BUFFALO — When the most devastating news was delivered by doctors last Tuesday, Mario Jimenez turned to his 15-year-old daughter and said, “What do you want to do, Sweetheart? Where do you want to go?”
Months of chemotherapy and radiation and surgery had eradicated the cancer from Aubrien Jimenez’s head but the first post-treatment MRI indicated that it had spread to her back, her hips, maybe into her bones and liver.
This was a very dark time.
“I want to see snow,” Aubrien Jimenez said.
So that’s what happened. Three days later, the Jimenez family left their Bradenton, Florida home and flew to New York City, the plan being to head upstate so Aubrien could watch flakes fall and accumulate.
Aubrien Jimenez, 15, is battling a rare form of cancer. She was a guest of UConn for a Big East Tournament semifinal Friday in New York and for a Selection Sunday gathering Sunday at the Werth Champions center. She is pictured with her father, Mario, who is originally from Bridgeport; mother Kimber, sister Eliana, and brother Mario.
Mario Jimenez / Contributed photo
The trip became so much more, though. Mario Jimenez, a Bridgeport native and lifelong UConn fan who passed that basketball passion to his daughter, dreamed of taking his family to the Huskies’ men’s basketball Big East semifinal game Friday against Villanova at Madison Square Garden.
His heartfelt post on a prominent UConn message board outlining his daughter’s condition made its way to UConn athletic director David Benedict, who called and offered tickets to Friday’s game. The family attended, then spent a night in a cabin deep in the woods of Cooperstown, N.Y., as 8 inches of snow fell, and on Sunday were guests of UConn during an NCAA Selection Show gathering at the Werth Champions Center on campus.
Coach Dan Hurley greeted them at the door. Aubrien, fighting an exceptionally rare form of cancer, was in a wheelchair, essentially immobilized by pain in her back only made slightly manageable by around-the-clock morphine. Hurley immediately began pushing her around the facility.
“Like she was his own kid,” said Mario Jimenez, who attended Bunnell High in Stratford, Class of 2003, but moved to Florida as a teenager. “I was like, why do they care? Why? They’re just great people. This whole UConn weekend, which is what it spontaneously turned out to be, was almost like a Make-A-Wish thing on the fly. It was like the greatest thing that we, as a family, have ever done.”
UConn plays an NCAA Tournament game Thursday night in Buffalo, a wildly important moment in the context of a high-profile basketball program further re-establishing itself. But the team’s recent interactions with the Jimenez Family — the warmth shown by those in and around the program — represent something much more meaningful and impactful. This the real power of college athletics and its people, value that has nothing to do with a ledger sheet or a bracket or winning and losing.
What bliss Aubrien felt entering Madison Square Garden. What a thrill Sunday was. Incredible effort is put forth by families fighting cancer just to feel some normalcy and joy. And sometimes that can be rather easily facilitated by others just opening their ears and hearts and minds and doors. That’s what UConn did.
“Dan was giving us a tour as the show was starting, like it didn’t matter to him,” Mario said. “It meant so much to me, my family, my daughter. Walking out of there, we were on cloud nine.”
The family’s life started turning upside down in December 2020, when Aubrien, a talented softball player at Inspiration Academy, lost her sense of taste and smell. It was initially assumed to be COVID-19. When the symptoms persisted, weeks becoming months, they thought it might be a terrible sinus infection.
Around the five-month mark, with Aubrien’s eyes turning bloodshot, a doctor suggested she be hospitalized immediately. Aubrien was diagnosed with Stage 4 esthesioneuroblastoma, which affects the nasal cavity. Mario said he was told that it affects roughly 1 in 22 million people and that its even rarer for children, with the median age of those diagnosed being 55.
All within the last seven months, Aubrien has persevered through eight rounds of chemotherapy, 30 radiation treatments, and head surgery. During recovery, she developed back pain. Doctors thought it could be nerve damage from aggressive treatments. It was not.
Last Tuesday’s MRI revealed the bleak reality of the situation at a time that could have signaled the optimism of a fresh start. So the family of five — Mario, wife Kimber, their three children, including daughter Eliana, 8, and son, Mario Jr., 6 — headed toward the snow and, unbeknownst to them, into a UConn basketball experience beyond their wildest dreams.
It came together quickly, through the initial care of inspired Boneyard members, right on up to Benedict and the Hurleys.
Before departing Florida, Mario had posted on The Boneyard, “My daughter … is fighting for her life. Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, we have made the decision to fly to NY from FL on a whim to see if we can have a dream weekend for her, as the doctors believe her case has taken a turn for the worse. I’d love nothing more than to take her to watch the Huskies play and see the snow falling in the NY countryside.”
Several Boneyard regulars know Benedict and reached out and everything was set in motion. Mario said the family wouldn’t have been able to attend without UConn’s gift, considering tickets were going for $300-plus apiece.
Friday night wasn’t easy. A wheelchair was secured for Aubrien, who watched the game while in great discomfort, even needed to leave a little early. She then fought through excruciating pain to walk the block or so to the car, and it was off to the cabin in Cooperstown.On Saturday, Mario received a call from Hurley’s son, Danny, who invited the family to Storrs for Selection Sunday. They stayed at The Graduate Storrs Hotel.
“Dan and Andrea treated us like we were family,” Mario said. “Andrea came to the hotel bearing gifts. My daughter can’t get up. She’s lying flat on the couch. Andrea goes and lays with my daughter on the couch. She spoke with us for 30 minutes like we were long lost friends.”
Aubrien is witty, her dad says, a prankster. She calls herself a bird mom because she is raising two cockatiels. She’s a regular churchgoer and loves the Pittsburgh Steelers and UConn basketball. And there she was Sunday, hugging players, talking basketball, the center of attention while the Huskies waited to find out where the pursuit of a national championship would begin.
Hurley asked Mario, the baseball coach at Inspiration Academy, to address the team.
“Every single person gave me a hug afterward,” Mario said. “It was just such a special time, to be able to share my daughter’s story and how much UConn basketball means to my family and how much they’ve gotten us through.”
He spoke of “The Light of Aubrien,” the name of a Facebook page dedicated to Aubrien’s fight.
“This is a chance to share our story with the world, share Aubrien’s story with the world,” said Mario, who grew up attending Bridgeport Bluefish gams, played college baseball at Palm Beach Atlantic University and often takes his family to home games for the Pirates-affiliated Bradenton Marauders. “It doesn’t look good, obviously, in terms of the outcome. But this is our chance to share our story. It’s an opportunity to share love, share peace, share joy, share resiliency in a dark, dark situation — the light of Aubrien.”
The Jimenez Family was invited by UConn to Buffalo but could not make it. Aubrien was undergoing tests Wednesday at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg. Biopsies were scheduled for Thursday. The next course of treatment will soon be determined.
They hoped UConn would win Thursday and again Saturday. They hope to see the team again soon.
“This situation for me — for my life, for my family’s life — is a strikeout,” Mario said. “We have to respond. Do you want that next at-bat or do you want to curl back and say, ‘No, I quit.’? You don’t quit.”
[email protected]; @ManthonyHearst
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism