Ranking Oregon Ducks Nike Uniforms: Best In College Football 2024?
8. "Heroes" Stomp Out Cancer Original vs. Michigan State
In an interview with Oregon Ducks on Sports Illustrated’s and KOIN 6 Game On’s Ally Osborne, the Van Horne’s detailed the process of working with Oregon coach Dan Lanning’s wife, Sauphia Lanning, and the couple’s three boys to tell their personal stories with cancer through this uniform.
Sauphia is seven years cancer free, after battling a bone cancer called osteosarcoma. Her last treatment was in 2017. The idea for these “Stomp Out Cancer” uniforms came when the Lannings moved to Oregon in 2022 after Dan was hired for the Oregon coaching job.
“The origin of the project came from Rob Mullens and him saying ‘you know what? The Lanning family, Dan, these are great people. We’d like to welcome them to Eugene, but we’ve heard this story that Sauphia is a cancer survivor. Why don’t you guys go talk to her and see if there’s something that she’s willing to do or say,’” said Todd Van Horne. “We didn’t know where the project was going to go. It was literally after that first conversation and she realized ‘This could be something not just about me, but I’ll honor the people that helped me and the heroes.’ Then she started doing sketches.”
Shortly after, the Lanning kids joined in on sketching the uniform design. Todd expressed that Sauphia wanted the kids' involvement to show how a cancer diagnosis can affect and entire family, not just the person fighting.
That family collaboration led to a uniform with several hidden details relating back to the Lanning family.
“There’s so many little details. I would say out of a lot of Oregon uniforms, this was a uniform where the details came into the story,” Quinn Van Horne said. “And we love to find those little intricacies that we can be able to play with. But it really started with a sketch.”
Shortly after, the Lanning kids joined in on sketching the uniform design. Todd expressed that Sauphia wanted the kids' involvement to show how a cancer diagnosis can affect and entire family, not just the person fighting.
That family collaboration led to a uniform with several hidden details relating back to the Lanning family.
“There’s so many little details. I would say out of a lot of Oregon uniforms, this was a uniform where the details came into the story,” Quinn Van Horne said. “And we love to find those little intricacies that we can be able to play with. But it really started with a sketch.”
The Van Horne’s also shared that each Lanning kid had input. An ice cream cone was the first symbol seen throughout the uniform and clothing. The cone symbolizes the ice cream trips that the family made after Sauphia’s cancer treatments. This ice cream symbol flows into Sauphia’s desire for her children to live in a world without cancer one day.
“‘It came into the phrase of ‘a world without cancer is like ice cream on a summer day,’” Todd Van Horne said.
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