A remarkable Middlebury senior continues to amaze.
"Did you see that catch?"
It was a crisp fall afternoon at Middlebury's Youngman Field, and Tom Cleaver '05 had just brought the crowd at Alumni Stadium to its feet with a remarkable one-handed grab of a Mike Keenan '05 pass. Under heavy pressure from the Bates rush, Keenan seemed to be throwing the ball away when he lofted the pigskin 20 yards down field, toward the far sideline. Cleaver—Keenan's friend and favorite target—had been blanketed by a Bates defender, and the savvy quarterback appeared to do the wise thing in throwing the ball out-of-bounds. Yet somehow Cleaver managed to elevate over the Bobcat defender, snare the pass with one hand, and jab a foot down inbounds at the Bates 6-yard line.
The catch had left the crowd—including the College's president—in delighted disbelief. "Seriously," Ron Liebowitz asked. "Did you see that catch?" I was standing with Liebowitz and athletic director Russ Reilly at the opposite end of the field, but that hadn't stopped us from getting a great view of the acrobatic reception. "That kid is just unbelievable," Reilly said, turning to me. "You should really do a piece on him."
I reminded him that I had already written about Cleaver ("Undaunted Courage," winter 2003); in fact it was the first piece I wrote for the magazine when I arrived at Middlebury a little more than two years ago. "That's right," he replied, not missing a beat. "Well, what about a follow-up story?"
Reilly had a point. If ever a story deserved a follow-up, it was this one. When I met Tom Cleaver in the fall of 2002, he was just six months into remission from chronic myelogenous leukemia, a rare form of cancer that affects bone marrow. He had returned to Middlebury that fall healthy and optimistic—just one year after lying prone on the practice field, nearly blind in one eye (the first major sign that he was seriously ill). After a round of chemotherapy, he had started taking an experimental drug called Gleevec that seemed to be keeping the cancer at bay. And while a bone marrow transplant was (and still is) the only known "cure" for CML, he was willing to give the new drug a shot as long as he felt fine. Two years later, Cleaver is still on Gleevec, still in remission, and—as the first two paragraphs of this column indicate—still feeling fine.
In his final collegiate game, against Tufts University, Cleaver caught nine passes for 128 yards, and finished his Middlebury career with school records for most catches in a season (62), most yards receiving in a season (943), and most yards receiving in a career (1,974). He led the NESCAC in both receptions and yards per game, and was a first-team, all-conference selection for the second consecutive year. Even more remarkable: every catch made and every yard gained has come since he was diagnosed with cancer.
In December, he was one of 15 student-athletes to be named a 2004 National Scholar Athlete by the National Football Foundation and the College Hall of Fame, receiving an $18,000 postgraduate fellowship.
He traveled to New York City for the awards dinner, a fete at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and shared a dais with such college football superstars as the University of Georgia's David Green and Virginia Tech's Bryan Randall. Though Green would finish his career as the Southeastern Conference's all-time leading passer, and Randall would lead his team to the Sugar Bowl, it was the dean's list student and political science major from Middlebury who was tapped by his gridiron peers to deliver the acceptance speech on behalf of the group.
So, in answer to Ron Liebowitz's question at the top of this column: I saw Cleaver's catch—I've been watching him in amazement for two years—and I can't wait to see what he does next. — Matt Jennings