By MARC RAIMONDI
The atmosphere at Bishop Loughlin was raucous, the hundreds of fans in attendance jumping out of their seats with every point. The Lions girls’ volleyball team swept St. Agnes on Senior Day and the players were ecstatic afterward, dancing, cheering and enjoying baked desserts.
Things got serious in the classroom a few minutes later, though.
“I told them, ‘This is fulfilling for me,’” Loughlin Coach and Athletic Director Angela Proce said. “Last year was rough. It was a totally different year.”
Last September, Proce was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer. She had surgery to remove a lump a month later and after volleyball season began three months of chemotherapy followed by 6 1/2 weeks of radiation treatment.
Proce, 42, lost all her hair and was physically exhausted every day over the winter — yet she still came in almost every day to fulfill her duties as athletic director during boys and girls basketball season.
In July, a mammogram and sonogram revealed she was cancer-free. This season, by contrast, has been a dream. Loughlin is 10-2 and in second place in CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens Division II with a realistic shot to win the title and advance to the Class A state tournament.
“Her energy is irreplaceable,” Lions senior captain Ashley Murrell said. “We’re trying to take it all the way this year for her. This is our gift to her.”
Murrell said she and her teammates were devastated last year when they found out their coach, who “is like a mother” to them, had cancer. Proce missed the team’s playoff match and was unable to coach softball while she was undergoing radiation treatment in the spring.
Somehow, though, she was a fixture at Loughlin during basketball season, and not just in the office during school hours. A hat on her head, Proce sat through boys basketball tripleheaders and girls doubleheaders. Loughlin boys hoops Coach Ed Gonzalez said she still wanted to drive the bus to away games, and the ones she couldn’t make, she called him minutes after the final buzzer.
On Senior Night for boys basketball, the team presented Proce with a gift and the managers said a few words.
“The girls couldn’t even speak,” Gonzalez said. “They couldn’t speak about her without shedding tears. It’s pretty amazing what she does for Loughlin and how the kids receive her.”
A Howard Beach resident, Proce is incredibly energetic with seemingly unlimited volume. During the match Oct. 19, she announced to the capacity crowd that the scoreboard had a glitch. There was no microphone necessary. Everyone in attendance heard her loud and clear.
“She’s energetic, loud all the time, yelling,” Murrell said. “That’s our motivation. That’s our little warrior.”
It’s that fight that allowed her to push through the exhaustion to be at Loughlin just about every day last winter.
“I just felt that I needed to come to work to just try to live a normal life,” Proce said. “I wasn’t gonna let cancer just bring me down.”
Added Gonzalez: “That’s the attitude she instills in her volleyball team. She’s a competitor. She’s an athlete by nature. She plays every sport. She plays softball, she plays volleyball. She’s very competitive and she wants the kids to do well. If they had half of her competitiveness, we wouldn’t lose many games in any sport here.”
The hardest part, Proce said, was losing her hair. She didn’t want to wear a wig, so she came to the Fort Greene school wearing an assortment of hats. Her hair has grown in now, though it’s curly as opposed to straight.
In many ways this is a new beginning for Proce. She went to Italy, where her parents were born, this summer for the first time to treat herself. Since the school year has started, she has become more active in breast cancer awareness. Last week, Loughlin had a “Dig Pink” match and she and the girls participated in the breast cancer walk in Prospect Park. In January, Proce said the school will also host a Coaches vs. Cancer event.
In the meantime, though, there’s that Division II championship out there to win and Loughlin has put itself in a pretty good spot to do it. Just to be around the same kids, back with them, motivated Proce to get better.
Murrell and her teammates don’t realize that they have had as great an impact on their coach as she has had on them.
“Many of these girls helped me through last year,” Proce said. “I was sobbing to these kids last September, last October, because I couldn’t believe I had breast cancer. The support of the kids and the faculty and, of course, family and friends really kept me going.”
