Maribel Wilson cried for the entirety of her son Tristan’s cancer diagnosis. 

Tears streamed silently down her face from the moment the doctor told her sixth-grade boy that that bump below his right knee wasn’t shin splints. It was bone cancer.

His voice muffled in Maribel’s head as the tears nearly drowned out his treatment options - placing a steel rod in Tristan’s leg, or amputating it. By the time the doctor left the exam room, emphasizing how sorry he was, she wondered how she still had water left in her body.

Maribel left the exam room to compose herself. She put her back to the closed door, her attempted deep breaths instead coming out shallow and ragged as the doctors’ office walls closed in on her. She’d walked into the appointment thinking her son had tweaked his knee because he kept running in his Nike Air Maxes after the heel bubble popped. They’d leave with an osteosarcoma diagnosis.

Only when the tears slowed to a trickle did Maribel walk back into the room. She needed to be strong for her son, but the red rims around her eyes gave her away. That’s when Tristan set the tone for how the next four years of his life would turn out. He would be strong for his family.

“Mom, don’t cry,” Tristan said. “I’m going to beat this.”

Tristan just finished his sophomore year at Midland Greenwood High School. He serves as the team manager for both the football and basketball teams, and he recently earned a bronze medal in the seated shot put at the UIL State Track and Field Meet for the second consecutive year. 

His cancer has returned three times since that initial diagnosis in sixth grade, twice in his neck and once in his ribs. It’s taken away his right leg, parts of his neck, his entire eighth rib and portions of the seventh and ninth. But it has never taken away his smile. And for that, every day Tristan shows up is a day he beats cancer.

When Bryan Hill became the head coach at Midland Greenwood in the spring of 2023, one of the first kids people told him about wasn’t a stud football player, but an eighth grader named Tristan Wilson. Greenwood is a Class 4A school, the smallest public school in Midland. But the fewer people, the more each and everyone became connected to Tristan’s story. When his cancer returned this past spring, the community fundraised $15,000 for the family at a high school baseball game.

Tristan has various duties as a football manager. He films practices with the drone and takes care of the footballs on Friday night. But his most important job is to be himself. Tristan reminds the coaches and players how to respond to the adversity of a season - injuries and losses. Last fall, he had neck surgery to remove a cancerous regrowth, then showed up for the Homecoming game less than 24 hours later.

“Our coaching staff, our entire football program, sees Tristan as a leader and mentor,” Hill said.

Tristan’s favorite part of Friday night is a Midland Greenwood win. And while he is integral to the final scoreboard, he can’t directly participate. He competes every day to live his life, but he also needs the competition that sports bring. And where football falls short, the seated shot put fuels that drive.

At first, Tristan refused to do the seated shot put. He wanted to throw standing up believing it’d be proof he could be normal even with one leg. But nothing about his life is normal, which is what makes it so impactful. But, as a high school freshman, he wasn’t thinking about how his sport would affect others. He was simply hooked the moment his first seated shot landed over 20 feet, and he realized he could go to state.

Tristan won a bronze medal as a freshman with a throw of 23 feet, 3.75 inches. After the first three track meets of the 2025 season, he was confident he could win gold as a sophomore. But then the cancer returned. Surgery removed his ribs and sidelined him for two months. Tristan was released from the hospital, where he’d had a tube in his left side for two weeks, just before the district track meet. The doctors told him to rest. Tristan told his mom he was competing in the meet.

Despite abbreviated season and rib removal, Tristan placed third again at State. To everyone else, it was a Herculean achievement. But the only thing Tristan focused on was that he’d thrown two feet shorter than last year.

“People ask me about my performance at state, but I don’t think I threw well,” Tristan said. “They always say it’s because I just got off of surgery. I could use that as an excuse, but I really don’t want to.”

Cancer gives Tristan more built-in excuses than anybody in the school. He beats it by refusing to make any for himself.

“He is the most accountable kid in our program,” Hill said. 

In the hardest years of their lives, the Wilson family has grown stronger in their faith. Tristan says that without God, he would not be here today. He has never questioned why God gave him this battle. But Maribel did. In that doctors’ office four years ago, she couldn’t understand why this happened to a son who didn’t deserve it. But Tristan has answered her question in the way he’s lived since that day. God’s plan for Tristan’s life has helped more people than Tristan’s plan for Tristan’s life. 

“Tristan wanted to be the big football star, but that was not in his path,” Maribel said. “Him doing what he is now, with the seated shot put and his story inspiring others, I think that’s Tristan’s path.”