Caleb Farley Opts Out for Understandable Reasons
- Caleb Farley, 22, a former cornerback for Virginia Tech spoke to SurvivorNet about opting out of playing this season due to COVID-19 concerns, and worries over safety.
- Farley lost his mom to breast cancer, after she battled the disease twice.
- The young football star remembers how his mother gave him faith in God, and discusses how it became the foundation for his life.
“I always had a deep passion, a deep love for the game and I always excelled at it,” Farley tells SurvivorNet. “I knew it was something that I believed in myself and I just wanted to play for as long as I could play." Something besides football deeply affected his life as a young boy his mom's cancer diagnosis. "My mother had a very long fought battle with cancer starting when I was really young," Farley says.
Read MoreRelated: The Top Breast Cancer Risk Factors and What You Can Do About It
Farley is projected to be a first-round 2021 NFL pick and is currently preparing for the draft. Farley always knew since the age of six that he wanted to play football. "Since I was a little boy, I wanted to make a career out of football," Farley tells SurvivorNet.
Related: New Research Claims All Breast Cancer Patients Should Get Genetic TestingIs It True?
"My father and my mother having to sit me down and tell me that, you know, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. At this time, I still truly did not know what that means. And we were a very religious family, so I kind of just shrugged it off with them in which is their approach to me was we’re going to put our trust in, you know, God."
Farley watched as she went through multiple rounds of chemotherapy to battle the illness. At the time, she was still working, doing treatment, while also taking care of her family. Her bravery was immense. "It was incredible to see how she fought through that and kept a smile on her face because she didn’t want me to be down, um, she didn’t want me to be sad. She kind of still uplifted me, even though I didn’t fully understand what was going on."
Three years later, she was cancer-free, but the cancer would return. When Farley was in high school, his mother's cancer came back. Farley says, "We still took the same attitude. At least I did, you know, my mom was like a superhero, you know, I thought she could be anything if she beat it once she would beat it again."
Farley credits his late mother with his faith "My mother raised me to be very religious, very God-conscious. That's been everything to me, and my life. That's like the building blocks of my, of my life. Anything that’s happened to me, any adversity, any good times, any bad times, I’ve always kind of stood on that rock of faith. I can’t thank her enough for how she raised me and because it was her who gave me all of that, um, spiritually, she, she just filled my heart with love and joy. I’ve had a happy life because of her."
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.