Chris Hegardt is greater than that viral Sacha Kjlestan picture, greater than a most cancers survivor

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — All of us have our sports activities memorabilia collections, whether or not or not it’s it a shoebox below the mattress or a custom-built basement show that appears like a cul-de-sac Cooperstown. All of us have an autographed ball or a field of ticket stubs, maybe a jersey or two.

Chris Hegardt has a really good assortment of jerseys, as most soccer gamers do, however his stash of shirts serves as a roadmap for the inconceivable profession of the 20-year-old midfielder. From the youth league fields of suburban San Diego, by the soccer improvement ladder from Los Angeles to Europe to Seattle, to the NCAA Faculty Cup and in the end to the royal blue No. 19 jersey he wears now, as a rookie participant with growth MLS membership Charlotte FC.

The jerseys Hegardt wears on the pitch cowl up the scar that slices throughout his stomach. The jerseys that hold on his partitions, in his childhood bed room again dwelling in San Diego and in his nonetheless sparsely adorned Charlotte bachelor pad, cowl up nothing. As an alternative, they reveal the story of a kid-turned-cancer-survivor-turned-man whose soccer desires are nonetheless coming true. That is very true for a pair of uniforms handed to him by the identical American soccer legend a dozen years aside.

“It feels so significantly better while you accomplish issues understanding that you have overcome a lot,” Hegardt says now, his bearded face framed by a perpetual smile. “That is the aim, to encourage many extra folks to change into a professional soccer participant and be a superb particular person. And for all these folks which can be sick to maintain going and maintain preventing.”

Now, the story of the primary jersey.

It was December 5, 2009. Chris Hegardt was one month shy of his eighth birthday and spending his Saturday morning doing precisely what tens of millions of youngsters his age do each weekend: He was enjoying soccer. However Hegardt was already acting at a degree that almost all by no means attain. There was a constructing buzz round soccer-crazed Southern California that he is likely to be one the most effective in his age group not simply within the space, however within the nation.

– E60: The Reunion: Saturday, 9 a.m. ET, stream on ESPN
– MLS on ESPN+: Stream LIVE games, replays (U.S.)
– Soccer on ESPN+: FC Daily | Futbol Americas
– Haven’t got ESPN? Get instant access

Then a play occurred that did not merely threaten Chris’s soccer desires. His father, Ron, was afraid it may cost a little his son’s life.

“He went into the ball and another child kicked the ball and it hit Chris within the abdomen instantly, which does occur,” Ron, a wealth administration advisor, remembers now. “He was having hassle respiratory and that was apparent. Then he was throwing up somewhat bit. We knew one thing wasn’t proper.”

Ron took Chris to a neighborhood emergency room, the place it was found that he was bleeding internally. Immediately, father and son had been in an ambulance, rushed to San Diego Youngsters’s Hospital for emergency surgical procedure.

“I used to be most involved about what did that bleeding imply? I imply, is he going to…” Ron pauses to choke again tears. “Is he going to make it to the hospital?”

The surgical procedure stopped the bleeding, but in addition found the horrifying trigger. Chris’s liver was coated in tumors, attributable to a type of liver most cancers recognized in youngsters solely two or thrice per yr in america. The impression of the ball had ruptured a type of tumors.

Greater than a month of chemotherapy remedies adopted because the now-eight-year-old waited for a liver match to land onto the organ donation database. An organ lastly turned out there, tragically, when a teen was killed in a automotive accident.

On February 10, 2010, Chris Hegardt obtained a brand new liver, one half of the donor liver. The opposite half went to a different younger affected person. He went dwelling 10 days later, however confronted a every day routine of capsules to stop his physique from rejecting the brand new organ and one other three months of chemotherapy.

In the midst of all of it, Chris obtained a go to from Sacha Kljestan. Lately, we all know Kljestan as a workhorse of American soccer, a 17-year skilled and former common of the United States males’s nationwide workforce. In early 2010, although, Kljestan was nonetheless on the rise, a four-year member of now-defunct franchise Chivas USA. Ron Hegardt and Kljestan had a mutual good friend, and Ron had requested by that good friend if Kljestan may cease by and see his ailing son.

“I completely keep in mind it as a result of this wasn’t an official go to that my membership workforce had mentioned like, ‘Oh, there is a request for you within the hospital to do a hospital go to.’ This was a good friend of mine,” Kljestan remembers, including that it was former teammate Sam Reynolds who requested. “It is at a youngsters’s hospital in LA and convey a jersey or one thing. This child’s an enormous soccer fan. He is been within the hospital now. He cannot wait to get out to go play soccer once more. And it will imply so much for those who got here and talked to him.

“He had the most effective smile on his face all day, and I simply thought, how is that this doable? He is obtained such a constructive angle and he is going by such a tough time.”

