About
Hi, I’m Spence, the founder of The Ball Player's Club.
For 12 years, I've been a youth soccer coach. Where I live, the winters are long, so we play indoors on a large pitch divided into three smaller, wall-less fields. With so much action happening at once, stray balls frequently fly onto the wrong field.
One afternoon in 2023, a ball bounced onto our pitch. One of the players went to kick it back, but instead of finding the right field, it hit me square in the pills.
Occupational hazard, right?
It hurt, but the impact also felt strange. When I got home, I realized my left testicle was incredibly firm and had almost no feeling. I thought "That's odd, but it'll go away."
Weeks passed. Nothing changed. I finally called my doctor to make an appointment. When I described the symptoms to the receptionist, she told me to go to the emergency room immediately. My response? "Okay, but can I still make an appointment?"
I booked it for a few weeks out and completely skipped the ER, because clearly, my time was much more valuable than my health. When the appointment finally rolled around, I had to travel for work, so I canceled and rebooked it.
When I finally sat in the doctor's office a couple of weeks later, he checked things out. After confirming I had absolutely zero feeling down there, he immediately booked me for an emergency X-ray and an ultrasound.
Up until this point, I hadn't told a soul. My wife found out by discovering the ultrasound requisition sitting on my desk. As you can imagine, that didn't go over well.
I got the ultrasound, later that day my doctor called with the news: a tumor had consumed my entire left testicle, and I was being sent to the Cross Cancer Institute for a consultation.
The next week was a blur. A few days after the consult, "lefty" was gone. I survived because I was incredibly lucky, but the whole experience proved I had also been incredibly ignorant and stubborn.
Once I recovered I couldn't stop thinking about how foolish I’d been. It lit a fire in me. I knew I needed to help other men stop making the same excuses and start making their health a priority.
And then, like a bolt of lightning, it came to me: The Ball Player's Club.