Beatty athletic director: inspired to teach by his experience with cancer

Bryson Moore was appointed as the new athletic director of Beatty High School this year. Moore took over from Leo Verzilli who had the position for the past three years.

Moore was raised in Utah in the town of Layton, which is just north of Salt Lake City and then went to college in the Southern United States obtaining his associates at Dalton State College in Georgia in Exercise Science and then he attended Alabama A&M. Moore played baseball and volleyball in college and while going to college he worked as an athletic trainer.

The young trainer went to Southern Utah University where he spent three years working as an athletic trainer. While at SUU he was a trainer for football, baseball, gymnastics and track and field.

It was at SUU in his third year that he found out that he had a cancerous brain tumor in his medial, inferior, right-frontal lobe. “I got my first cancer back in 2008. It was stage II and right on the verge of stage III. The first one was a golf ball sized tumor in the right frontal lobe on the bottom.” The cancer was operable and the surgery was 14 hours long to remove. He said the name of the cancer was an Oligoastrocytoma.

Along with the support of his friends, family and coworkers he said his faith in God got him through his cancer. He said his faith in God kept him from ever fearing death. “My faith kept me strong and really at no point did I ever feel I wasn’t going to make it,” he said with conviction.

Prior to going into the surgery the athletes and coaches of SUU called him into the training room.

“That place holds a special place in my heart because it was my third year there when I found out I had cancer. I told the coaches that I had it to stop rumors. I remember my boss telling me to go to this place at the school. I came back to the main training room at the stadium and I see all these cars there. I was thinking — NCAA drug testing. I see all the athletes and coaches gathered in the room and they told me, ‘We are not letting you leave yet. We are shaving your head first and then you can shave ours.’ We did this for three hours. It was quite an experience and they wanted to let me know that they supported me,” he shared.

After the surgery, Moore lost his ability to smell, but he said when you work as an athletic trainer and spend a lot of times in locker rooms, that could be an advantage.

“To this day I can’t smell. I guess dealing with athletes at the college level is a really good thing that I can’t smell. You get in a locker room at halftime and they smell bad. I remember when I was going to Alabama A&M, we were playing Auburn, I remember looking at my colleagues and them saying, ‘Oh my goodness, this is the worst smelling halftime ever.’ and I just looked at them and said, ‘What are you talking about, I can’t smell a thing.’ and my coworkers looked at me and said, ‘Shut up, we know you can’t smell.’”

Cancer did not leave Moore alone. While teaching high school in his first year in Ogden, a tumor appeared again, but this time it was much smaller — the size of a gumball. The cancer was in the right temporal lobe and it was so close to the first tumor that doctors were able to remove it through the same entrance hole from the first cancer. After two cancer operations, Moore appreciates every little thing about life.

“It is good to say that I am cancer free and that I am a cancer survivor twice. It makes you appreciate the little things. I remember driving west toward the Great Salt Lake. The family was in the car. I told them to stop. And they asked me what was wrong. I said, ‘Look at the sunset.’ My mom is the mildest tempered woman you will ever meet and she hit me in the arm. ‘I am getting so sick of your damn sunsets. You feel that I don’t appreciate them.’”

He said the cancer inspired him to be a teacher. “I felt like I could make a difference. I had a good experience teaching last year and this is my second year of teaching,” he said.

Moore said that is the reason he is not coaching now is because his last bout with cancer was so recent. He was diagnosed in January of this year and he just finished with his last chemotherapy about a month ago.

Moore is 35 and has a wife and two kids. His youngest child is 1 and his oldest is 10.

His goals as the athletic director are to bring some continuity with all the coaches at Beatty. “I want the coaches all on the same page. These are our students. The students need to realize that they are not going to play college sports unless they have the grades. I think it is important for the student athletes to understand that. School is first and if you do that the athletics will come with that. Working at the college level as an athletic trainer I remember coaches telling me, ‘This kid has so much talent, look at his academics, not very good. If he does not put some effort into his academics, he won’t fit in here,’” he explained.

Moore said he enjoys the small town life that Beatty has to offer. “We love our walks around town. We love the outdoors and we love puzzles,” Moore concluded.