Kljestan gave Chris a U.S. jersey they usually took a photograph collectively. Then, the professional went again to work and Chris went again to his restoration. That summer season a weakened, however undeterred, Chris Hegardt returned to the enjoying discipline. After video games he would collapse onto his mattress beneath that Kljestan jersey, now framed on his wall.

My spouse and I visited this younger man again in 2010 at Youngsters’s Hospital LA. Right now I bumped into his dad and mom in our resort foyer in Charlotte. His title is Chris Hegardt and he is a rookie midfielder for @CharlotteFC. I gave him a jersey as soon as, hopefully he’ll give me his tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/NhXiVIAGzp

— Sacha Kljestan (@SachaKljestan) March 4, 2022

“Folks had been all, ‘I am unable to imagine you are letting him play!” remembers Chris’s mom, Kim. “And I am like, God, he is been by a lot. He will be superb. Let him do it.”

Hegardt’s comeback story garnered lots of native consideration, particularly as he entered remission and was reinserted into the “greatest participant at his age” dialog. The nation discovered about Chris by way of an E:60 feature titled “Saved By Soccer.” In that tv story, 10-year-old Chris sits on his mattress and says to ESPN The Journal’s Tom Good friend: “Like, I am glad they discovered it as a result of I might’ve been most likely extra sicker and they might’ve discovered it out later and it will’ve been larger.”

When Hegardt watches that story now, he has the identical response all of us do once we see ourselves as youngsters in dwelling films. He cringes. Nevertheless it additionally reminds him of his anxiousness, even then, to shed the label of “Chris the child with most cancers” and get on together with his desires.

“I simply saved enjoying soccer. I saved being a child. I saved dwelling my life. And I used to be simply questioning the place this life would take me.”

He did a stint abroad, making an attempt his hand on the European soccer developmental pyramid. He frolicked in Los Angeles within the developmental program of the LA Galaxy. In the end, he moved to a pair of Washingtons, first with the Seattle Sounders academy after which at Georgetown College. With the Hoyas, he made it to the 2021 NCAA Faculty Cup, soccer’s model of the Last 4. Barely a month after a heartbreaking loss within the semifinals, Chris joined his household for a Montana trip, already targeted on his return to highschool and an opportunity to avenge that loss.

The Hegardts had been at lunch when the cellphone rang. It was Chris’s agent. The latest membership in MLS, Charlotte FC, was buying him from the Sounders.

“It was a second I would been ready for my entire life, every thing I’ve labored for,” Hegardt says of the decision. “For me, once I signed the professional contract, I regarded again at my life and I am like, rattling, I’ve obtained to take this in and luxuriate in it.”

“All you need is on your youngsters’s desires to return true, ?” Kim Hegardt explains. “While you undergo chemo and also you lose your hair. I keep in mind we shaved his head someday within the yard, and he was like … I am unable to keep in mind what soccer participant he thought he regarded like, however he did not seem like that soccer participant. Nonetheless, he was like, ‘Oh, I look identical to Messi!’ And he had bald spots in all places. It wasn’t Messi, however, , it is so much. I am all the time like within the right here and now in that he is doing nice, he is wholesome, however I understand how exhausting he is labored, so it is a actually superior feeling that he is been capable of finding success with the issues he loves.”

And that brings us to the story of the second jersey.

It was March 4, 2022, the eve of Charlotte’s inaugural dwelling recreation, held in Financial institution of America Stadium, the house of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. Ron and Kim Hegardt had flown in from San Diego and had been hanging out within the foyer of their resort, just some blocks from the stadium. Ron obtained a work-related cellphone name and stepped outdoors to take it. As Kim waited on a foyer sofa, a person sat down subsequent to her. She instantly acknowledged him. It was Kljestan, now a midfielder for the LA Galaxy, on the town to face Charlotte FC.

“She simply mentioned, ‘Oh, excuse me, are you Sacha?'” Kljestan remembers. “And I mentioned, ‘Yeah.'”

“I might have by no means, if he was throughout the room, gone over and mentioned something,” she says. “However the reality he simply sat subsequent to me, I mentioned, ‘Sacha, my title’s Kim Hegardt. I do know you are not going to recollect this, however you got here and visited my son, Chris Hegardt, within the hospital most likely 12 years in the past when he’d had most cancers and a liver transplant. I simply wished to thanks. That meant so much to our household.'”

When Ron returned to the foyer, he noticed his spouse speaking to the soccer professional. The daddy excitedly scrolled by the digital camera roll of his cellphone till he discovered the photographs of the 2010 hospital go to together with his son. Right away, the recollections of the go to got here dashing again to Kljestan. The chat and jersey reward to Chris Hegardt had meant so much to him then, however this was deeper. The girlfriend he’d introduced with him to the hospital a dozen years earlier was now his spouse they usually had since change into dad and mom themselves, with a toddler very near what Chris’s age had been the day of their go to.

