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If you haven’t been to Children’s Mercy Park, you haven’t heard the chants.
Yeah, you may have heard a few Sporting Kansas City-specific songs during a match. But the best chant of the day happens before the first whistle.
“Mah-tay-oh [clap, clap, clap], Mah-tay-oh [clap, clap, clap]”
“Ell-oh-weez [clap, clap, clap], Ell-oh-weez [clap, clap, clap]”
The names change each game. The sentiment is the same.
Before every SKC match, the cameras hone in on a kid sitting in the lone orange seat in the stadium. And The Cauldron, SKC’s supporters’ section, lights up with a simple song tailor-made for that day’s special guest.
It’s a Sunday in late August 2022 and six-year-old Matteo Rodriguez doesn’t look like himself. He’s been coughing a lot lately. There have been a lot of trips to the doctor and not a lot of clear answers.
After church, Matteo’s mom, Jennifer, takes him to urgent care. They’re there longer than expected. By the end of the day, they’re being asked to head to the hospital. By the next morning, Matteo has been diagnosed with stage 3 Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. It’s 11 days before Matteo’s seventh birthday.
Jennifer and Matteo’s dad, Pablo, are forced to cancel Matteo’s birthday party. They’re forced to reckon with finding a tumor in Matteo’s chest so large that the doctors are questioning how Matteo is able to breathe. They’re forced to try and grasp that it’s unclear if treatment will be successful.
What followed were long days in the hospital. Sometimes the trips lasted eight to 10 hours as Matteo began chemotherapy. One trip lasted a month. For Matteo, those trips were time for treatment and time for soccer. When he’d wake up at 6 a.m. to head to the hospital, Matteo would make sure his Switch and a copy of FIFA were in tow. When he played, he played as his new favorite team: Sporting Kansas City.
A few weeks before his diagnosis, Matteo and his family went to their first SKC game.
On his seventh birthday, Matteo received a video featuring Sporting KC players wishing him happy birthday.
A few months after his diagnosis, Matteo would meet the same players he’d been playing with day after day.
In 2018, a new Sporting KC tradition began. The Victory Project, a program designed to enrich the lives of children with cancer and make soccer accessible for those in need, began honoring a child battling cancer by providing a customized, VIP experience on SKC match weekends.
Each honoree and their families meet with the team at training on Fridays. Sometimes that means being shy as professional athletes come over to say hello – SKC make sure to show a quick biography to their players before every honoree visit – and sometimes that means immediately going into conversations and kicking a ball around like the kid is part of the squad.
They at least look like they’re part of the squad. Each honoree gets a custom jersey with their name on the back. They also get a shopping spree at the team store to grab as much merch as possible.
On matchday, they arrive at the stadium with their favorite foods and snacks waiting for them in a special suite. The orange seat is right outside the door.
In late November 2021, eight-year-old Eloise Hennessy’s parents called her upstairs to talk. Her parents, Nick and Cara, were being calmer than normal. Cautious.
Eloise asked what was wrong. Nick and Cara did their best to explain Stage III Anaplastic Large Cell Lymphoma. All Eloise can remember afterward is running to her room and closing the door.
Seven days later, Eloise underwent treatment at Children’s Mercy Hospital for the first time. With the world still coming out of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were strict rules. Eloise had to stay in her room without her full family around her.
Her hair began to fall out over the course of six treatments. She only got called a boy once, but it was enough to hurt her confidence.
Fortunately, her hair is all back these days. Eloise went into remission in April 2022. In August, she got the full Victory Project experience.
The SKC players play a key role in that experience. On their trip to training, John Pulskamp talked with Eloise and her family for a while. Graham Zusi made sure to grab an extra pair of signed cleats for Eloise’s sister. Johnny Russell delivered a brand-new jersey. And everyone on the team made time for Eloise.
“Every player came over and said hello to her,” Nick Hennessy said. “And it wasn't just like, ‘Hi, how are you?’ There were multiple people who stopped and spent enough time where it was a truly authentic experience where they actually wanted to know her story.”
