More than 70 children with disabilities will get to have their own "Super Bowl" moment during the 16th annual Victory Day.
The event takes place at Woodhaven High School from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Sept. 12. Children will participate in football, cheerleading or marching band activities and partner with an athlete from across 12 different high schools.
Aaron Segedi, a teacher at Boyd W. Arthurs Middle School in Trenton and former defensive coordinator for Trenton High School's football team, founded the event in 2010 after overcoming a cancer diagnosis in 2005. He received a liver transplant from his sister after chemotherapy and radiation treatments destroyed his liver. He faced cancer again in 2009 and 2013, defeating the disease each time,
according to the event's website.
Segedi said community members rallied around him during his first two battles with cancer and he wanted to find a way to thank them for their support.
"I kinda wanted to [implement] a program or something to give back to the community that supported me so much and came up with this idea of having these children in our area … having their Super Bowl and scoring a touchdown," Segedi said.
Segedi has brought the Victory Day event to a number of schools across the country including Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland and Florida, according to a press release for the Trenton event.
The event has given participants and their families something to cheer about. Segedi recalled a conversation with a father of a boy with autism who took part in a Victory Day.
"He was going to Dick's Sporting Goods to buy [his son] a pair of football cleats that he never realized how special that was going to be to that family," Segedi said about the conversation. "He said, 'I know my son's never going to play organized sports. He's never going to have a moment like this. But tomorrow's going to be the day.'"
Segedi invites people from across metro Detroit to attend and see those special moments.
The cost of admission to the event is a canned food donation, which will go to the Trenton Food Pantry.
"This community wrapped its arms around me when I was sick," he said. "They took care of my family, and I look at it as a second chance in life."
For more information about Victory Day, visit victorydayfootball.com
Contact Eric Guzmán: eguzman@freepress.com; 313-222-1850.
Victory Day
When: 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Sept. 12
Where: Woodhaven High School, 24787 Van Horn Road, Brownstown Township
Admission: No tickets needed, but the organizer asks attendees to bring a canned food donation
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Downriver teacher, cancer survivor created Victory Day for kids
