The 10th annual AJ McCarron Football Camp at Mobile Christian School’s Harrison Field on Saturday came with the usual July weather of Coastal Alabama. That made the truck-turned-lemonade-stand parked across from the registration tables a destination for those seeking to beat the heat.

But beyond ice-cold refreshment lay a link between the lemonade and the camp’s sponsor. Among those making the lemonade at her family’s Cups for a Cure stand was Starla Chapman, and more than a decade earlier, McCarron had come into her life when it seemed as though it was about to end.

“Today is just a full-circle moment,” said DeAndra Chapman, Starla’s mother, “by this being the 10th annual football camp and by her now being 16 years of age. Those are both huge milestones.

“On the way over here today, I was thinking about how more than 10 years ago, nobody could tell us that we would see this day. When you have a child that’s diagnosed with cancer, and not just diagnosed with cancer, they have such a rough road with treatment, it’s hard to see the other side.”

About two weeks before becoming the biggest of celebrities in Alabama – the quarterback of a national-championship Crimson Tide team – McCarron took a break from his preparations for the BCS title game against LSU to visit USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital in his hometown of Mobile on Christmas eve in 2011.

“AJ walked into our lives literally while we were inpatient at USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital,” DeAndra Chapman said. “He was visiting all the kids in the hospital, but something about he and Starla, they just made an instant connection right from the start, and they kept in contact ever since then.”

McCarron joined Team Starla, the youngster’s support group, and got a yellow wristband symbolic of childhood cancer victims and their fight for life. The quarterback wore the wristband as he led Alabama to a 21-0 victory over LSU in the BCS national-championship game on Jan. 9, 2012, and it sparked a curiosity that led to an outpouring of support for the young victim of acute myeloid leukemia.

“It’s awesome, the spotlight that we were able to put on her story and her journey,” McCarron said after Saturday’s camp. “I still remember walking into that hospital room and seeing her with tubes running to her nose and hooked up to every machine in there, so it’s awesome just to see her – a beautiful young woman, thriving and doing everything she’s doing. And then the fact that she drove here today makes me feel old. But it’s awesome. Happy to see her doing so well.”

But when McCarron led Alabama to the first of back-to-back national championships, Starla Chapman wasn’t doing well at all.

“Starla was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and had a very rough go with the treatment,” DeAndra Chapman said. “She went in remission the first month after the chemotherapy treatment. But around early January of 2012, she went into cardiac arrest due to the treatments, and we were told she wasn’t going to survive, and if she did, she would need a heart transplant and wouldn’t be able to go through cancer treatment because of that. But as you can see now, she is 16 years old and making great strides.

“She’s doing all the fun things that a 16-year-old does. She’s driving. Not only does she work on the back of the truck, but she also has a part-time job, so we’re enjoying the simple things, as most people would say, in life because after our journey with cancer, we’ve come to realize that the simple things mean the most.”

About two weeks after Alabama’s championship victory over LSU in 2012, McCarron and teammate Kenny Bell drew a crowd to Bel Air Mall in Mobile by signing autographs while taking donations for Team Starla. And while McCarron has gone on to nine seasons in the NFL and two more in spring football, the quarterback and the cancer survivor have remained connected. McCarron is Starla Chapman’s godfather, they appeared on ESPN’s “SportsCenter” together and she served as the flower girl at his wedding.

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“It’s meant a lot to me, honestly,” Starla Chapman said. “Even though I haven’t been able to see him as much as I would like to, he’s come to my big celebrations, like when I was the IHOP kid chef, he was there, and that makes me happy that we have someone as cool as AJ in our corner.”

The money raised by Cups for a Cure is donated “to families of local children with cancer as well as local childhood cancer organizations such as Rapahope,” DeAndra Chapman said.

“We have been selling lemonade since 2012,” DeAndra Chapman said. “Immediately after Starla got out of the hospital, we were doing premade lemonade out of the dispenser and we were just taking donations and sending them to a childhood cancer foundation for research and things like that.

“It wasn’t until a year and a half ago, I talked to my husband and said, ‘I think I’m ready to take this to another level, start our own foundation and do fresh, hand-shaken lemonade.’”

The result was the Cups for a Cure truck.

“It’s extremely gratifying,” Starla Chapman said, “because I wish someone like us was there to help our parents. We had a lot of people that came together, but an organization such as ours would have been an amazing help when I was in the hospital.”

Next month, the child that was supposed to die 13 years ago will be beginning her junior year at Baldwin County High School in Bay Minette.

“I’m looking forward to being on the honor roll,” Starla Chapman said. “I’ve been able to do it every year. And helping at our football games. We’ll be there with Cups for a Cure.”

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.