Tralee “Mama Ringo” Hale, mother of Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Kelee Ringo. Photo courtesy: Tralee Hale-Ringo
The NFL ramps up their campaign to fight cancer during Breast Cancer Awareness month
By Shara Talia Taylor
“So, when I emphasize the importance of early detection and zero procrastination, I just can’t put it into words how important both of those are. I almost paid the ultimate price. I almost didn’t get to see my son play in the Super Bowl.” –Tralee Hale-Ringo
Breast cancer survivor Tralee “Mama Ringo” Hale, mother of Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Kelee Ringo, knows the importance of early cancer screenings and wants to continue to share her story, especially this October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Photos courtesy: Tralee Hale-Ringo
The NFL and their campaign Crucial Catch, a year-round initiative in partnership with the American Cancer Society (ACS), aims to educate fans about early cancer detection and risk reduction as teams, and players like Kelee, highlight the topic this month. For Kelee, he participates in team activities and is supportive of his mother, while Hale tackles the topic off the field.
“I’m just humbled, and my life was spared, and that’s why I have to use my voice and advocate.” Hale said.
Kelee has championed those efforts.
“I just want to be able to support my mom, no matter what she does and just be able to help her voice her journey,” he said, “That’s just [the] overall goal and to help others understand getting your scans is definitely important.”
Both have shared their story through social media and in the news.
Mama Ringo’s personal journey fighting cancer began in Phoenix, Arizona. Hale, originally from Tacoma, Washington, where her son was born, moved to Phoenix for work. Kelee’s father was a member of the Navy at the time, and she was a primary care giver. Kelee attended high school in Washington, but Hale transferred him to a high school in Scottsdale for his sophomore year. When her son committed to play college football at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, she planned to relocate behind him in order to not miss a game. She was 39 and with her son’s preparations, she had been ignoring something important.
“I’m embarrassed to say, but at 10 o’clock on my left breast, I had a palpable mass that was approximately the size of a pencil eraser,” she said. “I felt it and ignored it for just about nine months, because I wasn’t 40 years old, cancer doesn’t run in my family, and I was a busy single mom trying to get my son out the door to college. I thought that I had time to have that mass examined.”
She said about nine days after her son left for college, following a mammogram and a biopsy of the mass, she was diagnosed with stage 3 triple-negative ductal carcinoma, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Dr. Jennifer Sims-Mourtada, Ph.D., the associate director of the Cawley Center for Translational Cancer Research in Delaware studies breast cancer, and in particular, TNBC.
“It’s called triple-negative because it doesn’t have any of the receptors that other breast cancers do, and so these receptors are important because we have drugs that target them,” she said. “Women with this type of cancer can only be treated with chemotherapy and radiation, but none of the newer therapies and it’s a very aggressive cancer. It primarily affects younger women and Black women.”
Sims-Mourtada said there is a trend of increasing incidents of breast cancer in women under 50. She is aware of women ages 40-50 and sometimes younger with TNBC. She is presently researching whether the environment where a woman lives interacts with genetics to increase risks of breast cancer in general and of TNBC.
“We think that there are different, what we call exposures, like alcohol use, different co-morbidities like diabetes, having children without breast feeding them that leads to an increase in inflammation, and this might have something to do with directing the type of breast cancer that you get,” she said. “We haven’t proven any of that yet, so this is kind of early research.”
Hale was surprised with her finding.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, because again, my plans were to pack up the house and relocate behind my son,” she shared. “When cancer knocks on your door, you can’t put it off.”
She had surgery and began chemotherapy.
“I opted for a bilateral mastectomy to remove all breast tissue, to prevent as much as possible, for that to return and might have to endure my treatment again,” she said. “They found dead cancer cells in my lymph nodes, as in the cancer was in the process of metastasizing and I started chemo just in the nick of time.”
Kelee experienced his own challenges at UGA.
“My freshman year of college, I actually had a shoulder injury,” he recalled.
His senior year of high school 2019-2020, the first year of COVID lockdown, he was dealing with the injury. He left June 3 to play college football. Unable to practice well he had surgery in August 2020. He began rehabilitating and simultaneously his mother was going through her treatment. She flew across country to help him.
