Michael Phelps, was featured on ESPN’s “My Wish” series tonight with 16 year old swimmer Hailey Cannaday. ESPN partnered with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to show viewers how star athletes are able to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions. Cannaday is from Clintonville, Ohio and is battling osteosarcoma. Her mother Maggie submitted her wish to meet Phelps to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Four other sports stars along with Michael Phelps will be featured on the show granting the wishes of different children. The other four athletes or teams are the San Francisco 49ers, WWE® Superstar John Cena, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen,and Minnesota Lynx player Maya Moore.
Starting July 19th, ESPN will air one “My Wish” special per day through July 23rd, and then on July 23rd ESPN’ SportCenter will air a one-hour special highlighting all five stories. Each story may also be viewed at ESPN.com following its original air date.
View Hailey Cannaday’s story below:
“(Phelps) has been my idol all along, though. He’s a super human. Eight gold medals (in the 2008 Beijing Games) … We may never see anyone ever do anything like that again. It’s jaw-dropping. All of my teammates call him the human Aquaman.” – Hailey Cannaday to the Westerville News
Cannaday competed for her high school team as a freshman, receiving the team’s Most Improved Ceremony. Shortly after that, however, she began feeling pain in her knee. After multiple trips to the doctors, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. Ten weeks of chemotherapy, surgeries, and then another 20 weeks of more chemotherapy interfered with her swim team’s award ceremony, and she never physically received her trophy.
“She has had 10 surgeries in about a year’s time,” Haliey’s mother said. “She had a blood clot from her first port (for chemotherapy) and all sorts of surgeries. She had a nodule in her right lung in February, and they removed it. She had a checkup on May 3 and they found two nodules in her left lung but were only able to remove one. The other was too small. So after this wonderful wish is granted, she’ll have a small break before starting chemo again on July 9. She has had some rocky days, but she’s been a trooper, for the most part.”
Cannaday was asked to come to the high school to pick up her trophy one day, but when she walked in the building, she was greeted by an entourage of her closest friends and family. While at the high school, her idol Michael Phelps told her via Skype that she would be going to Colorado Springs to meet Phelps and see the US Olympic Training Center with him at the beginning of July.
“I’ve never met anyone famous, so to be meeting my idol and the best swimmer of all time … I had trouble just Skyping with him. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him when I get there.”
Cannaday flew into Colorado Springs on Phelps’ birthday and hung out with him at the Olympic training center. Despite battling cancer, Cannaday hasn’t let osteosarcoma affect her dreams of swimming in college.
“I can honestly say this ESPN/Make-A-Wish event is one of the coolest things I’ve ever been involved with.” – Hailey’s coach John DeRing
Hailey has passed away.????
Hello this is Maggie, Haileys mother. Unfortunately on Nov. 25 at 9:57p EST we had to say farewell to my beloved daughter. She fought hard for almost 3 years but the disease was just too aggressive and overtook her lungs. My sister-in-law has started a GoFundMe campaign to help us with her final arrangement expenses. If anyone could please help by donating and/or sharing to social media it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and God bless. #HaileyStrong https://www.gofundme.com/hashtaghaileystrong
After all the highs or lows, it just feels good to see MP being his best self. That’s the top.
Awesome.
Terrific presentation. Saw it on the big screen Mon. Nite. Nice shots of training center. Maybe a a dumb question since when did center have outdoor pool.
At least in the 90s, the OTC had a small (very simple) outdoor pool on-site — 25 distance (can’t remember if it’s yards or meters). I noticed the video shot stayed away from any focus of the pool surroundings b/c it’s nothing fancy! It appeared to be the same pool that I remember.
That was a great video. 🙂
Nice video
God bless them both. Thank you for posting. Romans 15:13