Under the weight of the moment, the phone line fell silent for a few seconds.
“Rob, are you OK?” dermatologist Mark Lowitt eventually asked Middletown native and former Towson University football coach Rob Ambrose.
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“Yeah. Are you OK?” Ambrose replied.
Ambrose said the doctor seemed perplexed by his reaction and how well he seemed to be taking the news. Lowitt had just delivered information that would shake most people to their core.
Ambrose had cancer, a lab scan of one of his moles revealed. Stage 3 melanoma. It felt like a life-changing event to Ambrose at the time. But it also felt instantly manageable.
The stubborn, mind-over-matter, quarterback-turned-football coach was present from the very first moment.
“I go, ‘Mark, isn’t it like one in four people have cancer?’” Ambrose said. “’You are telling me I am part of this frat. All right. Whatever. I’ll figure it out. … It’s a big deal. But how does freaking out about it help?’”
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A month or so later, the situation escalated dramatically. A CT scan revealed that the melanoma had spread to Ambrose’s brain. It was Stage 4.
His wife, Melissa, asked what the prognosis was. The doctor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore wheeled his chair over to her, grabbed her hand and said the odds of Ambrose living longer than five more years were 50-50.
“Honestly, I think he was being generous,” Melissa Ambrose said. “You know, I just broke down. I’m an emotional being. I’m a clinical social worker. I’m a therapist. I’m an emotional being. So, of course, I started crying. And, you know, [the doctor] is a very kind man. And he said, ‘We’re here for you.’”
Ambrose remained stone-faced and resolute, determined as ever to not let this cancer beat him. He told Melissa he would fight with all he had for her and their two children, Grace and Riley.
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“I know I am going to fight Mike Tyson,” Ambrose thought at the time. “I know this is going to kick my ass. But I am going to get up. And I am just going to keep getting up.”
The 54-year-old Ambrose, who coached football at his alma mater, Towson, for 14 years and spent the last two as consultant/analyst on the University of Maryland’s football staff, said that few outside of his inner circle, consisting of family and a few work colleagues, were aware of his condition.
“The reason is, while everyone wants to wish you very well when you have cancer, when you are a 50-year-old-guy with cancer, they might want to wish you well, but they might not want to hire you,” he said. “’Cause nobody knows if you are going to live or not.”
Yet, Ambrose remains in demand. Now two-and-a half years into this fight, his melanoma is in remission, and Shepherd University just hired him to be the offensive coordinator for its football team.
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He said he feels rejuvenated and as healthy as can be. Once a “fit and trim XL” at 6-foot-2 and 225 pounds, Ambrose now describes himself as a “fit and trim large.” His weight has bounced back after getting down to about 180 pounds.
His diet has completely changed. He has learned to listen to his body. He makes better choices when it comes to taking care of himself.
Recent scans have shown no traces of the melanoma. But since it can be so hard to detect, doctors won’t say he is cured or cancer free.
“I grew up on a farm with a very tough father, and that served me very, very well,” Ambrose said of his dad, Tim, the legendary football coach at Middletown High who passed away Oct. 19 at the age of 75 after a battle with dementia.
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“Mind over matter is a legitimate thing in a lot of ways.”
He was anxious to get back into coaching. As Ambrose started to feel better in the fall of 2023 after an aggressive course of treatment, Maryland coach Mike Locksley, his buddy and former teammate at Towson, offered him the chance to bring his offensive mind into the Terrapins’ defensive meetings. He was hired as a defensive analyst and served two seasons at Maryland.
And the Shepherd opportunity developed rapidly around the start of July after the Rams’ previous offensive coordinator, Tom Clark, left.
Ambrose now has the chance to coach his son, Riley, who is a senior wide receiver for the Rams.
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“I really don’t have many concerns because I think he’s healthy, and he seems to have great energy,” Shepherd head coach Ernie McCook said. “You know, we’re obviously rooting that he stays in remission and continues to get better. … Rob’s a fighter. He’s a winner. He’s a competitor. I am very excited about the hire.”
A new chapter
When Ambrose’s contract expired as Towson’s football coach in December 2022, he had already reached the end of his rope.
“I was dead tired,” he said. “I really was. I was just tired. You love the game, and if you do the job the way it’s supposed to be done, you should be damn tired because you are pouring your soul every day into the program and the kids.
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“It’s not normal. It’s not a job. It’s just a way to be.”
In 14 seasons as the head coach at Towson, where he once played quarterback before switching to receiver, Ambrose led the Tigers to three Football Championship Subdivision (Division I-AA) playoff appearances.
In 2011, Towson went 9-3 and won the Colonial Athletic Association championship. Ambrose was named the FCS Coach of the Coach of the Year.
The odds of all that happening three years into his first head-coaching gig? Probably significantly less than 50-50, as he was reminded by a close friend after he was told he had a 50-50 shot of living beyond five years in the early stages of 2023.
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“If your husband has a 50% chance of winning,” the friend told Melissa, “I am putting all of my money on him.”
In 2013, Ambrose led the Tigers to the FCS national championship game in Frisco, Texas, where they fell to two-time reigning champion at the time and perennial power North Dakota State, 35-7.
