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It’s not lacrosse season, but last week Winter Springs (Fla.) High School played one of the most significant girls lacrosse games in memory. The score didn’t matter in the least. The significance came from the game’s sheer existence. The most important spectator at the game was Carl Defoe, a middle-aged man devoid of body hair after five rounds of chemotherapy, cheering on his daughter for the first — and in all likelihood, the last — time in his life.

Defoe is dying of lung cancer, and he knows that he doesn’t have much time left — six weeks, eight weeks, maybe more. The  cancer has spread from his one remaining lung to his brain stem and spinal cord. While Defoe insists that he isn’t done fighting the disease yet, the one thing that left him most anguished was knowing he’d never get to see his daughter, Heather, play in a high school lacrosse game.