Seattle Seahawks fans celebrate Super Bowl 60 victory over Patriots
Seattle Seahawks fans took to the streets near their home stadium after the team defeated the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60.
When Stacey Gooden-Crandle had her son, she never imagined he would grow up to be a Super Bowl champion.
At the time, she said, she didn’t even know if he would make it home from the hospital.
Seattle Seahawks linebacker Derrick Hall was born in Mississippi in 2001 at 23 weeks old. Doctors quickly put him on life support, and his tiny body, weighing just 2 pounds, 9 ounces, fought to survive, his mother said.
“It’s been a trying time for our family,” Gooden Crandle told USA TODAY, adding that doctors have told her son may never walk or talk again.
Hall, now 25 years old, is 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs over 250 pounds. In Super Bowl 60, he attracted attention with two sacks, one tackle, and a fumble recovery at the end of the third quarter, contributing to the team’s victory.
His mother comes to watch every game.
“I never miss a game. He’s looking for me,” she said. “If he doesn’t find me, my phone rings at halftime, ‘Hey, where are you?’
One mother in the NICU tells another that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Off the field, Hall and her mother work together to raise awareness and funds for families with infants in neonatal intensive care units. Gooden-Crandle said Derrick Hall’s One Percent Foundation responds to all families who contact them. Hall’s nonprofit recently partnered with Huggies on the Natural Born Fighters campaign, with Huggies donating $1 for every social media share.
“I want people to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Gooden Crandle said.
Hall had been in the NICU for more than five months after birth. During that time, Gooden-Crandle said, her “faith in God, family and village surrounded her with love and support.” Miraculously, and to the surprise of his doctors, Hall made a successful recovery.
“I was mentally messed up. You never talk about what NICU parents go through,” Gooden Crandle said, adding that it’s very different from the typical parent’s birth story. “You have to leave the hospital while the baby is still there and fighting for his life. So it’s a different process. In that moment, my faith was strong, but I can’t say I wasn’t worried and I wasn’t scared because there were so many unknowns. There was so much uncertainty surrounding Derrick’s health.”
Gooden-Crandle said Hall was developmentally delayed until he was 6 years old. The first three years of his life were a revolving door of doctor visits. She was out of work during that time to care for her son, making it difficult financially for the family, but Gooden-Crandle said they managed.
Hall was a mischievous child and needed an outlet as he grew older, she said. Gooden-Crandle’s older brother encouraged him to play football.
“And I’m like, ‘Absolutely not.’ Like, my baby doesn’t play soccer. I’m not going to let anyone hurt him,” she said.
She hesitantly signed him up to play flag football when he was 4 years old. Even then, she said, his coaches knew he was a star. Although initially reluctant to let Hall continue with the sport, he fell in love with the game.
“It helped him get a sense of normalcy,” Gooden Crandle said. “Just running around and playing soccer with the other boys gave him a sense of security.”
Sitting in the stands during the Super Bowl and watching his son win, “there were so many emotions.” After the win, she hugged him and told him how proud she was to be his mother. “You did it,” she told him.
“Then he said, ‘No, we did it,'” she recalls. “I think that moment validated all the hard work and how he got to this point.”
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the care economy for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact Madeline at: memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ With X.