But Towson never recaptured the same magic, and when the university hired a new athletic director in February 2022, Ambrose knew his time coaching the Tigers was likely over.
“I didn’t fight it,” he said. “I was like, ‘Good luck.’ It’s my alma mater. I did my time. I am grateful for my time at Towson. But it was time to move on.”
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Ambrose was open to accepting another coaching job right away. But after talking with his wife, he also would have been fine sitting out for a season, allowing the deck to reshuffle and his battery to recharge.
“I needed a break,” he said.
Yet, he kept his tentacles in the coaching pool to see what might happen.
On a preseason visit in January 2023 to the Memphis Showboats of what was then known as the United States Football League in Birmingham, Alabama, Ambrose was reacquainted with coaching colleagues and former players.
During that trip, the call came from his dermatologist with the cancer diagnosis, and the course of Ambrose’s life was dramatically altered.
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He chose to fight the cancer aggressively. One surgery uprooted the malignant mole from his back, leaving a big scar. Another removed lymph nodes that had been compromised. The brain cancer was treated with immunotherapy.
His adrenal gland and thyroid were essentially destroyed during the course of the treatment, which Ambrose underwent every three weeks for roughly six months.
“I was perfectly fine in treatment,” he said. “I am in a boxing fight with Mike Tyson, and I am handling it. Until probably the middle of July 2023.
“Then, all of a sudden, I hit a wall or a wall hit me. I am like, ‘Wow!’ No energy. I am drained. I lost 35 pounds. My doctor and I, we had a long conversation. My insides started to die. They were being fried by the treatment. We backed off.”
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Stopping the treatment a few weeks early turned out to be the right move. It allowed Ambrose’s body to recover, though he continued to take medication.
He felt well enough to stick his feet back into coaching and accept Locksley’s defensive analyst offer at Maryland in the fall of 2023.
“It was mid-September and now he was back on his feet,” Melissa said. “Was he feeling great? Could he have actually coached a position? No. Could he do an analyst’s job? Yes.
“It helped him tremendously. It was a gift. Mike Locksley didn’t even know the gift he was giving my husband at the time.”
Rob and Melissa both agreed that it was a huge blessing in disguise that he did not jump right into another coaching job after he left Towson. In a weird way, the health scare did him a favor.
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“My wife said, ‘If you would have gotten a job right after they announced you left Towson, you would have never paid any attention to any of this [health] stuff,’” Ambrose said. “‘You’d have gone and worked the job, and you would probably be dead already.’”
Ripples in a pond
Ambrose’s superhero in many ways was his father, Tim, who he looked up to, admired and still wants to be like to this day. He’s the reason why Rob loves football and became a coach.
As Tim’s health faded badly last fall, Rob said, “Looking at my dad in a bed, it’s just hard to watch your idol wither.”
Rob recalled a conversation he had with his father after Middletown fell short in a state final for the third time under Tim’s leadership in 2002. And it generated a mantra or philosophy to which Rob still tries to abide: Ripples in a pond.
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Over a beer one night, Rob asked his father, “Hey, if you get to the end of your career and you never win one of these [state titles], are you going to be pissed?
“He just turned and looked at me and goes, ‘You know better than that. It’s not why we do this.’ That meant more to me than anything else, and I wish more people knew that.”
The idea, as Rob explained it: “When we are dead, the wins and the losses, nobody is going to care. Our only legacy is the difference we made with the people around us, and football coaches have a chance to do great things for young people, to bring them farther than they can go without a game and without a coach. That’s what makes a great coach. It’s what they pass on and what gets passed on after that. Ripples in a pond. That’s the legacy. Leave it better than you found it.”
Excited about the future
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Ambrose genuinely feels his life is a long way from being over.
The chance to coach at Shepherd and help spark a Rams team that finished 6-5 and averaged 21 points per game last season feels like a homecoming for him.
His brother Jared, who is the interim head coach at the University at Albany, played at Shepherd. The Rams’ defensive coordinator and assistant head coach, Josh Kline, is from Middletown and played football there for Tim Ambrose. And Rob’s son, Riley, plays on the Shepherd offense he is now directing.
“It’s really cool,” 22-year-old Riley Ambrose said of the chance to play for his father.
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He wasn’t exactly sure about it at first. He was intent on paving his own path. But the more he has been around Rob at Shepherd, the more he has warmed up to it.
“The job is great for him,” Riley said. “It doesn’t have the stress of coaching Division I. It’s not the same stress as being a head coach. It’s a chance to do what he loves, coaching football, at a place that really values winning.”
Rob is ecstatic for what’s next. The Rams finished 13-2 and reached the semifinals of the NCAA Division II playoffs as recently as 2022. They finished 13-1 with their only loss coming in the national championship game in 2015.
“Shepherd football is special. The culture is special. The kids that come through there understand that,” he said. “Coaching kids who have gratitude, who have respect for the game, it’s no wonder these kids have been so successful at that place for so long.”
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Ambrose is stubbornly refusing to let his health get in the way of living life to its fullest.
His daughter, Grace, 25, a behavioral health recruiter in Greenbelt, recently got engaged, and Rob is intent on one day meeting his grandchildren.
“I’ve got way too many quarters left in my game,” he said. “Way too many.”
