Keeler: MSU Denver basketball’s secret MVP is 4-foot-2, weighs 62 pounds, and is kicking cancer’s booty

Their MVP is 4-foot-2, weighs 62 pounds and will dunk your heartstrings. But because it’s colder than a witch’s armpit, because it’s late, because cancer stinks, Benny Segura wears a glare that could melt what’s left of the Ross Ice Shelf.

“He gets it from me,” Iram Segura, Benny’s mom, explained to me on a frigid February night. Her son, bundled between us, just rolled his eyes. “He forgets to enjoy the moment.”

The thing about Benny is, he’s a gamer. A ninja in an orange Broncos hoodie. The iPhone said it was 7 degrees on MSU Denver’s Auraria campus late last Tuesday night. Baloney. The winds that whipped across Speer did so out of sheer spite, mincing through layers and rattling bones. Especially bones that spent the day recovering from oral chemo treatments, bones that ached with every step.

Benny came anyway.

“What a testament to this kid’s strength and this kid’s resolve and his love for life,” Roadrunners forward Caleb McGill said of Segura, the leukemia survivor he’s proud to call a teammate.

“(Benny) wanted to come out to a Division II basketball game and be around us at 8 at night. I’m sure he would be better off being at home, getting some rest.”

The scouts can’t measure Benny’s heart, the one doctors once said was killing him slowly. The one that needed a piece removed just so he could turn 7.

“If I wanted to, I could just drop him off here and I know he’s in good hands,” Iram said as the men’s basketball game between the Roadrunners and Colorado School of Mines tipped off. “I know they’ll take care of him. He’s one of their own.”

She leaned over to her son and made a smiley face, pointing to both of her dimples. The boy in the orange hoodie glared again.

Benny doesn’t love crowds. He’s tired. You would be, too, if you were 8 years old and needed regular spinal taps.

But Big Game Benny wasn’t skipping the Roadrunners’ regular-season home finale. No way. We’re at the business end of coach Dan Ficke’s third season at Metro, which headed into the weekend on a pace for its best winning percentage (18-9, 66.7%) in a decade and best winning percentage in RMAC tilts (12-5, 70.6%) since 2016.

The Roadrunners rolled into Saturday’s intracity tussle at Regis leading the RMAC in 3-point percentage (38.7), second in defensive rebounds per game (27.8) and third in opponent field goal percentage (42.8).

They’ve got one of the best pure shooters in the RMAC in Legend alum Sufyan Elkannan. They’ve got a couple of bangers in 6-foot-8 McGill, a linchpin of Grandview’s 2018 state champs, and 6-9 Brayden Carter, who used to hoop it up at Mullen.

And they’ve got Benny, who’s tougher than the three of them combined. Who’s been wrestling T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or T-cell ALL, for two years with one hand, while staving off avascular necrosis and neuropathy with the other.

Since last fall, Segura’s been a fixture at Roadrunners events, treatments permitting, as part of the university’s partnership with Team IMPACT, a non-profit that matches children with serious illnesses or disabilities with collegiate sports teams.

If Benny’s not sitting at the end of the MSU Denver bench, then he’s right behind them. If he’s not right behind them, then he’s in the back of their minds.

“He’s just really strong,” McGill said. “He’s inspired me more than the other way around.”

“You didn’t teach them your dance?”

With 4:55 left in the first half, MSU Denver is clinging to a 25-21 lead. Mines sends Riley Schroeder to the free-throw line for two shots.

The hooded figure to my right rises and scoots to the edge of his seat.

“GAAAAAAAAAH!” Benny screamed.

Clank.

Second shot.

Another rise.

Another scream.

“GAAAAAAAAAH!”

Clank.

Gamers pull their weight.

The Roadrunners, alas, trail 30-28 at the break.

“You didn’t teach them your booty dance?” Iram asks Benny.

The glare resumes.

“We don’t know how he’s still breathing”

It began with flu-like symptoms that snuck in like a shadow. Two springs ago, Iram recounted, Benny suddenly wanted to sleep 14 hours a day. His appetite dried up. He lost 10 pounds over a fortnight.

During a May 2023 trek to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Broomfield, a specialist told Mom that a mass had formed near her son’s heart.

“We don’t know how he’s still breathing,” a doctor said.

Emergency surgery at Children’s Hospital Colorado’s Aurora campus removed fluid from his heart and lungs. The next day, Benny’s folks were told of the leukemia. It crushed Iram, who lost two brothers to cancer — and both young, one at 15, another at 30.

“Even for his brother and his cousin, when they first saw him in the hospital right after diagnosis, they had him on morphine and fentanyl and oxycodone; they had him sedated,” Benny’s mother recalled. “His brother saw him with tubes coming out of him everywhere. He still had his drains from where they’d drained the fluid.

“And (his brother) said, ‘Mom, is Benny gonna die? Is that gonna happen to me?’ That’s always stuck with me.”

