The Carrboro High School wrestling team is off to a good start this year. The season is heating up and the state tournament is just around the corner in the start of February.

But take a closer look at those Carrboro wrestlers. On that team, you’ll find one of the most inspiring stories we’ve had the privilege of hearing in a long time.

There’s Dante Veltri. He’s a senior this year at CHS and he’s been been on the wrestling team since he was a freshman. The Veltris are a wrestling family: he and his two brothers David and PJ all started competing when they were toddlers living back in New Jersey.

His coach, DeWitt Driscoll, says Dante’s a pretty special kid. “I think one of the best words is ‘tenacious,’” he says. “He’s one of the most tenacious kids I’ve met. He’s got big goals, he’s got big dreams.”

And last February, wrestling in the 120-pound division, Dante took fourth at the state finals in Greensboro.

Dante Veltri Carrboro Wrestling 4th place state finals

Fittingly, he’s only slightly happy with that finish. (“I really wanted to win,” he says.) But fourth place is big news. A top-four finish at states qualifies you to be able to train at regional training centers – including one at UNC that’s run by Coleman Scott, who won a bronze medal at the 2012 Olympics. “Dante can go once or twice a week and train with an Olympic medalist,” says Driscoll.

But that is not why you’re going to remember Dante Veltri.

This is.

“I noticed, like, a lump one day. It was really sore.”

The lump was under his arm. It was the fall of 2013. Dante had just begun his sophomore year.

“We went to the doctor to see what it was; they put me on medicine, antibiotics for a couple weeks,” he says. “I didn’t think anything of it, other than it was keeping me off the mat.”

But when the swelling didn’t go away, doctors recommended a biopsy – and the news wasn’t good.

Karen Veltri is Dante’s mother. “The biopsy was October 15,” she says. “And on October 17” – she remembers the date – “they called me at work.”

Dante was only 15 years old. He’d been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“And I had to go pick him up from school and bring him home,” Karen says, “and tell him he had cancer.”

Listen to Part 1 of WCHL’s story on Dante Veltri.

 

True to form, Karen says when she broke the news, Dante’s first question was:

“What about wrestling?”

“I told him we’re not going to be wrestling for a while,” she says. “We have a much bigger match right now.”

Over at Carrboro High School, DeWitt Driscoll says he’d been worried ever since he first saw the lump on Dante’s arm – but it was still hard news to take.

“It threw me backwards, you know,” he says. “Especially when you have a kid like Dante, that I’ve been so close with for so long – emotionally it was really hard to hold it together.”

But with cancer treatments looming and his wrestling career possibly over, Dante Veltri did what he always did: he got to work.

“Right after I heard, I was upset, I didn’t really want to talk to people,” he says. “And then after like 10 minutes, I just wanted to figure out the plan.”

Dante Veltri received his cancer diagnosis on October 17, 2013. His mom Karen says the treatment began immediately.

“He took everything,” she says. “You don’t know what’s coming at you. Biopsies, scans – they drilled into his hips to check and make sure it wasn’t in his bone marrow. They did a lot of invasive things, and he just took it all in stride.”

Between October of 2013 and January of 2014, Dante went through five rounds of chemo at UNC Hospitals, each lasting several days. Karen Veltri says the last round lasted more than 160 hours.

“Through it all, he was amazing,” she says. “He figured out that walking the hospital floor 16 rounds was a mile, so he would get out there and do that. He stayed active. He went to school, he kept up his grades…

“You know, the treatment is pretty brutal. It not only kills the cancer cells, it just attacks everything…but he did whatever was asked of him and never complained. It wasn’t easy, believe me. Watching him was not easy. But I’m proud of him. He did great.”

While Karen Veltri watched her son go through the biggest fight of his life, through it all, Dante kept his focus.

“I didn’t think much of it,” he says. “The whole time I just wanted to get back to a normal life, get back on the mat.”

Listen to Part 2 of WCHL’s story on Dante Veltri.

 

And in January, after that grueling fifth round of chemo, a PET scan showed Dante was all clear. Three months later, he was cleared to wrestle again – and coach DeWitt Driscoll says that first practice back was special.

“We were at a club facility we go to in Hillsborough,” he says. “It’s kind of an old, dingy beat-up place and it usually has kind of a dark aura to it, because there’s so much darkness in there…but that day, man, I just remember it was bright.”

Dante’s doctor told him it would likely be about a year until he was back to normal, but Driscoll says his wrestler was close to 100 percent after only two months. Of course Dante would have to wait into the later fall for the start of the wrestling season – but in the meantime, he was happy just being a normal kid again.

“Not playing keep-up all year, like in sophomore year, was huge,” he says. “My grades (were) amazing, (and) being on the mat the whole year – it was awesome.”

And when the wrestling season finally began – even after a year of missed practices and biopsies and tests and week-long chemo treatments – it quickly became clear that Dante Veltri hadn’t missed a beat.

And his mom Karen was there every step of the way – all the way to Greensboro, for the state finals last February.

“I’m on the bleachers every match,” she says. (Dante corroborates: “I could hear her from all the way down on the mat in that huge Greensboro Coliseum.”)

He’d faced five rounds of chemo, and in Greensboro he faced five opponents. “It was pretty intense,” says Karen. “One of his matches he wrestled somebody that every time during the season he had beat him, and then it turned into a nailbiter at states, where you’re just shaking because you’re thinking, oh my gosh, he’s never lost to this kid, what’s going on? And then he won.”

Dante Veltri Carrboro wrestling

And when it was all over, Dante Veltri, barely a year removed from intensive cancer treatments, had finished fourth in the state.

“The year before that, he was still dealing with scars on his chest (and) his hair was still all missing,” says Driscoll. “Just to think back to where he was a year prior to being on the podium at states…

“Most people would say he came a long way, but he doesn’t see it that way. He just took the next step in his life.”

Now? Dante Veltri is a senior at Carrboro High School. He’s still on the wrestling team, hoping for even bigger and better results. His fight back from cancer has won statewide recognition: last year, the North Carolina High School Athletics Association honored Dante with the A.J. “Tony” Simeon Courage Award. But for now his goals are pretty straightforward.

“I want to get straight As in school,” he says. “And win my first state title.”

January 8 marked two years since his last chemo treatment. On that day, he pinned his opponent on the wrestling mat to claim his 100th career victory – a significant milestone, even for a wrestler who hadn’t missed an entire season of competition.

DeWitt Driscoll, Dante Veltri, and Karen Veltri.

DeWitt Driscoll, Dante Veltri, and Karen Veltri.

But that’s still not the end of the story – because this isn’t only about one family and one kid. It’s about our community as well.

And while Dante Veltri was in the hospital, his mom Karen says the community came through with incredible support.

“The amount of support that poured out of Carrboro High School, his athletic director, the doctors, the nurses…I can’t even believe how much they did,” she says. “Baskets of stuff would come from school for him with his favorite foods or gift cards…just the amount of support, it was really overwhelming.”

Carrboro High School athletic director April Ross even organized a 5K to raise funds for Dante’s treatment – and now, there are plans to keep that 5K going annually, to raise funds no longer for one family, but for UNC’s entire department of pediatric oncology.

And Karen Veltri went even further. She organized an initiative called “Take Down Cancer” – collecting not money but board games, 100 board games last year alone, to give to kids fighting cancer at UNC Hospitals.

“Being there so much, you’d see these little kids, they’re 4, 5, 6 years old and they don’t know what’s going on, and all of them have a smile on their face most of the time,” she says. “And so we just decided that we were going to do this game drive, and his whole team jumped right on board.”

It’s been more than two years since Dante Veltri was diagnosed with cancer. Today, he’s cancer-free, back on the mat, preparing for a run at a state title, his coach DeWitt Driscoll cheering him on.

“The silver lining from it may be that he gained a little more perspective,” Driscoll says. “Just being on the mat competing is what the fun of it is. The rest is just gravy, whether you’re winning or not.”

The Veltris are still a long way removed from New Jersey – but for Dante’s mom Karen, Chapel Hill is home now, in a way it hadn’t been before.

“When I first moved down here, I kind of felt guilty, taking my kids away from family and friends,” she says. “And it’s kind of strange that it took a cancer diagnosis for me to realize – we are exactly where we need to be. I don’t know that we would have got that (support) anywhere else.”

And as for the teen at the center of it all?

I asked Dante Veltri what he’s learned from this whole experience.

“Don’t give up,” he says. “Even if the odds are against you, don’t give up. Anything is possible.”

His mom Karen, standing by his side, agrees.

“You know, there is light at the end of the tunnel,” she says. “There’s help out there. There’s people that care. Just keep pushing. Keep trudging forward.

“You’ll get where you need to be.”

To learn more about the Take Down Cancer drive, or about how you can donate to the UNC Pediatric Oncology clinic, email Karen Veltri at TakeDownCancer2@gmail.com.