Kelee Ringo answered a phone call from Eagles general manager Howie Roseman a few minutes into Day 3 of the draft. His belated wait to enter the NFL had ended. Sitting next to him, directly to his left with a smile stretched across her face, was his mother, Tralee Hale.
The significance of sitting next to each other shouldn’t have been lost on the mother and son during this phone call. They remember the calls three years earlier.
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“There were certain situations that we didn’t know if we would overcome, and she was able to figure out a way,” Ringo said in an interview with The Athletic this week, days before Mother’s Day.
Ringo left for Georgia on June 3, 2020, and his mother wondered if the year could become any worse. This was during the throes of the coronavirus pandemic. She had been laid off from her job as her son enrolled in college across the country, leaving her as an empty nester.
She decided she would finally make herself a priority. She needed her eyes checked. A visit to the dentist awaited. Both paled compared to something else.
“I’m embarrassed and humbled to say that I actually had a palpable mass located at 10 o’clock on my left breast that I had actually been ignoring for nine months,” Hale told The Athletic. “Just being a single mother and being a soccer mom, if you will, and just putting myself behind my son, as most moms do. Women are caregivers and we put ourselves second, and while that’s commendable, it’s dangerous. And I almost ended up paying the ultimate price.”
Diagnosed during the pandemic
Son had just left to college
Single w/ a limited support system!
You fight because you have NO other option👛
PLEASE Schedule your mammogram!
bbbc_athens pic.twitter.com/0eqMYs9vGf
— Mama Ringo (@HaleTralee) September 26, 2022
Hale was diagnosed with triple-negative ductal carcinoma, a form of breast cancer that disproportionally affects women of color. She was 39. The cancer was in the process of metastasizing.
Ringo was 1,800 miles from his Arizona home and a few days shy of his 18th birthday. His mother considers her son her best friend. He knew little about breast cancer.
“I’d definitely say it was one of the tough times in my life,” Ringo said.
It didn’t help Ringo that he injured his shoulder, prompting the five-star recruit to redshirt his first year at Georgia. He tried to remain resolute for the woman who remained strong for him, watching the chemotherapy from afar.
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“It helped shape me,” Ringo said. “I knew nothing I was going through compared to what she was going through.”
Hale’s health progressed into 2021, and so did Ringo’s football career. He became a starter for the top-ranked Bulldogs as a redshirt freshman. In the national championship against rival Alabama on Jan. 10, 2022, Ringo caught the game-clinching interception and returned it for a touchdown. He reached the pinnacle of college football. And if 2020 was a study in Murphy’s law, the following year became a study in Yhprum’s law. Doctors determined Hale was cancer free.
“Six weeks after my son made the interception,” Hale said. “It was my win. I was so thankful to have it behind me. When I actually heard the news, I definitely didn’t react as much as I did later. When everything was able to sink in, I kind of went through my head later that night of all the things that I could have missed if I didn’t take my own breast health seriously.”
Ringo won another title with Georgia last season while starting all 15 games. He was named second-team All-SEC. Although he was drafted later than expected, he found a team eager to add him. The Eagles traded a 2024 third-round pick to move atop the fourth round to select Ringo, who stood out so much on their draft board the morning of Day 3 that Roseman made the type of trade (a higher future pick for a lower current pick) that he never had before. Ringo joined four of his college teammates in Philadelphia.
We wouldn’t rather be anywhere else!
This is looking like…….
The migration of Elite Georgia Defense pic.twitter.com/nLHBUj7MRq
— Mama Ringo (@HaleTralee) April 30, 2023
Hale came out on the other side of breast cancer with a refined perspective. She’s a flight attendant and has an appreciation for the travel opportunities ahead with a “new lease on life.”
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“There’s things I want to do, there are places I want to go,” Hale said.
One destination she plans on frequenting? Philadelphia.
Ringo has perspective, too. He also has a platform that comes with being an NFL draft pick on a team in a major market that is a Super Bowl contender. In Ringo’s first weeks as a professional athlete, he wanted to leverage the platform one specific way: by raising awareness for breast cancer with his mother and encouraging women to undergo screenings for early detection.
“This is very important to me to continue to be an advocate for women’s health overall because of what I saw my mother go through,” Ringo said.
It’s not lost that they’re going on this publicity blitz leading up to Mother’s Day. They have a message they want to share, but they also have a bond that has been strengthened by what they’re preaching. Hale acknowledges she didn’t know what she didn’t know, and she doesn’t want other mothers to fall risk to what she almost missed.
“He’s the reason why I live. He’s my baby,” she said. “I almost wasn’t here to get to see him do what he loves on the field. And I’m not taking it for granted. And I don’t want any other moms to do that.”
She was by her son’s side when he received the life-changing phone call. She’s here to see him achieve more.
(Photo: @HaleTralee / Twitter)
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