Le Moyne College was not Patrick Wiese’s first choice. After going to high school at Christian Brothers’ Academy in Syracuse, Wiese was hoping to take his baseball skills to Saint David’s Parish in South Carolina. “The weather in South Carolina is more conducive for baseball,” Weiss stated in an interview with two Le Moyne journalism students.

But sadly, Wiese was rejected from St. David’s and had decided to enroll in his second college of choice: Le Moyne. While Wiese was “a little upset” about not being able to attend his top school, what he didn’t know was that his rejection from St. David’s would change the trajectory of his life.

Because of that rejection, Wiese was attending Le Moyne when he started getting pains in his left leg during his junior year in 2013. “You don’t think too much of it,” Wiese said when talking about his response to the pain. But at the beginning of May, his pain got significantly worse.

He found himself skipping classes simply because he couldn’t handle the pain from walking up the infamous hill between the Athletic Center and Grewen Hall. It was around this time that Wiese decided to tell his Athletic Director, Matt Bassett, and his father, who is an orthopedic surgeon, about the pain. After running tests at Le Moyne’s athletic center, they could not find a specific cause for the pain.

Like the athlete he is, Wiese continued to play baseball, joining the New England Baseball League over the summer between his junior and senior years. But after it got hard for him to walk during his first week of senior year, his dad gave him an X-ray, which showed a tumor in his knee.

After removing the tumor and finding out that it was cancerous, this diagnosis left Wiese with only one question on his mind:

“Am I going to be able to play baseball again?”

With Wiese needing six months of chemotherapy and a total knee replacement surgery, the answer to his question wasn’t the one he was looking for.

Despite all of this, Wiese had one goal: “I still wanted to finish out my time with all of my classmates I came to Le Moyne with.”

Wiese could not complete his goal alone. Some of the people he credited with helping him achieve this were the school’s faculty. “Professors would record their lessons and send them to me…When I was given the diagnosis, it wasn’t Le Moyne telling me what I have to do.”

This acceptance of his goal and effort put in by the school helped him continue on with his education and achieve his goal.

Although it was a group effort from everyone at Le Moyne, Wiese credits one person for making all that possible: Shawn Ward. Before recently retiring after working at Le Moyne for 38 years, Ward was the athletic vice president at Le Moyne for 10 years before going back to the teacher faculty in 2011.

With this connection to both sports and academics, Ward was able to help Wiese achieve his goal of graduating on time. “Shawn Ward would bring [tests] to my house,” explained Wiese when describing the lengths the Le Moyne community went through for him.

“I was in the spot I was meant to be,” Weise stated. Looking back, he knew that if he had gotten into St. David’s, none of this would have been possible.

Wiese’s experience with being able to attend college while undergoing treatment started because of his desire to finish school with the people he started it with, but in doing so, he discovered another motivator.

“It really helped me take my mind off the whole process.”

This feeling of normalcy he was able to experience, partly led to the creation of the Patrick Wiese Foundation. Of course, this wasn’t the main contributor. That credit, Wiese shared, goes to his best friend from Le Moyne, Nate Reynolds.

After Wiese’s diagnosis, Reynolds put together a fundraiser selling T-shirts to raise money. At a basketball game in the winter of 2013, Reynolds was able to present Wiese a check for $5,000. Since Wiese’s family already had medical bills covered, the money was meant to go towards whatever Wiese needed, school supplies, everyday spending, etc.

Wiese felt this money had better use elsewhere, so he and Reynolds began discussing starting a foundation. Eventually, they landed on a foundation that provides tuition scholarships for cancer survivors and patients when Wiese remembered how beneficial going to school was for him during his cancer journey.

In the end, not only was Wiese able to graduate on time, but he also beat his cancer, becoming officially cancer-free, 10 days before his graduation, on May 8th, 2014.

Despite graduating with a bachelor’s degree in communications, Wiese struggled to find what he really wanted to do with his life. While he was still supporting college students with cancer through his foundation, he knew there was more he could do.

Wiese decided to reach out to the principal of his old high school to see if there were any job openings on the sports side of things. After meeting with the principal the very next day, Wiese was offered a job as a 7th-grade math teacher.

Although it took a bit of convincing, Wiese took the job. Alongside teaching math, he also became the coach of the baseball team, starting as the Assistant Coach for seven years before becoming the Head Coach for the past three years.

When discussing his job, Wiese revealed why he never looked back after starting it:

“I want to give back to the community.”