Hitting away at life’s curveballs

VC’s Corey Rometo made it to a graduation nobody could have expected

By KYLE ADAMS
Posted 7/8/20

For most young athletes, the best part of playing sports is seeing how many hits you can get, touchdowns you can score or goals that go into the net. If you ask Corey Rometo, he’d tell you the …

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Hitting away at life’s curveballs

VC’s Corey Rometo made it to a graduation nobody could have expected

Posted

For most young athletes, the best part of playing sports is seeing how many hits you can get, touchdowns you can score or goals that go into the net. If you ask Corey Rometo, he’d tell you the exact same thing.
The truth is that sports go well beyond the numbers. In Rometo’s case, sports have helped him and his family get through some of the most challenging times anyone can experience.
“I’ve played baseball forever. It was the first sport I ever played. It’s really fun,” Rometo said. “I’ve played soccer for a long time too. I like to kick and score goals.”
It was not too long ago that Rometo’s parents, Cindee and Frank, didn’t know if their eldest son would even make it to graduation.
To make a long story short, he did.

The now Valley Central High School, Class of 2020 graduate has battled his way through Addison’s disease, one of the three forms of adrenoleukodystrophy. It is a genetic condition caused by a mutation in his X chromosome.
When Corey was 10, he needed a bone marrow transplant to correct the enzyme deficiency, which caused brain damage, as well as seizures.
Some of his best memories from before he got sick come from the Cal Ripken All-Star Tournaments he played in.
One of those games was when he was eight years old, playing against Marlboro.
“I said give me the ball, I’ll win you the game,” he said to his mom at the time, who was coaching the team.
Rometo also remembers an extremely close game against one of the best teams in the tournament.
“Probably the Poughkeepsie All-Star game is my favorite game,” Corey said. “It was really close and we almost won.”
After that season is when more of Rometo’s medical issues started to surface, although a primary symptom of Addison’s disease had shown itself for a while.
Corey’s mom, Cindee, explained.
“When he was five or six, I mentioned to the doctor at a check-up that he had this unusual tan. Had he said then that ‘unusual tanning is a form of Addison’s, let’s do some blood work,’ we would have known then,” she said.
As the disease advanced, it led to some strange behavior caused by his lack of brain function. One day Corey went missing because he had decided to walk to a friend’s house. 
“That was what his brain had been telling him he needed to do,” Cindee said.
That wouldn’t be the end of it.
“His friend’s mom called me and said something’s wrong with Corey. He was awake, but it was like he wasn’t there. He was just gazing up into the sky. All of a sudden he gurgled and went limp. I thought he was dying. We didn’t know what was wrong,” she explained.
“When he started to wake up, he started pounding his chest and signing OK. He pulled me close and whispered, ‘I’m okay.’”
After a visit to Orange Regional Medical Center and not being able to figure out what was wrong, the doctors wanted to fly him to Westchester. Due to the weather, they had to drive, which seemed like an eternity.
The doctors at Westchester determined Corey would need a bone marrow transplant. While the procedure would fix the enzyme deficiency caused by the chromosome mutation, it would advance his disease during the transplant.”
The road back would be a bumpy ride. There were good days and bad days.
One of the good days came on February 1, 2015. That was the day of Rometo’s Make-A-Wish.
“I really wanted to do something with sports and it’s really, really hard to go to the Super Bowl,” he said. “So that’s what I wished for.”
After being picked up in a limo and going through the locker rooms at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, AZ, Rometo, along with the rest of the Make-A-Wish kids, saw the field for the first time.
“It was really fun watching the game and meeting the players and the cheerleaders. I got a lot of autographs and played on the field with Chris Matthews (Seahawks WR),” Corey said.
“[Seahawk QB Russell Wilson] got picked off at the end of the game. It was crazy.”
Corey’s brother Zach was the only one in the family rooting for Seattle, who lost that day to the New England Patriots, though he mainly remembers the celebration at the end.
“Even though the Seahawks lost, it was still really cool with the music and confetti and everything. The energy around the stadium was crazy,” Zach said.
“At first I thought we were going to build a tree house or something, but the game was really cool.”
Zach is still upset that Seattle didn’t let Marshawn Lynch run the ball. Corey and his sister Jackie each went home happy after the Patriots took the final knee in their 28-24 victory.
“My favorite moment was being on the field before the game and throwing two cross patterns to my sons in the end zone,” added Corey’s dad, Frank.
Corey’s first idea for a wish was to build a massive tree fort in his yard. Due to the lack of trees at his house and his interest in sports, Super Bowl XLIX seemed like the way to go.
“Make-A-Wish is such a wonderful organization,” Cindee said. “They treat those kids so well.”
Fast forward to today, Corey has finally found a good combination of medications and hormones that work for his complicated medical history and help to stabilize his condition. Recently he capped off an impressive milestone.
On top of graduating from high school, he has not had a seizure in over a year.
Up until COVID-19 shut down the world, Rometo had been attending a work program through Valley Central.
“I go to different jobs, like at Price Chopper and Burlington. I did a lot of stocking and hanging up clothes,” Corey said.
The senior still plays sports today, including Unified Basketball at VC, soccer with Beautiful People, volleyball at Gear Up and several sports with the Special Olympics, including bowling, track and field, and basketball.
Prior to the shutdown, he had been planning on playing in the Challengers Division of the Town of Newburgh Little League.
While Corey didn’t have the graduation anybody expected, he and his family are just happy that it happened.
“Graduating feels really weird, especially since we couldn’t graduate with a big ceremony,” Corey said.
Had things played out normally, he was planning on beginning the BRIDGES program at SUNY Orange next fall. Now it is unlikely he will be able to go down that path.
In the meantime, you’ll be able to find Corey playing sports with his friends or volunteering at the Walden Humane Society.