It was a normal day for Anthony Chiccitt in February of his junior year at Bethel Park High School in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.
He had just wrapped up a basketball practice when he noticed a strange lump on his shoulder. Chiccitt chalked it up as nothing too out of the ordinary and played in his basketball game the next day.
But the day after his game, Chiccitt and his family decided he should get the lump on his shoulder checked out just to be cautious. When he got it examined, he was ordered to go right to the hospital for further testing, which put a sense of fear in the air. Chiccitt began to do research and got a general sense of what it may be.
The test results came back and a nightmare scenario unfolded — Chiccitt was diagnosed with Stage IV Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
“I pretty much knew at that point, when they sent me to the hospital that something was up,” Chiccitt said. “I was researching on my phone and stuff, so I pretty much knew already what I had. So when they told me, I wasn’t super shocked. I would say it was way harder on my parents. They broke down and I was more just like ‘it’s fine, like, I’ll get through this.”
Chiccitt kept his head up and pushed forward instead of letting the heartbreaking diagnosis bring him down. He rang the bell that declared him cancer-free that same summer and all returned to normal for the time being.
But Chiccitt’s world came crashing back down nearly a year later.
While undergoing a routine scan, he found out the cancer had come back. Once again, Chiccitt beat it and returned to full health. He was two months through his redshirt freshman season as a walk-on at Robert Morris in 2021 when more bad news struck.
His mom Kelly had passed away in her sleep, throwing another devastating wrench in the 19-year-old’s life.
Despite life seemingly telling him to give up, Chiccitt refused to let the punches take him down. He overcame cancer twice and his mom’s passing to become the starting quarterback at Robert Morris. Now at Temple for one final season, he is continuing to showcase the perseverance and attitude that got him through his hardest points in life.
“I think he had in his mind that he wanted to play college football,” said Robert Morris head coach Bernard Clark Jr. “I think that was kind of his goal, ‘let me see if I can beat this. Not only beat this, let me see if I can play college football and then put myself in a position where, if I can transfer and go up, I can put myself there.’ So he’s overcome so much, I think his mindset is, ‘I’m going to do the best I can, wherever I am at that time.’ And that’s what he’s done.”
ATTITUDE TAKES DOWN ADVERSITY
Chiccitt was known for his athletic ability growing up. He was a three-sport athlete, starring in baseball, basketball and football. When he was diagnosed with cancer during the middle of his junior year, Chiccitt could have easily laid down and given up.
Instead, he rose to the challenge.
From the day he was first diagnosed, Chiccitt maintained the mindset that there was ultimately nothing he could do about it. His parents were devastated by the news when they first found out, but it was Chiccitt who remained calm and reassured them that everything was going to be all right.
“It’s one of those moments you remember and he looked at me and said, ‘Dad, I’ll be all right.’ I was kind of a little teary and I said ‘Ant, how do you know?’” said Chiccitt’s dad Matt Chiccitt. “And he said, ‘I know.’ His attitude was, ‘What am I gonna do about it? I can’t wish it away. I can’t make it go away. So I have to deal with it.’”
Chiccitt made a fast recovery and returned for his fall football season at Bethel Park. Everything seemed normal again as he entered the summer of 2020. However, in June of that year, he was hit with the horrible news that the Hodgkin’s Lymphoma had returned.
The treatment and recovery was harder for Chiccitt the second go-around. He went through four weeks of chemotherapy and then had to get a stem cell transplant. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he was stuck in his hospital room for a month straight. While getting diagnosed a second time was tougher for Chiccitt, he still kept the same mindset from when he was first diagnosed.
“I would definitely say the second time was a lot harder on me, especially since I went through it all again,” Chiccitt said. “It was horrible. I never thought I would have to do it again. It kind of halted everything again.”
Chiccitt once again beat the cancer in just a matter of months and was able to return for the spring since COVID-19 canceled the fall football season. Although he was back in action in the spring, he struggled to regain his strength and his coaches at Robert Morris began to grow concerned.
What they didn’t know was that Chiccitt was still undergoing chemotherapy treatments without telling anyone. Since he was a walk-on at Robert Morris, Chiccitt just wanted to compete and have the chance to continue to play the sport he loves.
“He was getting chemo treatments like once a week and I had no idea,” Clark said. “He wouldn’t tell anybody. He would just come to practice regularly and just work through it and just fight through it. You wouldn’t even know if he’s having a bad day because he didn’t get frustrated.”
