UD fan receives support from former Flyers in fight against brain cancer

A parade of former Dayton Flyers followed Hall in the video: Chris Wright; Kyle Davis; Jimmy Binnie; Kevin Dillard; Darrell Davis; and Jordan Sibert. All of them delivered a similar message of support for a Dayton superfan preparing for the fight of his life.

Lonsert, 35, a 2006 Centerville High School graduate, underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor in March in Houston. His friend and fellow Dayton fan, Annie VonderBrink, reached out to the former UD players and asked them to send videos she could play for Lonsert. Jack Clarkson, another friend, put the videos together.

That’s how Lonsert ended up watching the messages of support at home the night before his surgery while surrounded by his parents, his two brothers and his sisters-in-law.

“It was all a surprise,” Lonsert said. “I was staying positive. I had my family there. But going into a surgery like that — they don’t screw it up usually — but unfortunately sometimes you don’t come out of it. There were lot of a lot of things running through my mind right before the surgery. The video was incredible.”

Hall played for the Flyers from 1999-2002. Those were formative years for Lonsert as a sports fan because he was in middle school. That’s one reason Hall remains his favorite player after all these years. He knows the rest of the players on the video well, too, because he and Vonderbrink and other friends have made going to the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament every year a tradition. They’ve been every year since 2012 and even made the trip to Brooklyn, N.Y., for the cancelled tournament in 2020.

The group started with Lonsert and Clarkson and included Matt VonderBrink, Pat Lonsert and Joe Lonsert. Annie and Lily Clarkson soon joined the group, which now numbers 10-15 people every year.

“We still want to support the Flyers because that’s all we knew growing up,” Lonsert said. “Dayton is a magical place for a lot of our crew even though we don’t live there anymore. We always make efforts to get back to Dayton to get these games. Going into that surgery, seeing the amazing video and the fact that so many responded, it really gave me strength on top of all family support I’ve been very fortunate to have.”

Lonsert is part of a fanbase, commonly known as the Flyer Faithful, that has made the Dayton men’s basketball team one of the most well-supported programs in the country for decades. The program has sold out every home game for the last three seasons. The sellout streak reached 45 games Monday when UD opened the 2023-24 season against Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and will number 60 games by the end of the season.

Annie VonderBrink, whose grandfather Gerald worked as the comptroller at UD in the 1960s and helped secure the funds to finance the construction of UD Arena, knows how special the UD fan base is.

“When we go to UD basketball games,” she said, “I know exactly where all of my friends and where my other family members sit. It’s a community that you see and feel. Reaching out to these UD players, it was just really cool that they extended that community. You could feel that they truly cared and wanted to support Reece. It was really cool that the UD values that we have were the same values that the players showed right back to us.”

Lonsert’s brain surgery on March 30 was successful, though his cancer is incurable and his fight against it continues. He underwent radiation treatment after the surgery — he wore a Chapel Blue No. 11 UD uniform when he rang the bell upon completion of the treatment — and is now undergoing chemotherapy at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Lonsert works as a geophysicist for Shell in the energy industry. His background in science gives him “a lot of faith” that science will allow him to beat the cancer. MD Anderson is considered one of the best cancer hospitals in the world.

If the cancer diagnosis was bad luck, the discovery of the cancer was a stroke of luck. Two days after watching the Flyers lose to Virginia Commonwealth in the A-10 championship game in Brooklyn on March 12, Lonsert was playing soccer in Houston when he suffered a seizure after a headball.

An examination in the emergency room after the seizure revealed the brain tumor.

“I’m a scientist,” Lonsert said. “I look at images all day. It’s very obvious that one side of my brain looks completely different from the other.”

As positive as Lonsert has remained all year since the diagnosis, it’s been a lot to process because he’s also a new dad. His wife Jasmeen Moubarak was pregnant with their son Silas when he underwent surgery. He’s been fighting cancer while helping to raise a newborn.

Lonsert, Moubarak and Silas all traveled to Dayton in October in part because of the Flyers’ exhibition game against Ohio State. They gathered at Kramer’s Bar near the UD campus, and there Lonsert received another surprise. VonderBrink arranged for Hall to visit Lonsert and the group at Kramer’s. The moment meant just as much to Hall.

“It put things into perspective,” Hall said. “We all have our heartaches and what we consider challenging things in our life, right? And in the moment — because you’re going through it — they feel like a burden and they are to some degree, but when you come across something like that, it puts your burdens into perspective. When you meet somebody who’s going through things that are way heavier than what you’re carrying, it gives you strength. Reese is doing it with such a positive attitude. It blew me away.”

Hall and Lonsert exchanged text messages after his visit, and Lonsert wrote this message to Hall:

“(The visit) means so much to me you don’t even know!” he wrote. “I guarantee that I will keep fighting and spreading my positive energy along the journey. Only eight more months of chemo and then it’s back to normal life! I know eventually that I will win, just like the Flyers! I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a good year, but then again, I say that every year. Haha.

“Looking forward to staying touch, hanging out with crew, and catching UD games. I always have planned to live to 100 years old and I’m not planning on changing that mindset! Thanks again for the continued support.”