St. Thomas Aquinas Boys Soccer Dover, NH Rylie Cruz caner fundraiser

The 2010 season home opener for the Saints is on
Friday September 3 at 4:15pm

We will host the Windham High School Jaguars this year
on the St. Thomas varsity field.
The JV teams will play at the same time on the JV field.

In the 2009 home opener
St. Thomas played Oyster River to raise money to fight breast cancer.

The teams played the game with Select "The Cure" soccer balls.
Players wore pink sweatbands and headbands.
Some even had pink laces in their cleats.

Select "the Cure" Pink Soccer Ball

This was done to raise some money, but also awareness that cancer touches everyone's lives.
Everyone is effected by cancer in some way.
It could be a family member, a relative, a friend or someone you know.

In that 2009 game Ross Suleski scored the loan goal as the Saints won their home opener against Oyster River.
Ross played in memory of his Grandmother Betty Peterson who passed away from Lung Cancer.

This year I want to make the game a bit more personal.
What can make the game more personal than playing for cancer awareness?

Playing to help one persons fight for cancer. Playing to help one family.
Playing to raise money to help a child directly.

On Jan 9,2010 Rylie had a big belly and the family thought she was constipated. Rylie was brought to the ER, she was diagnosed with an enlarged Liver and was transported to Children's Hospital at Dartmouth in Hanover. Rylie was then transferred to Children's Hospital in Boston. She was poked, prodded, and x-rayed many times. They found that Rylie has a large Tumor in/next to her Liver and everything pointed towards Cancer. She has been a little trooper and behaved so well for all the Doctors and Nurses. There are multiple teams of doctors working with her from both Children's Hospital and Dana Farber.

"Karen and I appreciate all the concern and prayers for our little one, and the continued support is all that we can ask for." John Cruz.

Here is a youtube video of Rylie - if it doesn't work for you on this page here is the link

You can read updates on Rylie from Children's Hospital Care Pages.
(You have to sign up and create a profile first then search RylieCruz)

Rylie had a biopsy on January 11.

January 14 Results- The name of this cancer is Neuroblastoma. Rylie has a rather large Tumor so immediate surgery is out of the question and it is not typical of the treatment of this. What the most common treatment method is Chemo Therapy-Surgery-Chemo-Stem Cell Transplant. Timeline looks like 5 cycles of Chemo Therapy(3 weeks= 1 cycle), to work on shrinking the tumor, then Surgery to remove whatever they can, 1 cycle of Chemo Therapy then lastly a Stem Cell Transplant.

June 29th Rylie had her Stem cell transplant.

The Cruz family continues to go back and forth between New Hampshire and Boston
one of the best things we can do after praying for Rylie is help with expenses.

8 new select balls will be purchased for the games
$36.00 from Select on behalf of St. Thomas for the pink "The Cure" Balls will still go towards
finding a cure for Breast cancer.
4 will be used in the varsity game and 3 will be used in the JV game.
1 ball will be signed by the entire team and sent to Rylie.

$50.00 will go to for Kicks For Cancer for the pink & white wrist bands the players will wear.

100% of the proceeds from the T-shirts and any donations will be sent to the Cruz family to help defer the costs they incur driving from New Hampshire to Dana Farber and Children's hospital