Amsterdam baseball coach Robby Hisert is seen during a game against Scotia-Glenville on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 in Scotia, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
Robby Hisert came home from one of Amsterdam’s first preseason baseball practices last month with his hands covered in blisters, the souvenirs of an afternoon spent hitting fungo after fungo to his players.
For a baseball lifer like Hisert, who has spent the last 15 years coaching, that’s nothing out of the ordinary.
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But considering the year and a half Hisert went through to reach that point, the ordinary felt extraordinary.
“It’s like, ‘Alright, we’re back,’” Hisert, 40, said.
In late October 2024, Hisert hurt his neck when he landed awkwardly after hopping over a seat while attending a Notre Dame football game at MetLife Stadium. A checkup after the pain refused to subside revealed not only a fractured C2 vertebra, but a giant cell tumor.
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It led him down a road of multiple surgeries and more than nine months in a cervical collar. The varsity coach at his alma mater since 2018 was forced to miss the 2025 season, but, throughout the process, he was determined to limit that absence to one season.
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This spring, with a scar that runs down the back of his neck serving as the reminder of his fusion surgery, he’s back in Amsterdam purple and gold, hitting fungoes and throwing batting practice.
Bob Noto, one of Hisert’s biggest mentors, has seen Hisert’s determination firsthand. Noto, a retired former Amsterdam baseball coach and athletic director, is Hisert’s assistant coach and right-hand man in the dugout.
“I give him a lot of credit, because he had a pretty serious operation, and this was always his goal, to get back here,” Noto said.
Nobody’s seen the fight from closer up than Hisert’s wife, Sara. A fellow Amsterdam High graduate and former softball standout who serves as a volunteer assistant at Broadalbin-Perth, she called her husband “my superhero” for his perseverance.
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“It was a very long recovery road for him,” Sara Hisert said. “He’s my Iron Man. I don’t know how he did it without breaking his spirit, because it was baseball season, and baseball is his life.”
Amsterdam baseball coach Robby Hisert during warmup before a game against Scotia-Glenville on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 in Scotia, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
‘Luck of the Irish’
On Oct. 26, 2024, the Hiserts — Robby, Sara, daughter Emilia, now 11, and son Cole, now 9 — headed down to East Rutherford, N.J. to watch their beloved Notre Dame football team take on Navy.
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At one point in the game, Robby Hisert said, his son needed to use the bathroom. A few people in their row had been showing frustration at the constant ups and downs that came with a couple of kids seated near them, so Hisert decided to circumvent it by hopping down to the aisle.
That’s where it all started.
“I hopped over the wall, and I’m expecting it to be where I see the ground about 3 feet down behind the seat — (but) it was about an 8-to-10-foot drop,” he said. “I wasn’t ready for it. Luckily, I landed flat on my feet, but when I hit the ground, it was a jolt all the way up. I felt it all over. I kind of fell over. I think everyone else was more concerned than I was. … It hurt, but I was good. I’ve kinked my neck before, right?”
Hisert, a 2003 Amsterdam graduate and member of the Amsterdam Baseball Hall of Fame, initially didn’t make much of it. The next day, he recalled, the family played Wiffle Ball at home, and he gritted through the pain.
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“We all kind of brushed it off,” Sara Hisert said.
But the pain didn’t go away. So, on the Monday after hurting his neck, he went in for a doctor’s appointment. To cover all his bases, and on Sara’s insistence, he had an X-ray done as well, to check if he had a fracture in his neck.
A few hours later, he got the life-changing news.
“They called me pretty much right away that afternoon and they said I had what looked to be a tumor in my vertebrae,” he said. “I did have a fracture, but it was really because (my neck) was so weak.”
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X-rays turned to MRIs, CAT scans and PET scans. On Nov. 11, 2024 — the Hiserts’ 13th wedding anniversary — Robby Hisert underwent his first surgery at Albany Medical Center.
That eventually revealed the full extent of the ordeal he was facing — a giant cell tumor on his cervical spine.
“It escalated from zero to 100,” Sara Hisert said. “We had no idea what we were dealing with.”
Giant cell tumors are rare, fast-growing and usually non-cancerous tumors that most often grow in adults between the ages of 20 and 40. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, they occur most often in the long bones of the legs and arms.
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The path forward at that point was littered with questions, but catching it when they did turned out to be an enormous stroke of luck.
Hisert was told that anything more jarring than what he’d experienced at MetLife, like riding a roller coaster, could have led to paralysis — or worse.
“We had a Disney trip planned for that January,” he said. “This was October. If it doesn’t happen, who knows?
“We keep joking, because we’re Notre Dame fans, ‘Luck of the Irish, yeah? ‘”
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Amsterdam baseball coach Robby Hisert, center. is seen during a game against Scotia-Glenville on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 in Scotia, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
Planning and waiting
Hisert spent the winter of 2025 in a hard cervical collar, alternating between being stuck at home and making trips to see specialists in New York City to determine steps moving forward. The tumor was too gelatinous to be able to conduct fusion surgery, so he was subjected to injections in the hope they would harden the tumor.
Coaching baseball was out of the question. It was a devastating reality for Hisert, who played baseball professionally in Italy, and spent time as a college and pro coach — including a stint in the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league system — before becoming Amsterdam’s head coach in 2018.
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He entrusted the 2025 Rams to Brian Spagnola, Hisert’s predecessor as head coach.
“I was happy to know that I had somebody in there that was a baseball guy,” he said.
Hisert’s absence was tough to swallow for players like AJ Lopez, who had come up to the varsity level under the coach in 2024.