Right as things started to turn around for Chiccitt on the field, he was dealt the worst news imaginable.
LOSING HIS BEST FRIEND
Chiccitt had just returned from a road game against Gardner-Webb in October 2021 and was sitting in his dorm room working on school assignments when he got a call from his dad. Matt Chiccitt told his son to get home and that there was something wrong with his mom, Kelly.
He had just seen his parents for the Gardner-Webb game and had talked to his mom earlier that day, so the idea of something being wrong seemed unfathomable.
Chiccitt rushed home and found out his mom had passed away while taking a nap. He was crushed as he lost the person who meant most to him in the world, something that was 100 times harder than either time being sick, he said.
“My mom was my best friend,” Chiccitt said. “I would talk to her about everything. Talk to her all the time. Like talking to her about stuff you wouldn’t really talk to your dad about. I was really close with both my parents, but you talk to your mom about different stuff. I would pretty much say she was my best friend. We texted every single day. She was just constantly an awesome person and she was definitely my number one fan.”
Chiccitt took off a few weeks from school and football to recover, and was able to lean on everyone around him. All of his teammates at Robert Morris attended his mom’s funeral, showing their respect to both their quarterback and his mother.
Matt Chiccitt made sure he was also there for his son, which enabled their relationship to grow as they worked through the tragedy together. It was Matt who allowed Anthony to miss another week of school after the funeral to grieve. Once Anthony did return to school, Matt made sure he was checking on him regularly.
“We just tried to make sure once a week I would go up to school and we’d have dinner at night and just talk,” Matt Chiccitt said. “There’s just a little piece to you that never recovers from something like that. Coming on the heels of everything else he’d been through, it was just like, ‘How many punches to the gut can the kid take?’”
SUPPORT SYSTEM
From the first time Chiccitt was diagnosed with cancer to returning to school after his mom’s passing, he had a support system around him that made the recovery a little bit easier. His parents, friends, coaches and even sports always offered him a way to escape what was happening.
Clark never wavered about recruiting Chiccitt despite him being diagnosed with cancer twice and was committed to go to Robert Morris to play football. The coach had Chiccitt’s back the whole way, showing support for him after his mom died and starting him for the final two games of the season.
“We didn’t do visits or anything, so I didn’t meet really anyone else on campus,” Chiccitt said. “For them to do that without even really knowing me or meeting me in person, honestly meant everything to me. I played for Coach Clark my whole time there and I’ll be forever grateful for what he did for me.”
Through both treatments, Chiccitt’s mom was always there for him no matter what. He spent 35 days in the hospital and she was there every single day. When she passed, Matt Chiccitt was still there to aid him through everything. Anthony’s friends remained his best support system though as they were there for him at every juncture, so much so that he went out to play golf with one of them the same day he was told his cancer was back.
“His friends are so important through everything,” Matt Chiccitt said. “His friends come to games when they can. They kept him through the loss of his mom, through cancer, through everything, his friends and his mom were always there.”
FINDING HIS WAY ON THE FIELD
Once Chiccitt started to slowly work through everything that had happened, he began to take off on the gridiron. The walk-on worked his way up the ladder and snatched the starting job by the time he was a redshirt junior in 2023.
He appeared in 21 games during his final two seasons at Robert Morris and put together impressive performances. He threw for 30 touchdowns and just 10 interceptions in those two seasons and led the Colonials to a winning record in 2024 for the first time since the 2019 season.
Chiccitt decided to transfer following the 2024 season to try and play FBS football, something he always dreamed of. He committed to Temple for his final season of eligibility, fulfilling that goal and his new teammates and coaches have already seen what makes him special.
“There’s a whole list of things that he’s gone through to go out and play football,” said Temple head coach K.C. Keeler. “It’s needed to have one of those guys in your locker room that understands perseverance is part of what we do.”
It’s still unclear whether or not Chiccitt will earn time under center for the Owls this season. But regardless of whether he does, he has achieved his goal despite life trying to stop him at every turn.
Making his dream come true reminds Chiccitt of his mom and while she hasn’t been able to see his success, he knows she is still watching and is still his number one fan.
“I believe that she’s up there watching and looking down on me,” Chiccitt said. “Her favorite song is September by Earth, Wind and Fire and it’s just weird. I’ll just be walking around and I’ll hear that song all the time at the weirdest times. It’s like she’s there watching over me.”