St. Viator golfer overcomes adversity to help team defend state title

St. Viator High School boys' golf team clinched the Class 3A state championship this month, for the third year in a row. But after all the celebration died down, the team reflected on its unsung hero, senior Joe Ferrari of Prospect Heights.

He was a key member of the team that included state individual champion Danny Stringfellow of Roselle, senior Joe Carlson of Inverness, junior Kenny Wienckowski of Schaumburg, senior Brad Klune of Itasca and freshman Luke DeTrempe of Barrington.

On the last day of competition at Fox Run Golf Course in downstate Bloomington, the Lions began to sense the mounting pressure from New Trier, Lake Forest and Carmel high schools.

Their head coach, Jack Halpin, turned to Ferrari.

"After the 13th hole I told him we needed him to par the next four holes," Halpin says. "And he did just that, and shot a 38 on the back nine (holes)."

As if playing to defend the state championship wasn't enough, Halpin followed Ferrari to each of the holes to make sure he stayed the course.

"We had nobody else," Halpin adds. "Joe was it. His play was so gutsy."

Playing with guts is something Ferrari has been doing since freshman year. He joined the golf team less than a year after finishing up chemotherapy for bone cancer.

"In freshman and sophomore year, I had to ride in a cart," Ferrari says. "I could walk, but the doctors didn't want me walking nine holes."

At the end of seventh grade, a tumor or osteosarcoma was discovered on his left shinbone. Initially doctors told his family that Joe would lose his leg.

The Ferraris turned to pediatric orthopedic surgeons at the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, which was among the first in the country to perform articular-sparing surgery in order to preserve a child's limb.

As part of the procedure, surgeons removed the cancerous bone and replaced it with cadaver bone and tissue, fitting it into the surviving bone like a puzzle piece and adding rods and pins to make it stronger and more stable.

Ferrari underwent the cancer surgery and chemotherapy treatments while he was an eighth grader at St. Alphonsus Liguori Catholic School, in Prospect Heights.

Ferrari had been a star athlete, leading his classmates on the football field, in baseball, hockey as well as basketball. But once he underwent the surgery, his days of playing contact sports were over.

Instead, Ferrari focused on golf. Following in the footsteps of his older brother, Mike, who played on St. Viator's first state championship team in 2006, Joe dreamed of being a part of another state playoff run.

"He's the reason we won that championship," Halpin says simply. "He's our hero."

Ferrari says he wanted to wait until the end of the season to talk about his cancer. Now, he hopes that by talking about it, he might offer hope to another teen faced with a frightening diagnosis.

"I'd tell them to fight back and don't let it get you down," Ferrari says. "In the end it will make you stronger."