“When we first found out, we kept saying, ‘Keep sending checkups, get well,’” said Lopez, a current Amsterdam senior. “Updating him on the season was a big thing, because we know how much he loves it.”
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Family and friends, “pretty much anyone we have ever known,” pitched in to help, whether it was helping to take the Hisert kids to a practice or a game while Robby had a doctor’s appointment, food deliveries or messages of encouragement. Sara Hisert’s sisters and cousins pooled together to purchase a PlayStation 5 and some games, and long sessions of “MLB: The Show” helped keep Robby’s mind occupied.
Eventually, the tumor hardened enough that surgery could be scheduled for May 6 at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
“I went in for surgery at 7:30 a.m.,” Hisert said, “and I didn’t come out until 6:30 the next morning.”
Amsterdam baseball coach Robby Hisert during warmup before a game against Scotia-Glenville on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 in Scotia, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
The longest day
In 2016, when Robby Hisert got his job with the Cardinals organization, he and Sara — who grew up across the street from one another — got matching tattoos with the mantra, “We Got This.”
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“At the time it was more about being apart for long stretches because of baseball, but knowing that we could do it because we have always supported each other,” Robby said. “This time it was just a reminder that together and with the support of everyone around us and beyond, really, we would get through this.”
Through all the hours her husband was in surgery, Sara clung to that belief, and to her faith.
“The longest 24 hours of my life. A lot of praying,” she said. “We just stuck on faith so much, and it was very nerve-wracking.”
“My wife, she went through it,” Robby Hisert said. “I was sleeping. That’s kind of the joke I make.”
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Early in the morning of May 7, the three-surgeon team — one of whom was on duty for the entire 23-hour procedure — completed their work.
Once he was brought out of anesthesia, Robby Hisert said the initial plan was that he would remain in the hospital for about two weeks. He had a different goal in mind. Emilia’s 11th birthday was coming up on May 20, and he would do whatever he could to get back to Amsterdam in time for that.
In the first few days following the surgery, Robby Hisert didn’t see his kids at all, not wanting to worry them too much, considering his post-surgery state.
“It got to a point where they were like, ‘You’re lying. He’s not OK,’” he said. “So, we called (on FaceTime) one night, and they were good.”
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Robby Hisert said he took every chance to speed up his discharge as a challenge to be conquered, whether it was getting back to eating solid food or walking on his own again.
After 10 days, Hisert was discharged. His father-in-law came down to New York to drive Robby and Sara back home, but the news of Robby’s return had been kept a surprise for the kids.
“My parents picked them up from school that day, and when they came in (the house), we were there. It was a happy day,” Robby said.
“That feeling, just the relief of being all together, the four of us again,” Sara said. “It was the longest year of my life; it was definitely a challenge, but it was life-changing in a positive way for us.”
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Amsterdam baseball coach Robby Hisert during warmup before a game against Scotia-Glenville on Wednesday, April 15, 2026 in Scotia, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
The road back
In the months following his surgery, Robby Hisert was determined to push the envelope in his physical therapy and rehabilitation.
“We took it slow, but as quick as I could,” he said.
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Hisert said his physical therapist marveled at his progress.
“He told me a couple times, ‘I’ve never seen someone in the collar like that doing what you’re doing,’” he said. “I said, ‘Good, let’s go,’ because now I’m starting to get to the point where he told me, flat out, mobility is probably going to be a limitation, but outside of that, he didn’t expect other limitations.”
This past August, Hisert hit a milestone when he shed the hard cervical collar that had been a constant part of his life.
A bigger milestone came in the fall.
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“I finally reached a point through physical therapy and rehab this fall where I was able to pick up my kids,” he said. “It had been a year since I was able to pick them up and hug them. I did it and Sara looked at me like, ‘What just happened? ’ I knew I could do it, I could feel that I could handle it — but until it happened it was still a wait and see.
“After that, the floodgates opened.”
Wiffle Ball and basketball returned to his life. He helped out at Emilia’s fall softball practices, hitting light grounders that helped pave the way for the full-impact fungoes that would come with baseball season.
The titanium rods inserted during the fusion surgery restricted Hisert’s range of motion, which forced a change in his batting stance and throwing motion. Sara helped her husband get his arm ready for his return to coaching.
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A recent checkup revealed just how well his recovery’s gone.
“They check the hardware, they check to make sure there’s no regrowth and all that,” Robby Hisert said. “Everything’s been great. (My doctor) actually told me, ‘It’s crazy to say, but you’re probably one of my easiest patients.’ Going in, everything was a big question mark every time, and now we’re at a stage where he’s excited to see me. It’s a testament to them and what they do.”
Missing just one year had been Robby Hisert’s goal from the moment he stepped away from coaching. That he accomplished that comeback is deeply meaningful to his players.
“It’s great to have him back, because of that relationship we developed that first year,” Lopez said.
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When Amsterdam played its season opener on April 3 against Broadalbin-Perth, Sara Hisert couldn’t be in attendance because she had to take her son to a doctor’s appointment. She spent the day on pins and needles in excitement.
“I kept texting my mother and father, ‘Send me a picture of him. I want to see him in the uniform again,’” she said. “It was such a good feeling to see him back out there, because it’s what he loves to do.”
“It meant a lot to see him back on the field and be able to share the field with him again,” said Broadalbin-Perth coach RJ Pingitore, who played college baseball at Southern Vermont when Hisert was an assistant coach, “because I know how much of a baseball junkie he is, and how much it killed him not to be out there with his team last year.”
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Even with his determination to get back, Robby Hisert knew a second chance wasn’t guaranteed. He’s eternally grateful, he said, for the support system that made it possible.
“When I say we have never felt so loved and supported,” he said, “It would be an understatement.”