Video: Make-A-Wish Helps Senior Become Valedictorian

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TUPELO, Miss. (WCBI)-Nearly seven years ago we brought you the story about a young boy fighting cancer from Mantachie who received a baseball field in his backyard as a wish granted by the Make-A-Wish foundation.

Now, that same boy is all grown up and making even bigger strides as he gets ready ti graduate high school.

It’s the diagnosis no parent ever wants to hear or child can understand. Cancer.

“They looked me in the eye after I got up there in Memphis and said look realistically you’ve got less than a five percent chance to make it,” says Sam Farris.

Sam Farris was only 10 years old when the news that he was battling Neuroblastoma sent him on a very long journey.

Sam says all he could think about was baseball.

“I didn’t get emotional about that but when they said hey you’re going to miss little league season that was a big deal,” says Farris.

But Sam was determined to fight the disease. He missed a year of school, but while he was healing, he was concentrating on his education. And it paid off.

He is the 2014 Valedictorian of Mantachie High School.

“Being able to represent them and being able to say I am the top in the class when we graduated that’s really big accomplishment,” says Farris.

His classmates and best friend, Seth Dickinson, has been beside him all of these years.

“Seeing what all he has been through and everything he has done and how he has had to work at it coming back from behind and still being so far ahead. I’m proud I really am. There is not a greater honor. He deserves it,” says Seth Dickinson.

It’s a final cheers of high school.

And Sam knows none of this would have been possible without the support of his friends.

“Just because I am at the top I’m not looking down. It was because of all them that I was able to make it here today in the first place,” says Farris.

And he is not stopping here.

“God opened my eyes when I got up there and I knew I was here for a better purpose. He told me that I wasn’t done yet. he gave me my second chance,” says Farris.

With his faith, Sam will face his future and always remember his field of dreams.

Sam will be starting University of Mississippi in the fall where he will study Public Policy and Broadcast Journalism.