St. Edward's men's soccer rose to the occasion with critical plays throughout its 2024 season, but none with stakes as unique as its 1-0 home victory over Texas A&M International on Wednesday, October 16.
 
The Hilltoppers' volleyball and men's and women's soccer programs held their annual Pink Out and Breast Cancer Awareness games that week, decorating the Recreation and Athletics Center halls with pink ribbons and signage. 
 
While student-athletes wrote the names of loved ones on a window asking who they wore pink for, men's soccer freshman forward CHRISTIAN MEZAS put it in the box score. 
 
Mezas delivered the game-winning goal in the 53rd minute out of a set piece on a long throw-in from JOMMAR REYES redirected to Mezas by Matthew DeVaney. Instead of running to the corner of the field per the team's usual goal celebrations, Mezas immediately sprinted to the sideline in front of the home crowd. 
 
As his teammates converged on him, Mezas lifted his hands into the shape of a heart towards his mother and breast cancer survivor, Jennifer Mezas, standing in the crowd with her pink shirt, joyfully waving her pink rally towel. 
 
"As a soccer player, you try to treat every game the same, but it never leaves your mind when you have special occasions like that," CHRISTIAN MEZAS says. "It was important to me to play well and score so I could dedicate it to my mom and everything she had to go through."
 
Mezas describes his mother as a selfless, caring individual. He calls her the kind of mother and middle school teacher willing to go above and beyond at her own expense to help someone in need. 
 
"No matter how she's feeling when you come to her, she drops everything to help. That's admirable. Teachers have a lot of work and papers to grade, but she pushes all of that aside if a student needs to talk about something going on," Mezas explains. "She always wanted to be a mother and does a wonderful job. She takes care of people, and that is something that holds our family together." 
 
Jennifer Mezas dedicates her life to helping others, but in February 2019, doctors diagnosed her with an aggressive form of breast cancer, flipping her world upside down. Intense chemotherapy started almost immediately, relying on a treatment that can leave patients feeling worse off than the disease itself. 
 
Not accustomed to being the one reliant on help, Mezas remembers being reluctant to reach out to her husband's co-worker, who is also a cancer survivor. 
 
"Never being one to be sick, I wasn't used to asking for help. At first, I was like, 'I'm not talking to some stranger,'" she says. "Then, one day, I did. I literally cried to her for 15 minutes without saying a word, and she kept saying, 'I know what you mean.' It was important because it brought me to a place with other people who'd been through this."
 
Family, friends, and neighbors rallied around Mezas, returning the care and kindness she often delivered.
 
"It took a village. We had an incredible support system that drove the kids to school, took them on field trips, and lived with us temporarily," Jennifer says. "My husband cared for me, and everyone else who was part of the process cared for the boys. It took a weight off not worrying if they were okay and let me focus on not letting cancer stop me."
 
CHRISTIAN MEZAS stepped up to provide the support his two younger brothers needed. He served as a shoulder to lean on for the youngest of the Mezas boys and found the balance his other brother needed between space to process things on his own and being a caring older brother. When things felt dire for Christian, he turned to his faith. 
 
"Everything was day-by-day. I woke up and made sure my brothers got ready so they could have a good day, but in school, my mind was never really there. There was always something else I was thinking about," Mezas says. "A lot of it was hoping and praying. I got a lot of support from my faith, believing God has a plan for us all, and no matter what happened, it would be part of that plan." 
 
Christian and his faith were a rock when things seemed bleak, especially during one incident when the side effects of Jennifer Mezas's chemotherapy seemed too much to handle. 
 
Mezas homeschooled her boys during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as the family managed exposure while her chemo compromised her immune system. During one session, she suddenly found herself unable to talk and struggling to breathe. Her husband, Erny-Jay Mezas, scrambled to call EMS while Christian ran to his mother's side and held her hand.
 
"I thought I was going to die, and I just kept thinking, I can't die while he's holding my hand," Mezas exclaims. "I needed him so badly. I don't know if he actually knew how much I needed him to hold my hand. It was scary, but we are through it and without any long-term trauma."
 
Whereas a cancer diagnosis is instantaneous, recovery and remission are long, non-linear processes. After three years of treatment, surgeries, and living everything day-to-day for Mezas – unable to plan something as simple as meals or whether she'd be able to walk on her own – eventually, she was able to plan for family time, then vacations, and her future.
 
The Mezas family grew closer through the ordeal, simultaneously helping their family matriarch through cancer while living in a COVID-19 bubble. 
 
"They say intense illnesses can divide families or bring them together, and it absolutely brought us closer. It made us all understand we work together to better each of us as a unit and individually," Jennifer Mezas says. "When we spend time together, it's genuinely spending time together. Even now that he's in college, Christian still comes home and wrestles with his brothers. It makes my heart melt because I don't know that's something many 18-year-olds are going to do with their middle school brothers." 
 
"Before this, my brothers and I had never really been through anything. Three boys going through middle school and high school, sharing emotions isn't something we were super close with," Christian says. "But this brought us closer. It made us realize how important it is to look out for each other because no matter what happens, we'll always have each other. It also opened our eyes to all our mom does and grew our appreciation for it."
 
With continuing medication and six-month checkups, there is no one singular moment that marks an ending point, but Jennifer Mezas remembers one that's as close as one gets. 
 
"I remember going for a massage for the first time in years, and they had a questionnaire asking if the customer had cancer," she recalls. "And I'd just gone to my doctor, and he said, 'You can say you're cancer-free now.' I put that on the card, and they gave me the massage for free. That was a feeling I didn't think I'd have."
 
Surviving cancer can transform moments most people take for granted into indelible memories. It can also shift priorities to make time to create more of such moments, like at a soccer game.
 
"Normally, I have STEM club on Wednesdays, but I knew it was going to be a special day, so I asked a co-worker to cover for me," Jennifer Mezas says of attending the Oct. 16 game. "I'm pretty loud during games and was cheering from the get-go, so when [Christian's goal] went in, I was waving my towel and hollering. Then, when he did the heart, I was like, 'I see you.'" 
 
The pink ribbons and signs have long since been taken down in the RAC until next October, but that goal will always be in the box score and etched in their memories as a day the Mezas family celebrated two victories.