‘Pink out’ shows daughter’s love for mom battling cancer

Cathedral High School football players run on to the field before their Oct. 23 game against Lebanon High School wearing pink shoelaces. The shoelaces were a symbolic gesture to support fellow student Alyssa O’Malia’s effort to raise funds and awareness about breast cancer, the disease that her mother, Debi, is battling. (Submitted photo)

By John Shaughnessy

Similar to many teenaged girls, Alyssa O’Malia admits there have been times when her relationship with her mother could have been better.

Still, Alyssa has always known how much her mother, Debi O’Malia, has meant to her. She has just struggled sometimes in showing her mom the depth of her love.

So when her mom was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, the 17-year-old junior at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis wanted to find a way to let her mom know how much she cared, and how she plans to be there for her.

A trainer for Cathedral’s football team, Alyssa talked about her hope with some of her friends on the squad. A conversation with Cathedral football player Tony Skelton led to the idea of the team wearing pink—the symbolic color associated with efforts to combat breast cancer—during one of its games.

Then a conversation with football player Schuyler Montefalco sparked the idea of getting the Cathedral football fans involved in a “pink out”—where the fans would create a sea of pink by wearing pink shirts.

“I didn’t know how to support her,” says Alyssa, a member of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish in Carmel, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese. “Cathedral often does ‘white outs’ where all the students wear white shirts for the games. We figured we could do the same thing with pink shirts, and we could use the proceeds from selling them to give a donation to a local breast cancer foundation. I wanted my mom to come and see that it was for her.”

So for Cathedral’s Oct. 23 game against Lebanon High School, many people in the Cathedral crowd wore pink shirts on that cold, wet autumn night while the Cathedral football players wore pink shoelaces. And their coaches, starting with head coach Rick Streiff, wore pink t-shirts that said “Real Men Wear Pink” on the front and “Support the Cause and Man-Up” on the back.

“Alyssa asked me if there was something we could do with Breast Cancer Awareness Month [in October],” Streiff recalls. “She wanted to do something to help build up her mom’s spirits. Alyssa has a great bond with the guys on the team, and they wanted to be there for her. She ran the whole thing, and she was just magnificent. She likes to put up a tough exterior at times, but she’s a caring person. She knew this needed to be done, and she made it happen.”

The football players embraced the idea of wearing a touch of pink. The Cathedral coaches had the same reaction in wearing the pink T-shirts.

Streiff could also connect with Alyssa’s efforts on a personal basis. In 1973, his mother, Rosemary, died when he was just 11.

“I can understand when a child worries [about her mother],” Streiff says.

As a mother, Debi O’Malia prefers to put aside the worries and focus on the positives in her life. That list starts with her two children, Alyssa, and her son, Austin. Her voice is filled with pride and delight when she talks about them. She keeps the same tone when she recalls the night of the “pink out.”

“What a wonderful thing,” Debi gushes. “More than words can tell, it means so much to me. She’s got a lot on her plate. She’s a student, a football trainer, she does community service and she has a job. To do this was so amazing. It was such a wonderful effort on her part and just a fabulous thing for a daughter to do for her mother.”

Because the cancer and her chemotherapy treatments have diminished her immune system, Debi couldn’t be outside for too long on that cold, wet evening. Still, she went to the game with a friend, watching most of the time from the warmth of a car.

“It was such a beautiful thing,” Debi says. “It was so emotional for me. It brought tears to my eyes.”

Alyssa has special memories of that night, too.

“It was nice,” she says. “I’m close to the football team. It felt good to see the team running onto the field. I went up in the stands and thanked people for wearing pink. We raised more than $1,000, and it’s still continuing to grow.”

Her favorite memory of that night concerns her mom.

“She was feeling pretty sick that night, and it was cold, but she made it at the end for about five minutes,” Alyssa recalls. “She said it warmed her heart. She said she was proud of me and the school, and what we accomplished.

“It made me feel good. I felt like I let her know I could be with her through this time of struggle.” †