Bucs’ Tullo living his football dream
Cooper Tullo doesn’t mind the hits.
When he catches a football, the Hoover High School senior wide receiver looks for open grass rather than the sideline. It doesn’t matter if defenders swarm to block his path, as they did in the Bucs’ season-opener against Central-Phenix City.
Playing in Montgomery’s Cramton Bowl, Tullo corralled a short pass from quarterback Robby Ashford and charged into a trio of tacklers.
“People say they hate to get hit, but I love it,” Tullo said. “If I were to get hit, I just want to pop back up.”
Tullo’s approach to contact mirrors his larger approach to life. The toughness and resilience that help him on the football field enabled him to overcome pediatric cancer. Tullo, 18, is currently in remission from Burkitt lymphoma, an aggressive cancer that almost took his life before he became a teenager.
Hoover head football coach Josh Niblett called him a special young man.
“He’s a kid who’s going to fight. He’s a kid who’s going to be there in the end when the dust clears, and he’s going to persevere,” Niblett said. “He’s got a great skill set, but his heart’s what makes him so special.”
Tullo is living out a dream this football season by starting for the Bucs. He grew up attending Hoover games with his parents, Mike and Kim, and brothers, Landry and Carson.
Landry Tullo was a standout linebacker for Niblett who continued his career at Delta State University after graduating in 2013.
As Landry prepared to leave for college, his little brother prepared for the fight of his life. Cooper was only 11 when doctors at Children’s of Alabama diagnosed him with Stage 3 Burkitt lymphoma. According to the Lymphoma Research Foundation, Burkitt is a rare but fast-growing cancer marked by tumor growth in the jaw, central nervous system, bowels, kidneys and other organs.
By the time Cooper arrived at Children’s in July 2013, cancer had consumed much of his abdomen and collapsed one of his lungs.
“You’re fighting for your life,” Kim Tullo said. “You’re on the clock.”
‘SHARK BITE KID’
Cooper turned 12 five days into his three-month hospital stay. In that span, he underwent surgeries to repair his lung, remove part of his intestine and biopsy his tumors. One biopsy required such a large incision that the scar it left still draws eyeballs to Cooper’s torso.
“A bunch of little kids call me the shark bite kid,” he said.
In addition to the operations, Cooper endured five rounds of chemotherapy and withstood its side effects. His energy plummeted, his guts spilled, and his mouth became spotted with sores. But he said he didn’t realize what was happening to him until he began to lose his hair.
“Thankfully, the treatment was successful for him,” Kim Tullo said. “It’s not for a lot of people.”
Niblett visited Cooper when he was at Children’s. He remembers taking a picture with him and bringing him a pair of gloves, one of the first that featured Hoover’s logo on the palms.
“He was so pumped up,” Niblett said.
Cooper would have given anything to be on a football field instead of inside a hospital room. He started playing in Hoover’s youth league at age 4 and hadn’t missed a year until cancer interfered. To Cooper, sitting out his sixth-grade season was the worst part of his trial.
“He kind of toughed out all the treatment and toughed out everything,” Kim Tullo said. “It was (missing) football that was … the only time he would cry.”
Cooper hasn’t missed another season of football. He suited up for Bumpus Middle in seventh and eighth grade before joining the high school team in ninth.
The cancer, meanwhile, has stayed at bay.
“If I can go play ball,” Cooper said, “we’re good.”
RELENTLESS DRIVE
There is no cure for Burkitt lymphoma, so there is no guarantee it won’t come back. Cooper still examines himself once or twice a week, often in the shower, just to ensure he doesn’t feel any obscure bumps.
He said he doesn’t worry about the possibility of relapsing but chooses to focus on the present. On Fridays this fall, he has made an impact on a team that he always envisioned representing.
He’s given it his all.
“He plays every play like it’s the first play he’s ever got to play and the last play he’s going to get to play,” Niblett said, “so when he gets his opportunity, he makes the most of it.”
Tullo switched from defense to offense a couple of years ago and, as a junior, saw the field primarily on special teams.
Miles Holcomb, Hoover’s receivers coach, recognized Cooper’s potential this past summer. Although he’s only 5 feet, 8 inches and 160 pounds, he flashed agility, elusiveness and an unparalleled work ethic.
“He’s got such a relentless drive to be good and to prove people wrong because, you know, he’s heard his whole life, ‘Well, you won’t be able to do this. You’re probably not going to be able to do that,’” Holcomb said. “He’s just so relentless in the way he goes about his business on a daily basis.”
Tullo starts in the slot and returns punts for the Bucs. In his first game of the season, the one in which he took on three tacklers, Cooper caught his first varsity touchdown.
It was a 17-yard, toe-tap reception in the back of the end zone that evened the score at 14-14. Hoover kicked a last-second field goal to beat Central, the defending state champion, 17-14.
The memory won’t fade anytime soon from the Tullo family’s memory. Neither will the journey it took to get there.
“I wouldn’t change it for anything,” Cooper said.
Tullo and the Bucs will play at Thompson on Friday in the 7A state semifinal. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.