Hamish Fenton wants to understand a perfectly clear thing: he was not looped for the Philadelphia Eagles.
And there, he was preparing to watch the NFC championship match, wearing the equipment of his favorite NFL team from a bed inside the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York a few hours after an intervention Surgical to eliminate five cancer tumors from its lungs.
A zipped-up New York Giants Jacket on the back, a winter hat team team at the top of its head, Fenton was barely installed when Saquon Barkley took football from his quarter-arre and torn off a touch of 60 yards on the left key line .
It was at this point that the 12-year-old from Rye let out a cry that probably surprised the entire wing of the hospital cancer district.
“Oh my God, Saquon! Already!” Fenton shouted on TV while his mother, Cassie, entered the room and smiles.
Because it is a story about much more than a star player and one of his biggest fans caught in an showdown from the NFL rivalry between the Giants and the Eagles. This is inspiration and determination, and a lesson in the fragility of life while finding a goal beyond the rules of the game.
By preparing to look at the Super Bowl Lix, there is an innate challenge to find the appropriate balance between recognizing anxiety for giant fans who had to watch Barkley with the Eagles and rent one of the best seasons for a balloon in some time. There is also the criticism of the team’s brass to having let them go elsewhere, mainly without context of the reason why the decision was made in the first place, and the mockery of the giants almost every turn.
Fenton refuses to let the emotion be stuck in the middle, however, hinder his allegiance to the Super Bowl.
“Listen, I understand: I am a fan of the giants, so I have to hate Eagles,” Hamish told me in a telephone conversation from his home on Tuesday. “But Saquon is my hero. What he did for me – I would never have thought I would be happy to see the Eagles win, and I’m not – I’m just happy if Saquon wins.”
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Barkley is a final performance of the cap of one of the most dominant individual seasons of recent memory by hoisting the Vince Lombardi trophy for the first time inside the Superdome Caesars in New Orleans on Sunday evening.
It is a remarkable jump of the place where Barkley was during what turned out to be his last days with the Giants, while instead of focusing on a championship, he was thinking about his place in the game.
“What is your impact? What is your inheritance?” Barkley shared with me in his locker after one of his last training sessions as a giant at the end of the 2023 season. “I have the impression that each time I overturned, I got back and I I continued to fight.
Which brings us back to Fenton and his courageous battle, and how his undeniable spirit left an undoubted impression on Barkley, not only the reverse. They met two days before a memorable post-match exchange when the Fenton family was invited to practice, and an improbable friendship was born.
In September 2023, Hamish was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive form of cancer (stadium 4) carcinoma. He is determined to beat this cancer and, as his family describes it, get back to life as an athletic, outgoing and cheeky pre -adolescent “who looks at the chances of survival that say that the experts are supposed to be insurmountable.
Come back 13 months ago and Barkley sat in his locker which finished an interview session after his last match with the Giants, ironically an upheaval of the Eagles at the Metlife Stadium. There were questions about his uncertain future and Barkley was all the cases, refusing to let the circumstances break it in the moment.
Then Fenton entered the room and completely changed the mood.
“My good luck charm,” said Barkley, making a big smile as Fenton approaches. He was between chemotherapy treatments and joined Barkley and the Giants as part of his makeup artist to be “a giant for a day”.
Barkley lacked tunnel with fenton during pre-match presentations. Then he told Sterling Shepard to get Fenton out in the midfield in his place as captain for the draw. After the match, Barkley gave his jersey and the crampons he was wearing in what everyone knew could be his last match as a giant, reaching his duffel bag and offering them to the child inspiring without hesitation.
“What just happened,” said Hamish, wondering aloud how he was able to bond with Barkley so quickly.
“His face will hurt for days, he smiles so much,” said his father, Mark Fenton.
Barkley stayed in touch with the Fenton family in the weeks that followed their initial meeting, even if the uncertainty of his free agency underway is looming. He sent personal videos to Hamish before each treatment, and in the months following, according to Cassie, the Giants helped to facilitate communication between them.
“When I stop playing, it will count for many people I have done what I did for the others, not for the cameras or for the attention,” said Barkley previously. “If people talk about it, regardless of the number of affected affairs I have marked or the number of meters I had.”
A sustainable image of the match for the title NFC was the one that captured Barkley in a festive embrace with her family: the fiancée Anna Congdon and their two children, Jada and Saquon Jr., all covered with green and white confetti.
The colors count, of course, although this is where Hamish traces the line. The fans will organize a Fête du Super Bowl and he plans to wear the saquon jersey of his giants – not the one he was gifted, which is exposed with the crampons in his “Giant Sanctuary” of a room, joked Cassie .
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“Oh is a fan of the giants, we are all, and in some ways, Hamish considers himself the big fan of the giants, leading the pack, and he will never leave them,” said Cassie Fenton. “So yes, absolutely, Hamish is quick to say:” I am not rooted for the Eagles “, but the link he has with Saquon, he will never tell himself against him. He is his guy. His love for The player and his love for the team and his aversion to the other team – well, we will take care of this as it happens.
Choosing to rejoice the Barkley tales book, or to take root against him because of the team for whom he is currently playing, it is certainly a choice that many will make on Sunday, and there are many reasons to see this last.
“If it was Saquon against the Giants of the Super Bowl, I would be with the Giants, it’s my team,” said Hamish. “I want this to be the case.”
Given that Joy Barkley brought Hamish in the most difficult circumstances, if it has just had to face the conflict of implementation of a team that he is supposed to despise, too bad.
“In the lowest moments, you watch someone to guide you, for you mentor, and Saquon is that for me,” said Hamish. “Being in chemo, and excitement when it is done, it’s like:” Yes, well, I can go and do my favorite thing in the world and watch a giant game “and [Sunday]Watch SAQUON go there and play in the Super Bowl. It motivates me to see this and to think, I can continue to push, I can continue to push. “”
Now, this is something for which we can all root – not only on Sunday of the Super Bowl, be careful, but as long as it takes to Hamish Fenton to win this fight.
How can you not encourage this?
Note: the friends of the fentons started A gofundme account called hamish backs To help cover the cost of the treatment of Hamish and all the unexpected costs linked. To date, they have collected $ 273,029. All remaining funds will be given to support research on pediatric cancer or a related cancer charity. Cassie Fenton will also participate in Survival cycle to collect funds for a rare research against cancer At the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
This article originally appeared on Northjersey.com: Rye NY: This giant fan applauds for Saquon Barkley. Find why
