After a Christmas Eve cancer diagnosis, Harlan Hawks Coach Eddie Salas faced his toughest opponent yet.
SAN ANTONIO — Eddie Salas knows what it’s like to fight on the gridiron, having called the plays as head coach for Harlan Hawks Football since 2016.
Last spring, Salas found himself in a different battle–one against cancer.
His story started when he experienced some back pain last year that he decided to have checked out. It led to a phone call on Christmas Eve that changed his life.
“‘Is your wife there?'” he recalls the doctor saying. “‘Y’all might wanna sit down for this.’ I knew that wasn’t good.”
Salas was told that two of his back disks were highlighted on an MRI.
“The radiologist that read the MRI said that it was cancer.”
Eight months later, Salas is in remission–the culmination of a fight rooted in faith and an important realization he had one evening after his diagnosis.
“I’m staring at the ceiling and I’m thinking of all the things like, ‘OK, are my finances set for my family,'” he recalls. ‘I could feel my wife staring at me and she said, ‘I can’t do this without you. That was the click moment. That was night one where it clicked in me and (I) said, ‘Nah, we can’t be thinking this way.'”
He began viewing his cancer fight as something he wanted to win, a battle more important than any he’s experienced under the Friday night lights.
Salas’ primary tool in that battle: prayer.
“I realized that I didn’t have to do anything except pray,” he now says. “And have people around me pray. I think that gave me peace and strength. That gave me a purpose.”
He started taking things one day at a time, one treatment at a time, one prayer at a time.
The coach became used to seeing regular reports on his progress. Eventually, the day came where he got the one he was waiting for all along.
“I opened the portal and looked at it and just skipped through the whole mess of everything, (I) just wanted to see the remarks,” Salas said. “The first line I read said ‘No active lymphoma.’ I just just about fell off my chair.”
He credits his doctors for everything they’ve done for him since last December, when the tail-end of the high school football season yielded his biggest fight yet.
By the time he reached the milestone of remission, his attitude reached new heights.
“He told me, ‘Hey, you are in full remission,'” he said of his doctor’s evaluation that day. “And I was like, ‘Yes!’
Coach then asked his doctor: What’s next? “Could I go?”
“He said, ‘No,'” Salas recalls. “‘You are going to finish your sixth treatment.’ And I said, ‘Alright, let’s go! I can’t wait.'”
There was no ring-the-bell moment for Salas, only because the center where he was receiving treatment didn’t have one. But staff there commemorated his victory over cancer nonetheless.
“There was a certificate, and for me to get that and read it saying, ‘Congratulations on completing chemotherapy,’ that was my ring-the-bell moment,” Salas said. “It is amazing. It is a win. It was definitely that state championship in life that you get…. I’ve been very good about waking up in the morning and just thanking God for waking up in the morning.
“It starts with your faith,” he continued. “People say, ‘Well, it is just because you had cancer,’ but that is just the way life should be. Don’t quit and don’t give up. Lots of that is in your mind and your spiritual life. We serve a powerful God still, someone who can do anything.”
Coach Salas shared one final thought (football-related, of course).
“Our perspective is that if Coach Salas can beat cancer,” he says, “then we can win a state championship this year.”