“Passengers noticed how sickly my appearance was and even offered me their extra clear face mask that goes over your eyes in addition to the regular face mass requirement at the time,” she said. “Required a wheelchair to get from the airplane down to get my luggage and somehow managed to get into an Uber that was required to pull over for me to throw up approximately four times driving from Atlanta to Athens.” Kelee described the difficulty he was facing at the time.
“I was going through a tough time not playing ball and knowing that a beacon that could help my mom was being able to see me out on the field,” he said. “My mom’s a superhero of mine. She’s helped me get through a lot.”
Photos courtesy: Tralee Hale-Ringo
Things improved for Kelee. He became known for a 79-yard pick-six for the UGA Bulldogs, during the College Football Playoff National Championship game in January 2022 against the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. Kelee intercepted the pass of quarterback Bryce Young and changed the trajectory of the game for the team, as UGA won their first national championship since 1980.
Hale relocated from Arizona to Georgia and transferred her chemotherapy treatment. Her health improved and she began to share her story of survival. She was able to see her son’s college and later professional victories. Kelee was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles with the 105th overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. He reached another milestone in 2025 when he won Super Bowl LIX with the Philadelphia Eagles.
“So, when I emphasize the importance of early detection and zero procrastination, I just can’t put it into words how important both of those are,” Hale said. “I almost paid the ultimate price. I almost didn’t get to see my son play in the Super Bowl.”
Tralee Hale-Ringo celebrates the Eagles’ Super Bowl win with son Kalee.
Photos courtesy: Tralee Hale-Ringo
Kelee said the Super Bowl was a full circle moment as he reflected on winning at every level.
“You can get really emotional,” he said. “It’s honestly a great feeling. There’s no feeling like it.”
He knows his mother, who supported him along the way is also a champion.
“She’s the real soldier in just our lives overall,” he said. “It just definitely helped me overcome any adversity to any obstacle I went through in that year and years to come because of just seeing her fight.”
Kelee, his teammates, and other players, are ramping up their support for preventative measures this October with their NFL teams.
“Every club picks a Crucial Catch home game that will take place across the next couple of weeks of the season and it comes to life in several ways in the stadium,” said Anna Isaacson, Senior Vice President of Social Responsibility for the NFL. “Many teams bring survivors to the stadium and honor them.”
There are banners, messaging on their video boards or jumbotron, and announcements at the game.
“Our players, over the years have been so amazing with this campaign and actually with the American Cancer Society,” Isaacson said. “We’ve got a group of player ambassadors who raised their hand and essentially said they want to be a spokesperson for this campaign.”
Tanner McKee is an ambassador for the Philadelphia Eagles. The NFL has teamed with the American Cancer Society throughout the length of the campaign.
“We have worked with them since 2009 to really put out the Crucial Catch campaign to raise awareness for early detection and to provide screenings and education to those in underserved communities,” Isaacson said. “It started out and was for many years, a breast cancer specific campaign and then probably almost 10 years ago we decided that we could take what we had achieved with Crucial Catch, with the mass awareness and the pink campaign, and really bring that to multiple forms of cancer.”
According to the American Cancer Society website:
“Since 2009, Crucial Catch has raised more than $35 million, reaching over 1.9 million people with interventions to increase cancer screenings and improve outcomes through CHANGE grants, given to health centers in all NFL team markets to expand access to cancer screenings and preventive treatments. Aligned with the league’s commitment to social impact, these grants have supported more than 840,000 cancer screenings in identified communities with the greatest need.”
Sims-Mourtada said there are known risk factors for breast cancer and there are some preventative measures one can take, but none specifically for TNBC.
“For breast cancer in general, we have eat a healthy diet, exercise regularly, limit your alcohol use,” she said. “I think a lot of women don’t understand that alcohol is a risk factor for breast cancer.”
Kelee plans to continue to help others intercept cancer by supporting his mother’s efforts and through promoting the topic at events to increase awareness.
“Do anything you can do to catch it,” he said, “We don’t want anybody to have to go through that or go through anything that we had went through.”
Kelee has visited schools and has participated in activities with his team.
“I have a big mouth and I’m willing to use it and I’m going to educate,” Hale said about her goals now.
She intends to continue spreading awareness of breast cancer prevention and hopes to one day share her story through film.
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