“She’s like, ‘Yeah, so now he is enjoying.’ And I used to be like, ‘Okay. Cool. What? In faculty or the academy?'” Kljestan remembers concerning the likelihood assembly with Kim Hegardt. “She’s mentioned, ‘Oh no, he is on Charlotte.’ And I used to be like, ‘Does Charlotte have an academy already?’ And she or he was like, ‘No, he is signed to the primary workforce.’ After which I used to be like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ I could not wait to name my spouse. I had [Kim] textual content me the photographs from that day as a result of she nonetheless had them on her cellphone, after which I despatched them to my spouse straight away.”

That evening, Ron and Kim had dinner with Chris. They instructed him about operating into Kljestan and that he had requested to submit their photographs from 2010 on his social media feeds.

At first, Chris mentioned no. “He does not need to be outlined by this, ?” explains his father. “My older son and his fiancée talked to him and mentioned that this was the week after Ukraine was invaded and never lots of nice stuff was happening on the planet, they usually simply mentioned, ‘Chris, it is a good story. It is best to let him submit it.'”

His reluctance was deep rooted, relationship all the way in which again to these first days of returning to the pitch after the story of his prognosis and restoration had change into a nationwide story. Athletes need to be acknowledged as athletes first, measured by their skills first and every thing else second.

“It is tough as a result of it is a stability between the 2,” he confesses, even now. “Like, Chris Hegardt has such an ideal story, however he is additionally an excellent soccer participant.”

“I perceive his dilemma and that he needs to be acknowledged just for what he is finished on the sector,” Kljestan says. “However on the flip aspect, I might encourage him to embrace it as a result of he is an inspiration to youngsters, and he is an inspiration to folks which can be going by tough issues.”

Actually, that very week of Charlotte FC’s first dwelling recreation he had met with a neighborhood Charlotte baby, Liam Flynn, a 10-year-old soccer-loving most cancers survivor. It felt acquainted to Chris. It additionally felt good to see the smile on Flynn’s face. So, that evening at dinner, Chris instructed his father to textual content Kljestan and mentioned it was okay to submit the photographs from 2010. By the next morning, the tweet had gone viral.

That evening, Charlotte and the Galaxy performed in entrance of an MLS-record crowd of 75,000 followers. A lot of these followers had seen Kljestan’s submit and anxiously waited to see if the 2 may find yourself on the sector collectively. The veteran checked in for the visiting workforce within the 53rd minute. Within the 87th minute, the rookie lastly joined him to a thunderous response from the house crowd.

Recollects Kljestan: “I glanced over and noticed him subbing into the sport, I gave myself somewhat silent fist pump. I used to be like, ‘Sure!'”

The sport ended moments later, a 1-0 win for the Galaxy, however the 75,000 stood pat ready to see what occurred subsequent. A jersey trade. The primary time Chris Hegardt obtained a Sacha Kljestan jersey, he was an 8-year-old boy battling most cancers. Now he obtained a second, however as a wholesome, 20-year-old skilled soccer participant, standing at midfield and handing Kljestan a jersey of his personal.

play

The Charlotte FC crowd comes out in full drive, with 74,300 in attendance for the membership’s MLS debut.

Kljestan apologized, anxious his submit had overshadowed Chris’s MLS debut. Hegardt instructed him to not fear. Kljestan mentioned of the soccer life: “Preserve working, there’s lots of ups and downs,” and added, “For those who ever want something, let me know.”

Within the 5 months since, Hegardt has battled by accidents to return to the Charlotte FC lineup. He has additionally discovered to raised embrace his function as an inspiration. Even when he had wished to keep away from his backstory for the sake of specializing in soccer, the always-growing quantity of people that have heard his story would not have allowed that to occur. At any time when Charlotte asks for volunteers to take up group tasks, particularly these involving youngsters entrenched in well being struggles, the membership says that Chris is the primary participant to lift his hand.

“When your baby or anybody goes by a most cancers battle or any kind of well being scare, it is like, ‘Why me? Why my son?'” explains his mom. “I believe Christopher is lastly embracing the why. Like, ‘Why did I’m going by this?’ I all the time really feel like he wants to provide again as a result of he is been fortunate. I believe he is beginning to put on that badge of honor somewhat bit.”

If he ever loses sight of that mission, he solely wants to have a look at a pair of Sacha Kljestan jerseys, hanging on a pair of partitions 2,400 miles and 12 years aside.

“I will keep in mind that second perpetually as a result of I will have a look at my wall in 35 years and say, ‘I keep in mind once I swapped jerseys with Sacha Kljestan,'” Hegardt says. “That is why when persons are watching this, I hope in 15 years, my profession will take me many locations. However yeah, that is simply the beginning of it. And like I mentioned, I am not content material, I simply need to maintain working and maintain going to the subsequent degree. And I am simply excited to see the place it goes, as a result of I imagine for those who work exhausting and also you give every thing you may have every single day, the world will care for you. God will care for you. So, I am simply excited and blessed to maintain going.”