On Friday, UMass head coach Joe Harasymiak announced that wide receiver Dallas Elliott will miss the rest of the season after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Elliott began treatment at Dana-Farber in Boston last week. He has been around the team over the last several weeks while going through testing, and Harasymiak had the chance to visit with Elliott’s family a couple of weeks ago.
“He’s fighting it,” Harasymiak said.
Elliott’s name had been on the injury report for the past several weeks with no reason given.
“He’s a local walk-on that has earned a scholarship, earned a starting role and was the hardest worker on our team to put himself into that,” Harasymiak said. “He stuck with us, stuck with this place through some really, really hard times and now we’re going to do that for him and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“So he’s a fighter. If you’ve ever talked to him or met him, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to win this matchup. We talk about winning matchups on special teams and your matchup on offense and defense and there’s just no way he’s not going to win.”
Harasymiak said Elliott is attacking the diagnosis the same way he attacked everything in the program.
“He’s the most positive guy,” Harasymiak continued. “He knows he’s going in there to attack it and we just want to be here as a community for his family.”
Harasymiak also made it clear the program would follow the Elliott family’s lead on ways to help.
“We’re going to do whatever you want us to do because we are a family and we’re going to take the directive from you,” Harasymiak said.
Asked how the team has responded to the news, Harasymiak said there was worry and concern during the weeks of testing while the program gave the family its privacy, and that balancing that against preparing for games was difficult because of how much the players were thinking about Elliott.
“You can see them just caring and loving him so much that they want to make sure he’s okay,” Harasymiak said.
Once the team learned Elliott was headed to Dana-Farber for treatment, Harasymiak said there was emotion, but also closure, because the unknown was finally known.
“We know how he’s going to fight,” Harasymiak said. “That’s not even a question in anybody’s mind.”
Elliott’s teammates will respond the only way Elliott would want them to, according to Harasymiak.
“I think they’ll handle it the way that Dallas would want us to handle it and go win games and continue to grow this program in the direction that ultimately he was growing it in,” Harasymiak said.
You can support Dallas’ fight via the GoFundMe page his family has set up.
Stand With Dallas: Supporting His Fight Against Cancer
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