Anyone in and around the athletic scene at Aledo High School most likely knows the name Derek Vierling. Vierling literally built the AHS soccer program from scratch, coming in to coach the team’s first season 24 years ago.
Vierling and his wife, Kellye, both attended Trinity High School in Euless — Derek graduated in 1988 and Kellye graduated in 1989.
“We actually met in College Station,” Derek said. “We were friends in high school — kind of in the same running group, but we met in College Station.”
When Derek got out of high school, college was just a possibility.
“My dad said, ‘I didn't save very well. For college, you get two choices. You can do some college loans — I'll sign for you, or join the Corps.’”
Derek joined the Marine Corps, and was activated for Operation Desert Storm. He said there were 17 or 18 Aggies who were activated.
His service in the Marine Corps helped him pay for school.
At A&M, his experience as a business major was a cause for contemplation after Desert Storm.
“So I sat around with my roommates in college, and they started going through the course catalog, and it really looked like a phone book — we were just going through, and we got down to one that was called kinesiology,” Derek said. “One of my roommates went, ‘man, that'd be awesome, Coach V!’ And so I started thinking about it, and it was a good choice.”
“If I'm gonna be a coach's widow, can we please move back to Fort Worth?” was Kellye’s response.
At that time Kellye stayed at home to raise their sone Reed, who was two-and-a-half at the time. The family moved to Mansfield while Derek attempted to find a coaching job.
Mike Leach, who was vice principal at Aledo Middle School, had been Derek’s boss at Crowley. Leach told Derek that “Don Daniel, the superintendent at this little school, Aledo ISD, was starting a soccer program.”
Neither Derek nor Kellye knew much if anything about Aledo, but after interviewing with Tim Buchanan, Vierling was hired to start Aledo’s soccer program. He was thinking he might be in Aledo for a year, get the program started, and perhaps parlay that into another coaching job.
“We went 19-5 that first year, third round of the playoffs, and it was pretty exciting,” Derek said.
We thought he might do one more year — he loved the kids and he loved the parents,” Kellye said.
During Derek’s 24 years as soccer coach, Kellye worked at Aledo High School for eight years as a counselor secretary.
“For the longest time, I coached both the boys and the girls, and I've always felt like it's a soccer program, you know, the boys and the girls. And now my old assistant is the girls coach, Bryan Johnson — he assists the boys, and I assist the girls. And so we still try to treat it like a program, one entity,” Derek said.
On Jan. 19, 2021, Kellye found out she had anal cancer. The radiation and chemotherapy treatments required were, Derek said, brutal. “They took a toll on her body and she still has effects from it.”
Exactly two years later, on Jan. 19, 2023, Kellye was diagnosed with breast cancer. (They say now they will not schedule any medical appointments on Jan 19.)
Kellye had a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery, and is grateful that the surgeons removed all the cancer, so no chemotherapy or radiation was required.
Just as Kellye was recovering and given the green light to drive again, Derek’s symptoms began to appear.
After a checkup in August of 2022, Derek was told his blood platelet count was a bit low. In February of 2023 he had more blood work done, and his platelet count was even lower than his previous labs.
He was referred to a hematologist, who ordered a bone marrow biopsy, but the biopsy did not show any problems. Derek’s platelets were at 50,000 when normal range is between 150,000 to 400,000. However, he was told he was not critical and was sent home.
In July, Derek began to develop red spots on his legs. On that day he had been to his primary care physician, to an eye doctor because a blood blister had popped in his eye, and had worked out. By the time he got home, he was covered in red dots which he said looked like measles.
He and Kellye sent a photo to a cardiologist friend, who told them Derek needed to go to the emergency room. In fact, the doctor called the emergency room to let them know Derek was coming.
At the emergency room they told him he needed to get to a hospital immediately.
“I didn't feel bad,” Derek said. “I worked out that day. I did our summer workouts at school.” Friends and associates kept asking him if he was tired or stressed.
“Well, yeah, I was stressed. I mean, she's had two bouts of cancer the last two years. Am I tired? Well, soccer season is over again. I'm always kind of tired at the end of soccer season.”
The hospital had no answers. They installed a port in his neck through which he could receive plasmapheresis, a process whereby blood is removed from the body, separated into plasma and cells, and then the cells are infused back into the body.
Derek was in the hospital for two weeks until his platelets were brought up to a manageable level. After being home for two weeks, he began to experience severe back paid, and there was blood in his urine.
Back at the hospital, in August of 2023, he found out his kidneys were failing. Doctors thought his spleen was attacking his platelets, so they performed a spleen embolization, which involves blocking the artery that supplies blood to the spleen.
The next day he was put on dialysis through a port that was installed in his chest. Perhaps luckily, Derek does not recall much of this time.
The medical staff still could not pinpoint the problem. They wanted to perform a kidney biopsy, but Derek’s platelets were so low there was a danger of him bleeding out. After roughly three weeks in the hospital, once his platelets were high enough, he was sent home.
