One of her first ideas to stick was a “yellow-out” for Crofton’s home opener on Sept. 13, when the Cardinals would ask fans to wear yellow to support Ray and raise recognition during childhood cancer awareness month. The team posted about the game online to spread the message but wanted to surprise Ray, who was receiving treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“Keeping a teenager off social media is not the easiest thing to do, especially when you’re sitting in the oncology clinic waiting for treatment,” said Kristina Ray, Caroline’s mother. “We tried to keep her distracted until she found out. Then everything just started getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Ray found out before getting to the match, but that was just the start of the Cardinals’ season-long initiative to support her. What began with one yellow-out game turned into multiple fundraising drives to support Ray and her family led by Makela and Crofton throughout its season, which ended with a loss in the Class 4A East I regional final on Tuesday.

The Cardinals have raised more than $7,000 by creating a fundraising drive dubbed “Coins for Caroline” — in which they placed jars at concession stands to collect change during home games — selling shirts and bracelets and generating a QR code so people can donate to the family through Venmo.

Those efforts started immediately after Ray told Makela about the diagnosis. Makela, a senior goalkeeper, worked with her mother, Tracey Makela, and Ray’s aunt, Carter Heim, to brainstorm different ways to support her friend.

“As soon as that happened, I knew I had to do something to help her,” Makela said. “The entire summer we were planning different names for a fundraiser, what it would go to, how to get it out and how to get other people involved with it.”

The support for Ray quickly spread to other teams and schools. Crofton’s field hockey and football teams both held yellow-out games of their own. Meade’s football team affixed a sticker of a yellow ribbon to its helmets for its game against the Cardinals in September.

“After every football game, soccer game, field hockey game, the jars kept getting fuller and fuller,” Makela said.

Makela, who spearheaded the team’s fundraising efforts, has also supported her friend in other ways. She’ll randomly pop in to spend time with Ray whether she’s at home or receiving treatment. When Ray arrived from chemotherapy at the hospital to Crofton’s homecoming parade, Makela, whom Ray called “a big sister,” came running up to push Ray and her wheelchair to the team’s float. They joked Makela was getting her workout in for the day, Ray said.

“Cancer treatments are expensive, even when you have insurance,” Kristina Ray said. “The parking, the gas, the food while you’re in the hospital, the co-pays — it all starts adding up, and I’ve had to miss quite a bit of work to be there with her. … Their efforts have made it where I’m not as stressed about that part, and I can focus on being with Caroline.”

Ray first started feeling pain in her knee in March and began physical therapy and chiropractic care for what was believed to be an IT band issue. But during a visit to an orthopedic knee specialist on May 25, she got concerning X-rays that prompted an MRI. Ray’s family met with an oncologist and team of doctors on May 30 and were notified Ray should return the next day at 5:30 a.m., for a biopsy.

The osteosarcoma diagnosis in Ray’s left femur was confirmed on June 2, and she started chemotherapy on June 8. Approximately 800 cases of osteosarcoma are reported each year in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins. About half occur in children and teens.

Ray received chemotherapy in cycles of five weeks and underwent a 19-hour surgery in August. Ray avoided a knee replacement, which likely would have ended her hopes of returning to the pitch and her aspiration of playing soccer at a Division I school, Kristina Ray said.

“She cried when I told her that she got her cadaver bone. It was happy tears, knowing that that gave her the possibility to get back on the soccer field,” Kristina Ray said.

Ray was one of three freshmen to make varsity for the Cardinals, who went on to claim the Maryland 3A state title, last year. She hosted a team sleepover before the season started that Makela credited with bringing the Cardinals closer together ahead of their run to the young program’s first state championship.

Ray has been able to stay involved with the team since and has attended a few games, including the yellow-out and Makela’s senior day. Crofton’s coaches made sure Ray remained listed as a player on this year’s varsity roster.

“Having an outlet of being able to see, like, my friends and kind of see like my second family in a way … it’s been an easier journey,” Ray said.

With her chemotherapy treatment scheduled to end in January, Ray aims to take the field again with her teammates in June.

“Family’s supposed to be there for you, good times and bad. … People always say ‘Oh, my soccer family,’ but until you’re going through something like this, you really don’t realize just how important these people that you spend all this time with really are,” Kristina Ray said.