‘One foot in front of the other’: Canon-McMillan football coach Mike Evans on leave amid 2nd battle with cancer

By: Chris Harlan
Saturday, May 31, 2025 | 12:29 PM

Mike Evans felt a 15-inch needle stab into his liver three times to biopsy a cancerous tumor. The Canon-McMillan football coach also endured chemotherapy for weeks and recently battled a case of pneumonia.

He’ll have surgery soon.

But with all of that in mind, Evans is adamant that facing a fall without football is what pains him the most nowadays. He’s taking a sabbatical leave from Canon-McMillan until early February, meaning he won’t coach football or work as assistant athletic director.

The 51-year-old is battling cancer for the second time in four years. He coached the 2021 football season while undergoing treatment, until the day surgeons removed a section of his colon.

“When you’re going through stuff, getting out on the field and coaching the kids gets your mind off it,” Evans said. “It was the most I enjoyed coaching. That’s why I’m not looking forward to this — to not coaching — at all.”

This would be his 11th season with the Big Macs.

Evans had hoped to coach through his cancer treatments again but said health issues were costing him too many absences from his day job. By taking the sabbatical he will preserve his position as assistant athletic director, Evans said, but he can’t continue to coach, not even as a volunteer.

Besides, he pointed out, his next course of chemotherapy will overlap football season. So former Bethel Park coach Brian DeLallo, whom Evans added in January as offensive coordinator, will serve as interim head coach.

“It’s not fair to the kids if I’m there Monday and I can’t make it Tuesday,” Evans said. “And then I have an appointment on Wednesday and I’m back Thursday. That’s just screwing the kids up.”

Canon-McMillan hired Evans in 2015 to build up a football program that was coming off a 0-9 season. The cold Big Macs had three wins in five years.

In the decade since, Evans led them to the playoffs five times while competing against the largest WPIAL schools in Class 6A. The team is 40-58 under Evans, compared to 3-43 in the five years before him.

He got them back to respectability.

A former offensive line coach at Cal (Pa.) for 12 seasons, Evans played the position at Akron and later Mercyhurst, where the 6-foot-4 tackle was picked as an NCAA Division II Snow Bowl all-star as a senior. His football mindset — to always keep moving forward — is helping him battle cancer for the second time.

“He’s just, like, one foot in front of the other,” said Evans’ wife, Jennifer. “He says, ‘This is what we have to do, and we’re going to do it.’ That’s kind of how he is with everything. He’s a football coach. He might get a little (ticked) off at times that it’s happening, but he’s not going to cry about it.”

Evans said doctors told him the colon cancer he battled in 2021 had returned, this time metastasizing as a golf ball-sized tumor in the lower lobe of his liver. He’s being treated by surgical oncologist Dr. David Geller, director of the UPMC Liver Cancer Center.

An earlier biopsy done elsewhere provided a false negative result, but Geller later confirmed Evans had cancer. He is scheduled for surgery July 1 to remove maybe 25% of his liver followed by more chemo.

“The prognosis is good: I’ve got a good surgeon. I feel pretty good,” Evans said. “I was very fortunate to be recommended to Dr. Geller. In December, I didn’t think I was going to make it. If you Google what I have, it’s not good. You can find stuff saying you’ve got six months. You start thinking I may not see next Christmas.

“And then Dr. Geller says, ‘Mike, you’ve got Stage 4 liver cancer, but we’re going for a cure.’ ”

Evans said scans show his cancer hasn’t spread any further, which makes the prognosis better. His surgery initially was scheduled for May 13, until the pneumonia forced a delay.

“This one is a little bit different (than the colon cancer),” Evans said. “The same result, hopefully, but this one is a little bit scarier.”

The tumor was found in late October.

Evans was concerned because he wasn’t feeling well at practice and went to get checked. A test found blood in his urine, leading to an abdominal scan that revealed a spot on his liver. An initial biopsy missed the tumor, Evans said, leading to false hope it was benign.

On Dec. 4, the diagnosis was cancer.

“The first biopsy was a little needle,” Evans said. “This second guy takes a 15-inch steel syringe and shoves it in my ribcage and into my liver three times.”

He compared the biopsy to the TV show Wicked Tuna, where fishermen remove a cylinder of flesh from the tuna to check the quality of their catch.

“It was a core sample,” Evans said with a laugh.

He said he always believed the spot was likely cancerous, but the changing diagnosis was an emotional roller coaster for his family, particularly his wife.

“I feel bad for her,” he said. “My son thinks I’m invincible, so he hasn’t been worried at all.”

Mikey Evans, a redshirt freshman at Cal (Pa.), was an all-conference quarterback for his father and a 2024 Canon-McMillan graduate. It was during his son’s sophomore year that Evans battled colon cancer.

That was a solid season on the field — the Big Macs qualified for the playoffs — but a difficult one outside of football. Mike Evans’ mother, Heidi, was diagnosed with colon cancer that August and died Sept. 27, 2021, at 71 in Florida. He was diagnosed with colon cancer the same month and underwent surgery that November.

Evans recalled finding out that his mother had died about 10 minutes before a practice. Evans shared the sad news with his son, and then they practiced.

“I don’t know if (others) really understand how all-in we are,” Evans said of football coaches. “It’s what I do. I’m not thrilled I’m taking a sabbatical.”

Canon-McMillan went 3-7 last season and missed the playoffs, but what Evans said went unnoticed were the eight sophomores playing on offense.

They gave him hope this season would be better.

“Not only does Mike love the Canon-McMillan program, but he’s had a great bond with this particular group of kids,” said DeLallo, the interim coach. “Some of these kids are taking it really hard to be honest.”

Starting quarterback Ty Jansma, one of those rising juniors, visited Evans at his home this week. When Evans met recently with his players, he shared details of his cancer battle, told them how he hadn’t had a fall without football since third grade, yet believed this was the right decision for the program.

Evans also wrote a letter to the “Big Mac Nation” community.

“I’ve had some teams I’ve really enjoyed coaching and some I haven’t enjoyed as much, as I think any coach who’s honest will tell you,” Evans said. “But the group that we have now — the core — I’ve never been tighter with a football team.”

DeLallo first forged a friendship with Evans during his days coaching at Cal (Pa.). The two connected through Evans’ wife, who works as a middle school teacher at Bethel Park, the district where DeLallo also teaches.

Nowadays, it’s common for the coaches to talk for two or three hours a night and four or five times a week, ever since Evans became ill. DeLallo even accompanied Evans to chemo treatments at St. Clair Hospital.

Evans started them in mid-February, going every other Tuesday for 12 weeks. The sessions can last four hours.

“When I’d go with him, he’s like the king of the cancer ward,” DeLallo said. “He’s this big, gregarious guy and he’s got this big personality. Everyone knows him and loves him.”

The two coaches can talk about almost anything, DeLallo said, but football is a frequent topic. He’s among those encouraging Evans to focus on himself and his recovery but knows that’s not in his nature.

Neither is forgetting about football for a while.

“I know he’s going to miss the kids,” Jennifer Evans said. “He’s really bothered by that. The administration said, ‘We don’t want you to talk about football.’ What’s left to talk about? All we ever talked about was football.

“We’re going to have to find some new hobbies.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: Canon-McMillan