Derek was having to do outpatient dialysis three days a week. About this time, he and Kellye began to seek out additional medical resources, and got a referral to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern). A hematologist there told Derek, “I want to find out what's wrong with you, but I have to admit you in the hospital.”
The experience at UT southwestern, Derek said, was “night and day” different from his previous hospital stays.
He was there another two weeks, but they were able to get him to the point where a kidney biopsy could be performed. The result of the biopsy was that he has a very rare blood disorder called Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome (AHUS).
During this time Derek missed the entire fall 2023 semester of his job at Aledo High School.
“I lost 60 pounds over the course of the hospital stays, and I was just emaciated and weak,” Derek said. “I was using a walker and a cane, and I was just so drugged up with all the different drugs I was taking, I just slept, and then I couldn't sleep. So I would sleep and be awake and sleep, and I just zoned out watching TV.”
As the spring semester and soccer season approached, Derek began to gain some encouragement. He could not coach, but he could watch.
“It was around December and and Kellye said, ‘what if I just took you up to practice, to watch practice.’”
Derek didn’t want to go.
“I looked bad. I mean, I was just sickly. And I couldn't stand up. I had to sit down,” Derek said. “and Kellye said ‘ I'll just take you up there. We’ll sit in the car, and you could just watch.’ And finally, she convinced me to do it.
“I went out there, and I literally sat on the on a bench, and I just watched practice. And then I tried to coach a little bit, but I couldn’t. I didn't have a voice. Coach Martinez and Coach Johnson were doing a fantastic job. I mean, they really just stepped up. And, and Coach Martinez', wife, she is also a soccer coach.”
When Kellye got Derek home, she said, “well, what do you think?”
“I said, ‘man, I miss it. Can we go back tomorrow?’”
Kellye said yes, and day to day Derek began to get back into the realm of coaching.
“He said, ‘come on, we’ll go for a walk together. We'll just go to the stop sign and back.’ And it's like, three houses, and we'd do it. And I was just exhausted. And then the next day, he goes, let's go four houses and back. And pretty soon we were doing a block, going around the block, and then it was a couple times around the block, and I just slowly started getting a little bit stronger.”
The dialysis was still exhausting and time-consuming.
“You sit in a chair, and they literally take your blood out and they clean it and put it back in. And it was a it was a four-hour deal, and I had to do that three days a week..”
Despite that schedule, Derek returned to work for the spring semester 2024, but was missing Tuesdays and Thursdays to get his dialysis.
“It would make me so exhausted, and I was cramping up. I was on a fluid restriction because my kidneys weren’t functioning very well. And so I would finish up the dialysis, and my back would cramp, and my legs were cramping, and it would almost bring me to tears.
“Back in March, we finally discovered that he's he can do Peritoneal dialysis at home,” Kellye said.
That involved another procedure to put a port in Derek’s stomach, and more frequent dialysis.
“It was six hours every day, but I could do it at night while I was sleeping,” although sleeping was somewhat difficult.
“I had to lay on my back, and if I laid the wrong way the machine would start beeping, but at least I was at home, and physically, I was feeling better because I wasn't so exhausted from the hemodialysis and and then soccer season's kicking in.”
Derek was finding a “new normal” with nightly dialysis, coaching, and getting infusions every six weeks. Doctors felt something was still not right.
He had to have another bone marrow biopsy, which revealed that he has Chronic Lymphoblastic Leukemia (CLL). He is now on an oral chemo twice a day, and then he does another infusion as well. Finally, his platelets have gotten in the hundred of thousands for three months now.
Five weeks ago, Derek’s nephrologist said he could get off dialysis. His kidneys are functioning at 17%. As long as they maintain that level, he can stay off dialysis.
“So we're just day by day, and the infusions are keeping him alive,” Kellye said.
Catastrophic illness takes tolls on families — emotional stress, financial stress (loss of work time on the part of both patient and caregiver), and upheaval of life.
The board of directors of the Marcia Walters Memorial Thanksgiving Trot have chosen Derek Vierling and his family as the recipients of this year’s race proceeds.
But perhaps more important than the funds raised, the experience provides the community an opportunity to wrap its arms around one of its own who has gone through a traumatic experience.
“Coach Vierling was recommended to us by several community members as a possible recipient for this year’s Trot,” said race co-chair Niki Thompson. “Every applicant is so worthy of this cause, and we have each of them fill out the same information. It is reviewed by our board, and we have an anonymous voting system by which majority rules. Coach Vierling was selected as this year’s recipient and we are so happy to be a part of his story!”
Thompson, incidentally, is one of Vierling’s former soccer players.
“Reed (the Vierlings’ son) went through school here from first grade up, and he has lifelong friends here, and we were blessed to be here as a family,” Derek said. “He won two or three state championships in football as a kicker, and was all state as a midfielder in soccer, and just 15th in his class. I mean, I brag about the kid. It was a great experience for him.
“And when I have parents that that are moving into Aledo, and they say, ‘Hey, we're moving from New Jersey.' I always tell them what a great place it is, and how thankful we were that our son went through school here. It's just a great school district and great community”
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