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Breast Cancer Awareness in the NFL

Shane Demers, Staff Writre

Deangelo Williams, a running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers and a former back for the Carolina Panthers. Spectators think he is just another football player with a lot of money. People notice all the pink that he wears his hair and his gear but, people don’t know the true reason of why he does this. Wearing pink in October for breast cancer awareness has become a big thing. Not just in the NFL but around the U.S. Many people wonder where and how it started. His name is Deangelo Williams and this is his story.

Williams talked to the NFL player’s tribune on October 3 about his family's struggle with breast cancer. “I grew up knowing my mom would get breast cancer. It wasn't a probability. It was an inevitability. See, some people carry something called the BRCA1 mutation, which means the gene thatâs supposed to produce the proteins that suppress tumors isn't working properly. If you have a mutated BRCA1 gene, your risk of developing cancer -- especially breast cancer -- skyrockets. My mom and her four sisters all had the mutation. Even if I barely knew how cancer worked as a kid, I knew it was something that was coming.”

Deangelo Williams found out that his mother, Sandra Hill was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004. It went away for a while but the tumors started to grow back in 2010. “Back to the protocols we went - the doctors, the chemo, everything. But it wasn’t enough,” Williams told the NFL Tribune. The doctors could not do anything to save her. She eventually died from breast cancer in 2014. It was devastating to Williams. His four aunts had already died from breast cancer in 2011.

In 2009 Williams started working with the NFL to make it pink. He wanted players to support women in trouble with this cancer. Williams has tried every year to make the NFL pink for the whole season, but they won’t let him. "What I try to get people to understand is it's a 365 day a year thing. Once October is over, the breast cancer doesn't go away. The sickness doesn't go away. The chemo doesn't go away. The hurt and pain that a family member feel, doesn't go away," Williams told Raycom news in 2014. Williams has even tried to persuade the NFL vice president of football, Troy Vincent to let him wear pink all year. He was denied because it goes against the uniform policy. The NFL does let the players were pink in October. Also they sell pink merchandise and they have raised over $8 million for breast cancer.

Williams continues to try and spread the word about breast cancer. He runs in the race for a cure in uptown Charlotte. William’s team, “Williams Warriors” has raised over $211,000 for breast cancer with this race. He has even donated 53 mammograms tests, in honor of his mother who died at age 53. Williams will continue to try and make the NFL pink all year around. Williams has lost four aunts and his mother to breast cancer. He is trying to make people aware that breast cancer goes on throughout the whole year. Not just in October.

Image Courtesy of si.com

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