After brain cancer, UGA freshman plays role in football opener — with art

ATHENS — Mary Webb was offered admission to Auburn University and the University of Florida, but she always knew she likely would attend neither.

To her way of thinking, it was the University of Georgia or nothing. And she never wavered, not through a brain cancer diagnosis and not through treatment.

This Saturday, 18-year-old Webb will attend her first game as a UGA freshman. That in itself would be memorable. But it will be even more so when she looks around the stadium and sees a T-shirt she designed being sold to raise funds for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Webb, who grew up near Athens and has attended Bulldogs football games all her life, is one of two former Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta cancer patients selected to create designs for the Aflac Kickoff game between Georgia and Clemson. Webb’s creation features the mascot Hairy Dawg. Keren Clay, 16, of Atlanta, designed the Clemson T-shirt, which has a drawing of the Tiger mascot wearing a shirt with a childhood cancer ribbon.

“This is not just a game for me,” Webb said. “It is so much more than that.”

Webb has always loved music, art and Georgia football. She has plenty of family members who attended UGA, including an older brother, and her parents are longtime season ticket holders for football games.

In the fall of 2020, while she was a student at North Oconee High, Webb started having difficulty remembering things. Classwork that typically was easy became more difficult to complete. Then she lost all vision in her left eye.

“I’m sure my teachers were thinking, ‘What is wrong with this girl?’” Webb said.

Doctors found two tumors on Webb’s brain, one pushing on an optic nerve and the other on her pituitary gland. She started treatment the same day as her diagnosis and would go on to endure six rounds of chemotherapy and 30 radiation treatments.

“Every weekday, for six straight weeks, we had to drive to Atlanta and back,” Webb said.

Webb laughs when thinking back to those long days in the hospital, saying she “talked the ear off all of the nurses.”

Kery Webb said her daughter has always been an upbeat child. Mary is enthusiastic when she speaks, frequently describes people or situations as “awesome,” and uses a lot of exclamation marks when she texts. Her positive spirit kept her “moving forward,” Kery Webb said, adding, “She’s been like that — happy, happy, happy — since she was an infant.”

For three years now, the teen has been cancer free.

She plans to double major in music percussion performance and public relations at UGA. She imagines one day she’ll play in a symphony and intends to always work with Children’s Healthcare in some capacity.

The proceeds raised from her T-shirt will be used to fight childhood cancer.

“I’m just so honored,” Webb said, “to help in any way I can.”

It’s not the first time a piece of her art has been chosen for a cause. NASCAR driver Chase Elliott, a Georgia native with a charitable foundation that often works with Children’s Healthcare, featured Webb’s work on his car during a 2021 playoff race. The teenager and her family were Elliott’s guests at the track and later attended a Braves game with him.

“I felt so loved and so special,” Webb said. “Now I’m trying to do the same for others.”

The Peach Bowl, which runs the Kickoff Game, has long-standing ties with Children’s Healthcare. Players and coaches visit patients before the bowl game. But those ties became more personal when the 6-year-old daughter of Peach Bowl Vice President of Sales Benji Hollis was diagnosed with leukemia. Anna Charles Hollis died in 2018. The Peach Bowl LegACy Fund was created in 2019 with a $20 million donation to the medical facility to fight childhood cancer.

For this Saturday’s game, the Peach Bowl and Aflac, the Columbus-based provider of supplemental insurance, are each donating $100,000 to the LegACy Fund, and all proceeds from a raffle and the T-shirt sales will go to Children’s Healthcare.

“We’re using college football for the greater good,” Peach Bowl CEO Gary Stoken said.

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