, he underwent chemo treatments for 5-7 hours every other Tuesday, plus a chemo drip ball that stayed with Fullen until sometime on Thursday. On Saturday, he experienced a “chemo crash.”

“Everything would get cloudy, and I couldn’t focus,” Fullen said. “Our first playoff game (of 2020) was on a Saturday, and I had a crash during the game. I slept in a school suburban for 90 minutes before the game. In the second quarter, I had to go sit on the bench. I was still listening on the headphones, and I could get up when I needed to.”

Fullen knew when the bad days were coming, so he could plan for it. He also knew he had to change the way he coached.

“This probably sounds weird, but in some ways, the cancer was a blessing,” Fullen said. “It made me slow down and re-evaluate things. For those two months I was at home, I thought a lot about the kind of coach I wanted to be. It gave me perspective on what’s really important.

“In my first year as head coach (2019), I tried to do too much. When I came back, I learned to pick my battles, and I quit trying to put out every fire. You learn what can wait until next week and what has nothing to do with the grand scheme.”

Fullen was forced to delegate more responsibilities to his coaching staff, a group that was more than willing to assume more duties. Initially, Jeff Rhoads took over the head coaching duties, and Tommy Martinez, who had been at Abilene High since 2001, assumed the day-to-day football operations.

This season, Rhoads and Jerale Badon have run the offense while James Williamson coordinates the defense.

“We have a good balance on our staff of veteran coaches with experience and younger coaches with new ideas,” Fullen said. “They’ve upheld the standards of the program.

“My job now is more to manage the team. I’m more into setting the culture and direction of the program than the X’s and O’s. I came up on the defensive side of the ball, and this situation has allowed me to get to know the offensive players. I go with the offensive linemen a lot during practice now and try to make them feel important.”

On the field, the Eagles have excelled as their coach has battled cancer. In the delayed COVID season of 2020, Abilene High advanced three rounds in the Class 6A Division II playoffs, beating El Paso Eastwood and North Crowley.

This season, the Eagles overcame injuries and a 0-2 start and finished second to Midland Legacy in District 2-6A with a 5-1 record. Abilene High is set to host El Paso Eastwood in a 6A DII bidistrict game at 7 p.m. Friday at Shotwell Stadium.

Sonora and ASU influences

Fullen might not have become a football coach if not for his experiences at Sonora growing up and Angelo State playing college ball. As a 1988 Sonora High School graduate, he played tight end and linebacker for legendary coach Jerry Hopkins.

“Sonora is where I got my passion for football,” Fullen said. “It was a small town, and football is important to everybody. I learned about attention to detail from Coach Hopkins.”

At Angelo State, Fullen’s life changed under the tutelage of longtime defensive coordinator Mike Martin.

“My parents had divorced, so Coach Martin was like a father figure to me,” Fullen said. “He helped me through college and after college. I used to go visit him every year around Christmas.

“Coach Martin coached us hard, but he never let us leave mad after practice. He always told us if he corrected us on the field, it wasn’t personal. It was just football. We still tell our kids that same thing today.”

Fullen also kept some of Martin’s defensive verbiage, even though the scheme is different.

Fullen was a journeyman player for Angelo State. He never was an established starter, but he saw a lot of playing time at linebacker, defensive end and tackle.

“After college, I was going to work in the oilfield,” Fullen said. “I was going to ride around in a big pickup and check meters. But they weren’t hiring.”

Like most small colleges, Angelo State relies on student and graduate assistant coaches. Martin invited Fullen to stick around and help coach the Rams’ defense.

“He said nobody had as much of a grasp on what they did on defense as I did because I played a lot of positions,” Fullen said of Martin’s offer.

Fullen helped Martin coach for two seasons, and he returned to the classroom and earned a teaching certificate so he could coach in Texas public schools. He began as an assistant at San Saba in 1995, Comfort in 1996 and Abilene in 1997. Until he was promoted to head coach in 2019, he was the Eagles’ longtime defensive coordinator, including their state championship season of 2009.

Fullen followed Steve Warren, the head coach in 2009, and Del Van Cox as Abilene High head coaches. All three graduated from Angelo State.

Fullen never realized how many players he impacted and coaching colleagues he knew until he was diagnosed with cancer. He heard from players he hadn’t seen in 23 years. He heard from new coaching friends and old ones – all the way back to Martin, his college coach.

“It’s weird. When you’re diagnosed with cancer, everybody thinks you’re doomed,” Fullen said. “Then when you finish chemo, they think you’re cured. That’s when the real fight begins. I’m still high risk, but I’m not in as bad a shape as I was last year.

“That’s why I just tell people I’m still battling.”

Mike Lee writes a weekly high school football column for the USA Today Network's Texas newspapers. Contact him at michaellee7@att.net.

This article originally appeared on San Angelo Standard-Times: Abilene High coach Mike Fullen keeps battling after cancer diagnosis