“I’m on the website”

While little brother Vito dove joyously into football and wrestling, Benny’s health kept him sidelined. Kismet struck, of all places, inside Coors Field, when a stranger at a Rockies game, one who’d lost a son to cancer, suggested the Seguras reach out to Team IMPACT.

The wheels started turning about a year ago. MSU came into the picture a few months later. Once he’d heard Benny’s tale, Ficke couldn’t say yes quickly enough.

The Roadrunners’ coach lost his mother, JoAnn, to non-Hodgkins lymphoma in February 2007. He and his father, Bill, the former Nuggets assistant and the big heart behind Big Bill’s New York Pizza, founded the JoAnn B. Ficke Cancer Foundation in 2009.

“I bring that up a lot, whenever we’re facing adversity … (what) we’re facing, it’s nowhere near what life can ultimately throw at you,” Dan Ficke said. “It’s something we try to keep at the front of these guys’ minds … you’ve got a young man who’s 8 years old who’s fighting a disease that we pray we never have to face.

“In the heat of the season, it’s easy to think that what we do (on the court) is all there is and it’s the most important thing. And anytime you see him, you realize that life is bigger than basketball.”

As a native son, Ficke takes the community part of his role at Metro seriously. His Roadrunners have fed the homeless at shelters, packed lunches, stocked shelves. At a revolutionary time in college athletics, when the transfer portal and Name/Image/Likeness deals have encouraged student-athletes to put themselves first, Ficke encourages his players to share a thought — a word, a prayer, whatever they can spare — for somebody else.

“Just the smiles (Benny) will bring out on guys’ faces when he gives them a handshake or a hug,” Ficke marveled. “It just puts things in perspective.”

Team IMPACT in 2023 made 565 matches and placed 1,200 children on teams across the country. The organization recommends kids interact with teams at least twice a month during the school year and at least once a month during the summer.

Ficke went further. After a signing ceremony last October, the coach made sure Benny, a 2nd-grader at Eagleview Elementary in Thornton, was listed as an active player on MSU Denver’s online roster. He insisted the Seguras had an open invite to every game and practice.

“Oh my gosh, Mom,” Benny told Iram while scrolling in January. “I’m on the website.”

Division II schools don’t sell a lot of kids-sized replica jerseys, so Benny’s uniform, cut for a young adult, fits more like a toga. Most of the time, it hangs in a place of honor on his wall at home. But like his role on the MSU Denver roster, he’s growing into it.

“I think for us, it was a way that he could feel that he’s a part of our organization,” Ficke said. “It’s one thing to show up, meet the guys and you do the signing ceremony. This is something he can look to every day, and see himself on that roster, (and) you hope it gives him some hope.”

Benny and Vito helped judge a preseason Roadrunners dunk contest. Whenever the former had a round of chemo, the team sent videos of support his way. The Roadrunners even took the family with them for a group outing to an Avs preseason game.

“Basically,” Ficke explained, “anything he was up for.”

Treatments gnawed away at the autumn, especially over the holidays. The first time they’d seen Benny again after his birthday, the team presented him with a Spider-Man Lego set.

“It was cool to see him just hugging that thing at practice,” Ficke said.

“You can’t help but want to wrap your arms around him”

When McGill first met Benny, they didn’t just invite him into the team huddles. They encouraged him to help break them.

“1-2-3, FAMILY!” they cried.

“1-2-3, FAMILY!” Benny said.

McGill and Segura broke the ice talking hoops, the Broncos and Fortnite. He and his teammates lifted the kid high to the bucket for a dunk, then took photos of him hanging on the rim.

“Love him,” said McGill, who as of Friday topped the Roadrunners in scoring (14.9 points per game) and blocks (28). “You can’t help but want to wrap your arms around him and love him well in those moments. And say, ‘Keep going, hang in there.'”

He has. They all have. After two years of long, sleepless nights, Mom says Benny’s leukemia is technically in remission. The hope is that he’ll be cancer-free by September.

Ring that bell, young man.

Shake that booty.

“I just want him to have a good opportunity to be a kid,” McGill said. “And not have to worry about what the next day might look like. Or the next week. And just be fully present. That brings me a lot of joy, to know that there’s a finish line.”

“Were they sad in there?”

The Orediggers nail their bunnies. Metro doesn’t. Mines, pesky and sound, holds off MSU Denver, 66-61.

“Is it quiet in the locker room?” Iram asked Benny after the game. “Were they sad in there?”

He nods.

“Were they getting yelled at?”

He shakes his head.

“Do you want to play? Go see if you can shoot.”

As Segura bounds past the home bench, Big Bill Ficke walks over to give Little Benny a high-five.

“How you doin’?” the old coach asked, extending a mighty palm.

Benny slaps five right back, shooting his mother a cheeky grin. Then he bounces to the baseline, cradling a giant basketball in tiny hands and the moment to his chest.

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