If you ask Edgar Santana Castro what the hardest part of being a high school football player is, like many of his peers, he’ll say waking up early for school. But the 20-year-old’s first step out of bed each day is a bit different from what his teammates experience.
That difference has a 15-year-old story behind it that he tells calmly.
“Me and my brother were playing around, and I fell and broke some bones in my foot, so I had to go to the doctor and get a cast,” said Santana Castro. “They did tests, and they found out that I had cancer; it was pretty well developed.
“From then on, I had to go through a lot of treatments and chemo. When I was six years old, they said I had to amputate it, or the infection would spread. If the infection were to spread, then it would be gone to a point where amputation wouldn’t take it away.
That it will grow and then I’ll eventually die from that.”
So in second grade, while his classmates were learning to read and write, Santana Castro was fighting for his life.
“I remember all of it,” said the TechBoston Academy senior. “It was difficult. I was sad and disconnected because during that time, I couldn’t go to school at all. I was mostly at home doing chemo, checking up on my doctor, staying in the hospital, basically, withering away.”
After his surgery, the hard work continued. “It was months of leg strengthening exercises, stretches, just to basically get back into my physical condition from my knee and my leg.”
The young Edgar re-learning how to walk, this time with a prosthetic, likely would not have predicted that, come high school, he would become a tackle and guard for the TechBoston Bears and that by his senior year, he would earn the Spirit of Sport Award from the Commonwealthof Massachusetts.
“Coach Raul Brown, the former head coach of the team, came up to me and asked me to join,” said Santana Castro. “He was just randomly recruiting. They didn’t have a lot of team members. I was on my way home after school, going on my bus, and then he walked in and said, ‘You know what, you should join the team.’”
By the time Edgar took his seat on the bus, his mind was made up, but his mother was harder to convince that this was a good thing.
“My mom was worried about the physicality and all that,” he told The Reporter. “I was more in my head thinking that the harder it may sound or seem, the more I want to do. I wanted a real challenge.”
After joining the team, with his mother’s approval, he took on another hard challenge. But this was one he had some control over.
“He’s committed. Probably the most committed guy we have to our off-season program,” said TechBoston Coach Jason Seapker. “That says pretty much who he is as a football player because he’s doing all the same lifts that the rest of the team’s doing, obviously some of them may be adapted a little bit, but he pretty much is doing the same thing, and his attendance was much better than anybody else’s.”
All of which is why, when Santana Castro was honored with The Spirit of Sport Award on May 18 by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), it came as no surprise to Seapker and the TechBoston community.
The award recognizes student-athletes who exemplify resilience, dedication, leadership, and sportsmanship on and off the field. For four years, Santana Castro had done just that, acting as a source of inspiration for his school family.
“He’s helped me in multiple ways, but the most recent that I could speak of was when I had some health things going on,” said Seapker. “I was getting my last procedure done, which was the morning of his award, and I remember thinking of Edgar right then. If Edgar could do what he had to go through, then I’d have to be able to deal with this pain that I’m dealing with right now.”
Given his life experiences, Santana Castro’s spirit has had impacts far beyond the school’s campus on Peacevale Road. Most recently, it showed its value in Jamaica Plain, where 8-year-old Yozmar Montilla attends the Curley K8, the same school where Santana Castro was a pupil when he received his diagnosis.
Edgar Santana Castro with Yozmar Montilla, 8. Courtesy photo
“I have a lot of history there,” he said. “When I finally returned to school after the cancer treatment, I went to my third-grade class. But my teacher then transferred me to a second-grade class,” said Santana Castro. “I didn’t know anybody, so everyone was confused.” Now, over a decade later, he knows another student at the Curley, also in second grade, who is facing what he faced.
With the help of a translator, Eufemia Reyes told The Reporter that her son, Yozmar Montilla, is a fellow amputee. Unlike Santana Castro, he was born with a condition that cost him a leg as an infant. Despite the similar timelines, elementary school has proven difficult for both.
Reyes describes her son as reserved, explaining that he shies away from playing with his peers because they don’t have the disability he has. She added, “When he is around somebody who does, he gets more of that confidence.”
Cue Edgar Santana Castro.
Recently, he returned to the Curley to meet and hang out with Montilla. “It was very inspiring,” he said. “Just me accomplishing my goals is kind of paving a way for others to dream the same way.”
His next dream: Attend college and pursue a career as an entrepreneur. With his proven resilience, it seems that just about anything is possible.
