WVU coach’s son battling cancer

JaJuan Seider was jogging on a treadmill in an exercise room at West Virginia’s Milan Puskar Center one day in late January when he got a call from his wife.

It’s not uncommon for Seider, the Mountaineers running backs coach, to escape to the treadmill when he has some free time, and it’s not uncommon for his wife, Brandi, to call him.

“I’m in the middle of a workout,” Seider told her. “I’ll call you back.”

But something about this call was different.

“No,” Brandi shot back. “You get off that treadmill right now. We need to talk.” In an instant, life as the Seiders had known it changed forever.

For weeks, they had known something was not right with their 14-yearold son, Jaden. But only in the darkest moments did they believe this was a possibility: Their bubbly son, the kind of kid who had never met a stranger in his life, had lymphoma.

Three months have passed since that phone call, and many of those days have been filled with tests and chemotherapy treatments as the Seider family awaits results. But for all that cancer has taken away from them — their peace of mind, Jaden’s health and well-being — combating it has brought the family closer and taught the parents more about their son than they could have imagined.

And it has brought JaJuan Seider closer to his coaching family, as he has leaned on his colleagues at West Virginia and beyond for support. He has been a mainstay at Mountaineers practices this spring and will be on the sideline again today, coaching running backs in West Virginia’s spring game.

“You always worry as a parent and think about this and this and that, but I watched a strong kid, stronger than I could ever be, go through this,” Seider said. “Not one time have I seen a sign of him wavering or thinking that he can’t do this. He’s been as normal as you can be. I’m telling you, it’s the most courageous thing I’ve ever seen.”

A recent scan showed that Jaden’s tumor has shrunk but has not vanished completely. For now, the family has decided to take a nine-week break from treatment before potentially starting another round of chemotherapy this summer.

The Seiders got their first indica-

tion something was wrong on vacation in the summer of 2014, when Jaden alerted his mom to a lump on his neck. They were told by doctors to monitor it and to wait and see what happened. Even as it grew larger, tests results were inconclusive.

By the time they arrived home from the Liberty Bowl in December, the bump was the size of a golf ball. On his 14th birthday, Jaden underwent surgery for what they thought was a benign mass, but after the procedure, a doctor told Brandi it could be something more serious.

A few days later, they learned it was cancer.

“I was standing in the hallway and I couldn’t even breathe,” Brandi Seider said.

“You just can’t believe it. It’s never going to happen to you. It’s never going to happen to your kids. Other people have been through it, but it could never happen to you.”

The diagnosis was jolting not only because of Jaden’s age, but because nothing about the teenager screamed abnormal. Like his dad, a former quarterback drafted by the San Diego Chargers in 2000 out of Florida A&M, he’s an athlete, usually walking around with a football or basketball tucked in his arm. He plays video games late into the night and anxiously clamors to get every new pair of Jordans that come out.

The shock turned their once-steady life into a dizzying blur.

JaJuan Seider was “an emotional wreck,” he said, sometimes struggling to go home and see Jaden because he didn’t know what to say without discouraging him.

But, as they tried to encourage their son, the Seiders actually found strength in him. Even as Jaden underwent treatment — three, two-week cycles of chemotherapy, followed by a week off each time — his lively personality was unchanged.

“You just deal with it,” JaJuan Seider remembers Jaden telling him one night. “I’ve got it. We’re going to beat this thing, and it’s going to go away and we’re going to be done with it.”

Even if the resilience they found within themselves wasn’t enough, the Seiders received plenty of support from elsewhere.

Though Jaden’s diagnosis came just a few days before national signing day, Mountaineers coach Dana Holgorsen, who has a brother who battled lymphoma, insisted JaJuan Seider could take the time to tend to Jaden before returning to work. Since then, JaJuan has managed to balance time with his son with his coaching responsibilities.

In addition to family, some of the people Seider has leaned on the most have been fellow coaches, at West Virginia and from previous stops in his career.

As Jaden’s treatment progressed, the number of helping hands multiplied. He has been receiving calls from well-wishers on a daily basis, and the family has been sent letters and packages from places as far off as Texas and California.

They also are aiming to raise awareness and provide help for families such as ones they met during Jaden’s chemotherapy who had to travel three or four hours each way just to receive treatment.

“We feel responsible to do something,” Brandi Seider said.

“Take the bad and do something good, right?”