MADISON — UW-Green Bay’s men’s golf team had just finished 16th and last in the Badger Invitational, and coach Lee Reinke was, of course, disappointed.
Reinke is a member of Wisconsin Lutheran College’s 1,000-Point Club in basketball, was an all-conference selection there in golf and has seven holes-in-one. He’s a competitor, and results like this don’t sit well with him.
On the other hand, how great was it to be around his team, around the other coaches, around the game he loves? This was the first time that Reinke, who also coaches the women’s team at UWGB, was able to travel with either team this season and the word he kept using was “grateful.”
“It feels so good,” he said. “So good. This weekend has been great, no matter what the result is. It’s really put things in perspective.”
Reinke, in his 10th season as the UWGB coach, was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago, but he was treated successfully. That was a bogey.
In August 2023, he suffered a heart attack and his wife, Beth, “drove NASCAR-ish” to the hospital, where he was carted immediately into surgery. Doctors inserted two stents and one week later he was able to walk his daughter, Megan, down the aisle.
That was a double-bogey, albeit with a great bounce-back.
The scorecard-wrecker, though, was lurking just around the corner.
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Throughout the spring and summer this year, Reinke was in constant pain. His right butt cheek was on fire. Sitting was difficult, even for short periods of time. When he drove the team van to tournaments during the spring season, sometimes seven or eight hours one way, the pain was excruciating.
“Man, something was not right,” he said.
He underwent a battery of tests at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee. Doctors biopsied his lungs, sternum, hip and femur. The results were inconclusive.
“I said, ‘No cancer?’” Reinke said. “They said, ‘Well, not necessarily.’ I said, ‘I’m telling you, the pain in my butt and hip is really, really bad.’ Finally, they said, ‘We can go in with a drill. We can get deeper.’”
This time, the results were conclusive. Reinke had diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, localized in his hip and pelvic area. The good news was that DLBCL is curable. The bad news was that his oncologist wanted to start him on chemotherapy immediately and the eighth annual Phoenix Men’s and Women’s Golf Fundraiser was just three days away.
“It’s a big deal for our program and I really want to be there,” he told his oncologist. “I said, ‘Don’t take this wrong, that I don’t want to get this cured, because I’m in a lot of pain.’ I couldn’t even sit in his office. It was just brutal.”
A steroid prescription dulled the pain long enough for Reinke to get through the fundraiser. But he knew what was ahead: six rounds of chemotherapy, spaced three weeks apart.
He faced the players and their parents at the outing and told them he wouldn’t be able to travel with the teams, at least until he got through the chemo. Assistant coach Rick Warpinski would take on additional duties, but Warpinski has a full-time job in Appleton.
It would be up to the players to organize practices. Reinke apologized to the parents.
“I told them ‘I’m feeling guilty because you guys signed up to come here with me looking over your kids’ welfare and with you expecting me to be around,’” he said.
Juniors Trent Meyer and Logan Pechinski, co-captains of the men’s team, were more than willing to shoulder the extra responsibilities.
“It helped us put things in perspective about life in general,” Pechinski said. “A bad round of golf is nothing. Obviously, there are worse things in life than a bad round of golf. So we’re taking every day one step at a time and being grateful for what we have.”
Said Meyer, “We’re just a group of guys sticking together and fighting through it. Coach is fighting as well.”
In a fortuitous turn — Reinke, a religious man, considers it an answer to prayer — Phoenix alum Ryan Schuelke happened to be weighing the next step in his golf career. Schuelke was caddying at Erin Hills in the summer and in Phoenix in the winter. He had started in the PGA program but wasn’t sure that he wanted to work behind a golf shop counter, fitting clubs or giving lessons.
Something kept pulling him back to coaching. Out of the blue, he called Reinke and left a message: Any chance I could get involved with the team and help out?
“I called him right away and said, ‘Ryan, your timing is impeccable,’” Reinke said. “He has been great. He has traveled with the ladies three times, with the guys once to Drake and then Rick has filled in other times. Ryan can’t drive a van through the UW System, so we’ve got to take a bus, which is a budget-killer a little bit, but it’s working out. We’ve just got to do what we’ve got to do.”
Reinke started chemo on Aug. 22. After his first session, he felt terrible for five or six days. That was to be expected. His oncologist told him he would be miserable the first week after a treatment, but would improve by Week 2 and would feel pretty good by Week 3, when a new round would start.
“I got to end of Week 2 and beginning of Week 3 and I said to my wife, ‘Beth, something is not right. They said I’m supposed to be feeling better. I’m feeling worse,’” Reinke said. “I was like, holy crap, I’ve got to go through this six times? This is crazy.”
Back at Froedtert for Round 2 of chemo, his oncologist ran bloodwork and immediately discovered the problem. Reinke’s calcium level was dangerously high.
“He said, ‘You’re going to the hospital. I’m either calling an ambulance or your wife is taking you right now,’” Reinke said. “He said, ‘You’re this close to having a stroke or a seizure.’”
Doctors treated the problem with medication and Reinke was released from the hospital three days later feeling like a human being again.
“It was amazing,” he said. “As this (calcium) number came down, every eight hours I was feeling better and better. I’m very grateful. I said a lot of prayers. After that first chemo, I was just in a fog. I can’t even describe the feeling. I was just sick.
“I said, ‘Lord if you want to take me, I’m ready.’ I know a lot of people are worse off than me, but when it’s you … you know, it’s not good. I prayed, ‘If you don’t want me, just give me a day where I feel good.’ And all of a sudden, I got one. Then I got two. Then I got three.”
That’s why Reinke, sitting at a table in the sun outside the clubhouse at University Ridge last week, wasn’t disconsolate about his team’s showing in the Badger Invite. There will be more tournaments and, certainly, better results.
He’s grateful — there’s that word again — that he was able to make the 2½-hour drive from Green Bay to Madison. He knows that longer road trips are still out of the question.
“We understand it’s tough for him and we’re all supporting him,” said freshman Mason Haupt. “He wants to be with us so bad. We’re just consistently sending texts back and forth. I know he appreciates it. We’re there for him, whatever he needs.”
Reinke fought back tears as he described how everyone in the UWGB community has rallied around him.
“The team has been great,” he said. “Ryan has been a godsend. It’s been absolutely unbelievable how things happened. The school has been awesome. The athletic director, Josh Moon, has been great. My sports administrator, Alan Savage, awesome. Even the chancellor reached out to me. Everyone is so supportive.”
Reinke goes in for his third round of chemo on Oct. 10. He’s ready.
“I’m going to continue to get better and I’m going to beat this thing,” he said. “It picked the wrong guy. I’m going to get after it and we’re going to beat this. Stay positive and keep plugging away.”
