An OSU fan? Yes, but he’s a champion, too

If you’re headed to Oklahoma State’s game tonight against Iowa State, you’ll want to get there a little early.

The Cowboys will be honoring a cancer survivor before the game, and you won’t want to miss this one.

Cole Burke has been a lifelong Cowboy fan, a love passed to him from his father who is an OSU alum. But when Cole was 16 years old, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Months of chemotherapy and radiation followed.

Five months after his diagnosis, he was deemed cancer-free, but only three months later, doctors realized that Burke’s cancer had returned. Things were looking so grim that a Make-A-Wish trip was planned. Burke wanted to go to Germany to learn more about World War II history or meet Boone Pickens.

Told you this kid was a big OSU fan.

In the end, Burke picked the trip to Germany.

Not long after that, he was invited to a game as part of the Special Spectators, a program that enables youth with cancer to attend college sporting events.

“And who did we run into?” said Kendria Cost, who oversees OSU’s Coaches vs. Cancer efforts. “Boone.”

The two had a chance to shake hands, visit and take some pictures.

“The whole reason Cole wanted to meet him was to tell him that when he was at MD Anderson getting his stem cell transplant, he looked out of his room at a water tower with Boone’s name on it recognizing him as a donor to MD Anderson,” Cost said. “Cole wanted to tell him how much that meant to him and how proud he was that he was an OSU alum.”