A photo of two high school football players praying together on the field in Sherman, Texas, on Friday night has taken social media by storm.
When Sherman High School senior Gage Smith found out that the mother of a young man on the opposing team was battling cancer, he decided to show him how much he cared.
“I just had a moment with him praying over him, his mom and his family,” Smith said of the picture of him kneeling with Mesquite High School player, Ty Jordan.
Jordan’s aunt posted the photo on her Facebook page, and it has since been shared more than 150,000 times.
“To see what it blew up I was very surprised by it, and I wasn’t expecting it to be like that you know. I was just doing it for him and doing it for his mom and his family,” Smith commented.
Sherman’s head football coach J.D. Martinez, whose wife snapped the picture, said Smith always acts like a leader whether he is on or off the field.
“He’s a true leader, and he has compassion, and it followed through for a lot of the guys on the team,” he noted, adding that “It’s pretty special that kind of everybody gets to see really what he is, he’s that type of kid all the time, it’s just not in front of the cameras or anything like that, he’s like that every day.”
Smith knows Jordan from playing with him on another team and said that once the game is over, that does not mean players must take sides.
“When you’re playing the game, you’re playing to win and the other team is the enemy. But, afterward, you still have respect for the other opponent,” he commented, adding that “Football brings people together in so many different ways, and that was just one example of it that night.”