UNC basketball community supports associate athletic director Ken Cleary in cancer fight

By Pat Welter, WRAL Sports

The only constant in the business of sports is change. Ken Cleary is living proof.

"I started as a one man band here pretty much," Cleary said. "With just video boards...and it sort of evolved from that."

Cleary is the University of North Carolina's associate director of Go Heels productions. His unit handles all the ACC Network production that originates on campus. They also handle the in venue video production for all of UNC sports.

"My day to day job is to really help the really talented people that we have who are producers and directors who can program animation systems and graphic design, I try and help and support them," Cleary said.

Cleary is a UNC graduate from the class of 1991. After a career in marketing he started working at his alma mater in 2001.

"Our video board productions for football were housed underneath the bathrooms of the old rams room in the old field house in Kenan Stadium," Cleary laughed. "The traffic in the room upstairs and the people going to the bathroom by the end of the game, all the people in the control room their eyes would be watering because it smelled so bad."

Working conditions have improved and so has the technology since. Cleary now works out of the Woody Durham Media and Communications Center on campus.

"They are all remote control cameras in our room in there," Cleary said as he set the shot for a video podcast featuring UNC play by play announcer Jones Angell and columnist Adam Lucas.

The job looks a lot different in 2024 than when he started, and so does he.

"To put it on it sort of slides right on like that," Cleary said as he adjusted his prosthetic right leg. "Just stand up here and push down on it, make sure I'm not showing too much leg and voila!"

What he lost is obvious, but he still has his sense of humor.

"I have a fall risk bracelet which my wife Jill insists I really need to stop wearing," Ken laughed. "I wear it because when I was in the hospital and after at every follow up visit they would make you put on a fall risk bracelet when you checked in."

"I sort of got irritated about that," Cleary continued. "I was like if that's the case then I'm just going to own it and instead of it being something I'm embarrassed by I'm going to wear it like a badge."

Next to his fall risk bracelet is another that reads "strike out sarcoma."

"I had a weird lesion on my leg that going to a variety of doctors between dermatology, and vascular surgery and ultra sounds no one could really figure out what it was," Cleary said.

In June of 2023 tests revealed the mark on his shin was caused by a rare form of cancer in his blood vessels called angio sarcoma.

"I got a phone call at like 6:00pm at night," Cleary remembered. "I was getting ready to go to a sports video conference in Atlanta the next morning and I had to call a colleague of mine and go I'm not going to be able to make that I need to find an oncologist."

From Cleary's very first appointments the topic of surgery was discussed.

"I sat in the examination room in the hospital and said if I have to lose my leg to live, then there's not really much of a question," Cleary said.

Cleary's leg was amputated from the mid thigh down thirty days after diagnosis.

"I'm fifty-four years old and my brain has been used to doing things in a certain way for fifty-four years," Cleary said. "You have to retrain your brain particularly as you get to walking and back on your feet."

It took three and a half months for Cleary to get his prosthetic, but just three weeks for him to return to work. At Carolina he received school wide support starting with people like Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham.

"My heart fills up right now when I think about it," Cunningham said. "Nothing changed with Ken, whether or not he had two legs or one, he didn't change. His attitude, his demeanor his professionalism, his warmth, his love of what he does and who he does it with is extraordinary. It's a life lesson for all of us."

UNC director of basketball operations Eric Hoots struck up a friendship with Cleary soon after he was hired by Roy Williams as a video assistant in 2004.

"I was in charge of all the video for the team and I didn't know anything, knew nothing," Hoots said. "That was one of Ken's areas of expertise. That whole year he really helped me a lot."

When Hoots learned of Cleary's diagnosis he made sure the basketball team was there for whatever he needed.

"I reached out to him and just said 'hey I just want to let you know we are here for you, anything we can do to support you, but we need you back'", Hoots said. "Let him know how much we appreciate what he does. It was a tough time."

Cleary had support, he also had a role model in the athletics department as well.

"Obviously Eric Montross is somebody that we all cared for," Cleary said. "He was checking on me constantly and he's going through treatment and just texted me to see how things were going."

The beloved former UNC big man and radio analyst began cancer treatment in March of 2023. He passed away in December at the age of 52.

"Part of his message was to check in with people that are going through it," Cleary said. "I can't tell you how right he is."

Cleary lost a friend, his leg by comparison has just been an adjustment.

"I'm incredibly lucky," Cleary said. "Yeah I've got to relearn how to walk, but I can still walk. Sometimes it's harder to brush your teeth and take a shower on one leg, all those things are a bit more challenging."

"But at the end of the day," Cleary continued. "The people that are going through cancer treatments you know it's hard and I'm lucky to be where I am. I'll deal with the minor inconvenience."