Baseball team shows support for coach's mother battling cancer
PUTNAM CITY, Okla. (KFOR) — The Putnam City North baseball team is rallying around their coach and his mother, as she faces an opponent she didn't think she'd need a game plan for.
Support for her cancer journey can be seen on the diamond.
"They are a keeping me uplifted, when I can't be with her all the time," said Coach Brian Lockart.
Lockart heard the devastating news in January.
"She's my whole life," said Lockart.
His mother, Deana McLaughlin, is fighting small cell lung cancer. Her radiation and chemotherapy treatments are now a family affair.
"It's very aggressive," said McLaughlin. "I'm making it."
That means less time on the diamond with his Putnam City North baseball team.
"We were all kind of wondering why he would leave practice early," said Austin Guerrero, a sophomore on the team.
"I just told the boys in the indoor one day that I may be gone here and there to go be with her. I didn't want them to think that I wasn't just not showing up," said Lockart.
A couple of weeks ago, the duo shaved their heads in solidarity.
"We threw a towel around her and I took my shears and I said, 'Here we go,'" said Lockart.
The lone senior on the team, Cayden Swart, decided to take it much further.
"I was like, you know, what do you guys think about saving your heads?" said Swart. "And then lo and behold, like a lot of them said yes."
"We all had longer hair, mullets," said Junior Garcia.
The emotional reveal took place in the halls of the school.
"They show up at my classroom one morning with hoodies on," said Lockart. "They pulled their hoodies off and they all shaved their head for for her."
"We wanted to make him cry," said Guerrero.
"It was just good seeing him smile after some tough times he's had," said Garcia.
The coach wasn't the only one who was moved.
"I saw that and I just started crying, you know, I mean, it makes me tear now," said McLaughlin. "Do you know how hard it was to do away with all those flocks?"
The team has since embraced the new look.
"If we score a run or get a hit, we all take off our helmets and rub our heads," said Guerrero.
"It just shows what kind of kids that we've got within the program," said Lockart.
An entire team, determined to knock cancer out of the park.
McLaughlin recently learned her cancer is shrinking. The goal is to end treatment around April 24.