TAMPA, FLA. – Toddler Elias McNeal gazed up at Casey O'Brien as the Gophers holder visited him in his room at Tampa General Hospital.
The little boy — whose family moved from Minneapolis to the Tampa area about a decade ago — was in the hospital with a bone infection, awaiting an MRI. But when a group of Gophers and Auburn players rumbled through the hallway outside his room, his grandmother leaned out the door to shout "Go Gophers!"
That caught O'Brien's attention, as well as that of receiver Seth Green and linebacker Thomas Barber. The three ended up lingering in McNeal's room, signing posters and snapping selfies with the little boy, decked out in his new Gophers T-shirt and hat.
O'Brien sharing that moment with a young fan is a bit of a miracle. One that has now happened five times.
The sophomore missed the Gophers' last regular-season game after having surgery to remove a cancerous spot from his lungs. O'Brien has battled osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer, since high school and has undergone several surgeries and treatments for recurrences.
"Obviously, it's not what you want to hear," O'Brien said Friday. "But I've heard four times before. And I've beat it four times before. It's just kind of something you've got to take with you and take a second to be sad, but then you've got to go back to being yourself because I know that I have a lot of people looking up to me, and I don't want to let them down."
O'Brien said doctors removed all of the cancer in the most recent surgery, so he won't need any more treatment beyond his usual scans every three months.
"He's got a great attitude about his entire situation, always has, always will," Gophers coach P.J. Fleck said Dec. 8. "He's just, he's Casey. You can give him every adjective known to man in terms of being the toughest young man you've ever met or his spirit or his will. He fits every bill. He's a champion, champion in life, and he's going to keep doing it."
