Lisa and Jeff Decker remember hearing about the signs and the green T-shirts among the home side of Trojan Stadium showing their support for their teenage son, Mason, at a football game four years ago. But there was support from the Northfield student section across the field that also touched the Decker family’s collective heart.
The Northfield students arrived dressed in green. They rolled out a huge sign that told the Deckers and their friends they were not alone. The sign said, “No one fights alone- #MasonStrong.”
The Northfield coaches also made a donation and offered the family a note of support.
Lisa Ruedy-Decker and her husband, Jeff, had just returned from the hospital in Rochester where their eighthgrade son, Mason, was being treated for a form of non-Hodgkins’s lymphoma. The couple was too drained to attend the game.
But that didn’t matter to the New Prague football family and their opponents that evening in September of 2021. The fans from Northfield heard about the young NP player and his diagnosis. They wanted the fans from New Prague to know that despite their intense rivalry, no matter what happened on the field, they stood together in support of Mason Decker and his family.
The students and fans from New Prague set aside their hometown colors that evening in favor of lime green, the color signifying support for patients fighting lymphoma cancers. The effort raised over...
To see more on this story pick up the October 2, 2025 print edition of The New Prague Times.