Sporting players take pride in making the Victory Project experience memorable for the honorees. But the honorees give as much as they get.
“You know, for me, I live a privileged life,” SKC attacker Khiry Shelton said. “I've been blessed with a lot of great things in my life, and to see young kids going through what they're going through and fighting through that, it gives me strength. It gives me faith. They're strong, and they're always smiling.”
Each year, The Victory Project gives players a photobook of the team’s interactions with that season’s honorees. SKC winger Dániel Sallói says he looks at the books from time to time. Sometimes, the kids in the books reach out just to say they’re a few years older and a whole lot healthier. They also reach out to say thanks for a meaningful day in a miserable moment.
“It's one of those things where it's a good reminder,” Sallói said. “Sometimes you have tough moments in your life or tough situations, and these kids are, many times, fighting so much bigger battles that we can't even wrap our head around. And they come to our practice and they put on a full smile, and they are the happiest that they can be living in a situation that is so difficult.
"It's just a perfect reminder of how everything is tiny in our lives. When it comes to these problems, there are so many bigger things out there. I think we can give something to them, but they give something to us as well. It's a very, very special thing.”
It’s not just the meetings. It’s how the SKC community treats the honorees as a whole. Even if that’s just saying the kid’s name.
“Before the game starts, the supporters, pretty much all of our fans, turn to them and do a little chant and they shout their name and it's focused in on them,” Shelton said. “And in a way, for me, it's very spiritual. It's like giving energy and positivity towards them, which I love, and it lights me up every time.”
At his weakest, Matteo Rodriguez weighed 40 pounds. He could barely walk. The cancer and the chemo hit hard.
But in September 2023, a little over a year after his initial diagnosis, he and his family were able to make it out to Sporting KC’s training ground to meet the people who had wished Matteo happy birthday a year prior. The ones who had been with him on his Switch while he stayed in the hospital. Matteo and SKC were officially meeting for the first time, but it felt like they had known each other for years.
The next day, he took his spot in the orange seat.
“Mah-tay-oh [clap, clap, clap], Mah-tay-oh [clap, clap, clap]”
“I thought that millions and millions of people were involved and helping me in so many ways,” Matteo said. “It made me happy and super distracted. It just made me want to thank them all for all that they were doing and helping me out in so many ways.”
Eloise took her spot in the orange chair a few months before Matteo. She even got a mic attached to her jersey for the experience. You can watch her, just a few months removed from childhood cancer, take full control of the experience. You can see her personality shine through. And you can watch her react to…
“Ell-oh-weez [clap, clap, clap], Ell-oh-weez [clap, clap, clap]”
“It was like so surreal. I got to come here, and it was just very like something that not a lot of kids get to experience and it made me feel special,” Eloise said. "I felt important. I knew I was there because I had survived cancer, which was awesome. But I felt like, I don't know, like it was, I don't think of the word. But it was really cool.”
In February of this year, doctors declared Matteo cancer-free. He plays soccer in real life too, not just on his Switch, and is a right winger.
Eloise hasn’t relapsed since her initial diagnosis.
Both are healthy. And both are members of a group that includes nearly 200 matchday honorees who have shared the Victory Project experience and who have spent a few moments as the most famous person in an 18,000-plus capacity stadium.
“It was magic, right?” Nick Hennessy said. “You watch your child just suffer endlessly for months, and you're on a floor with children who are in the same situation. And you know that there's – there are moments in that situation where it's pretty bleak, you know, from diagnosis to chemo. It's a pretty rough road if you feel very much like you're kind of walking alone in a lot of ways, even though there's tons of people around to support you.
“So, the experience of coming here and her getting to really just be the center of attention to be celebrated for beating this terrible disease that she acquired was pretty awesome. But also just, you kind of live in the shadows a little bit when it's your child and you kind of step back and watch her glow when the last seven or eight months of your life have been watching her just wither away. Fade, grow pale and lose her hair and this and that.
"It was an incredibly powerful emotional experience to watch that transition from a bleak outcome to a celebration of your child. It was special in more ways than I can ever tell you.”
