Cal Receivers Coach Geoff McArthur on Coming Home, Surviving Cancer, Living in Present
The former Cal receiver returned to Berkeley to coach where he played, bringing with him a perspective shaped by one of the hardest fights of his life.
Geoff MaArthur didn’t need much convincing to come back to Cal. It had been on his mind for a long time.
“It’s a pleasure and an honor to be back home. This is a place where I not only grew up, but I feel like I was raised in the Bay Area. I’m born and raised in Los Angeles, but a lot of maturity and a lot of life lessons were formed here. Every day I go out there, I thank God and I’m very appreciative of the opportunity to do this. It’s not a lot of people that can say they coach where they played. It’s really special to be out here.”
He had been preparing for this moment long before it became a reality.
“I’ve been prepping for this moment for a long time. Personally, it was a bucket list. I was going to come up here and volunteer if nobody offered me anything and just sleep in the bear cubs or wherever all the kids sleep until they kicked me out. So I’m glad they offered me a job.”
The parallels to a previous era at Cal weren’t lost on him either.
“Once it started to become a possibility, I knew it was going to happen just because 20 to 25 years ago the same thing happened. You get a coach from Oregon, all of a sudden we go from pretty below average to above average, from one and ten to ten and one. History has a way of repeating itself and I feel like we’re about to do some special things once again.”
What he’s seen from the receiver room has reminded him of his own playing days.
“We have a very connected group. It reminds me of the group we had when I was here. You don’t have all these five stars and big-name guys, but the group as a whole plays well together. They compete for each other. Nobody out there is trying to make sure they’re the only one that knows the play. They’re sharing information, blocking for each other, playing hard. If we keep it up, we’ll be pretty special.”
The chemistry shows up in the details, inside and outside the meeting room.
“There’s not a lot of guys out there saying me, me. They’re doing what they’re asked to do, just an incredible bond. You see them sticking together, few words inside the meeting rooms but outside the meeting rooms they’re really locked in, dialed in, playing for one another, sharing information. There are just certain tells that show you these guys care for each other.”
MacArthur was diagnosed with stage four DLBCL lymphoma four years ago. He spoke about that journey with remarkable openness.
“It’s been four years since I was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Each year I tend to get a little bit stronger. As long as I keep myself in good health, hydrating, taking care of myself, eating the right foods and being in the right environments, I’m going to be fine. And this is the perfect environment.”
The first diagnosis in 2022 was met with a competitive mindset. When it came back in 2023 and metastasized, things got more serious.
“I was admitted to City of Hope and it was just like, okay, so I’m probably going to die. But I’ve never lived. I’ve always had a little bit of fear in my heart, always chasing objects and things and attachments, never really present. Always wondering about what I was going to do in the future or what happened in the past.”
The shift in how he approached the illness changed everything.
“When I surrendered to the fact that I would probably die and started focusing on living presently, it’s funny how my body kind of responded to that more than it did to fear and fighting and clinging to things. It was when I surrendered and did what I could control that things got better.”
Today, MacArthur is in remission and carries a different relationship with each day.
“Life is a privilege, it’s an honor. No matter what comes with life, life is really special. It’s a miracle. There are no bad days. When you have life, you have oxygen. It’s a gift. I think I live that way and it’s been pretty infectious with the people around me.”
That perspective is something he actively passes on to his players.
“I look forward to adversity. Whenever adversity strikes, I wait for it and I pounce on it. What an opportunity to learn about yourself, to grow and really create a new neuropathway. Every time you have something where you struggle, whatever choices you make about that struggle determine how your brain programs itself. I can tell when the light bulb goes off and they start to become believers in that too. We look forward to difficulties because they’re going to show us who we are.”
Coming back to Cal at this point in his life felt like the right completion of a longer story.
“I’ve come full circle. Before my cancer journey, I had a little bit of a fragmented story about Cal and how it went and what should have, could have, would have happened. After the cancer experience, I was able to grow in ways that only could have happened through a really challenging opportunity. Now that I’ve overcome those challenges, I’ve become a better version of myself. The students are benefiting from the adversity and the way that I handled those difficult times.”