LAKEWOOD — When Green Mountain High School’s football team danced and chanted its way off the field after its season-opening win over Durango, the Rams were in step, in tune and didn’t botch a line.
There were no dress rehearsals or pesky directors, just a command performance by a group of inspired players who turned it into a moment that will be replayed in their minds forever.
“This one was for you, Arsen,” the team yelled to Arsen Mkrtchyan, an 11-year-old Denverite who, on a good day, is probably not more than 70 pounds soaking wet yet is the toughest hombre the Green Mountain teenagers know.
For one night at Jefferson County Stadium, Arsen, whose desire is to become a high school quarterback, lived at least part of a dream.
He was a game-day guest of the Rams last Friday. He traveled with the team to the stadium, addressed the team during the pregame and halftime, took part in warm-ups, roamed the sideline and high-fived the players. He served as an honorary team captain and sported a Green Mountain sweat shirt with his name on the back, along with the number 68, which matches the count of throat surgeries he has endured the past seven years.
The native of Yerevan, Armenia, is on a seven-year, three-country odyssey in search of a cure for recurring throat tumors (laryngeal papillomatosis). He has the raspy voice of a miner and has been separated from his father for more than half of his life, and his condition scares his mother half to death on a daily basis.
But his presence among a giving high school football team meant more than a state championship.
“It was beyond special,” Rams assistant coach Bill Parker said. “It’s amazing how a grown man can admire kids. You’d think it would be the other way around.”
Arsen may be a struggling 11-year old, but acts like “30,” according to his mother, Elmira Poghosyan, and is a pure ham for attention. The sixth-grader at Whittier Elementary taught himself English with the help of television cartoons.
As for Arsen’s best memory of Friday night? Getting carried off the field? Hanging out in the locker room?
“I liked going out before the game on to the field to meet the other team,” he said of the coin toss.
Arsen has lived at the Ronald McDonald House in east Denver since he was 4 and is believed to be the longest-tenured resident in any of the 270 houses worldwide. The houses are near hospitals and were built for sick children and their families.
Over the past couple of years, the Rams have been going to the house once a month in the offseason to bring food and help cook, spend time with the kids and try to be a positive influence. The team was unanimous in taking it up a step in 2008.
“I don’t think you can understand what these kids go through unless you’ve been through it,” said Rams head coach Bob Hudson, a longtime state figure who lost his first wife more than a decade ago during the birth of their son. “We decided to get Arsen and his family to a game, and it was pretty emotional.”
The Rams didn’t advertise what they were doing. Even Green Mountain athletic director Jim Thyfault was kept in the dark until just before the game.
Said quarterback Josh Newman: “It made me realize what I have and what some people have to go through. If you think you have it bad . . .”
Arsen’s incredible number of surgeries — his 69th will be this month at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center — just about floored Rams senior guard Jared Parker, who has worked closely with his father, the coach, to keep the team involved.
“Our coach always talks about toughness, and Arsen is a poster boy for toughness,” Parker said. “It’s hard to hear about such a high number. It was incredible, so humbling.”
Added Coach Parker: “It’s a story of perseverance. Our kids see a lot of what a family does to help their child.”
All Arsen, his mother and eighth- grade brother, Hrach, can do is continue to be patient. It has been worth it — doctors in Armenia and Germany, his mother said, indicated they could provide no help, so she turned to the United States.
“They say he die,” Elmira said. “But thank you, God, and thank you, American people.”
They have spent seven Christmases without the family father, Artur, a baker denied a visa from home. There is hope that treatment and Arsen progressing into teen years will help him outlast the growths.
Arsen remains undeterred about his future, which he predicts will include becoming a throat doctor after playing quarterback.
Expect to see Arsen at another Rams game soon.
“We’re in high school playing, and that’s what his dream is,” Jared Parker said, “and to be able to bring it to him is incredible.”
