Juan Cervantes — Belvidere High School senior and three-year varsity football captain — and Elani Trejo — Romeoville High School senior and two-year varsity flag football captain — stood on the sideline at Soldier Field Sept. 21 during the third quarter of the Bears' Latino Heritage Month game against the Cowboys and felt the city of Chicago behind them.
The pair of standout students were being honored in front of nearly 60,000 fans for receiving the annual NFL Latino Heritage Month Youth Leader Award, which celebrates boys high school football and girls flag football players who exemplify excellence in academics, athletics and community leadership, while also serving as proud representatives of their Mexican heritage.
Cervantes and Trejo earned a special trip to Soldier Field, where they served as honorary captains for the Bears' 31-14 win and were personally congratulated by President & CEO Kevin Warren. Later this year, they will also represent the Bears in the NFL Latino Youth Honors, in partnership with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, where eight finalists selected from all 32 teams will receive scholarships and attend Super Bowl LX Week in San Francisco.
For both Cervantes and Trejo, being honored for their hard work throughout their high school journeys is special in itself, but that recognition coming from their hometown team is indescribable.
"Being backed by the Chicago Bears is like a lifelong dream," Cervantes said. "It's something so amazing that when I called my grandparents and told them, they were all so shocked and surprised. It's something that's personal to me and it made me happy to realize I got recognized for being a good athlete, for being a good student, for being Hispanic. Like, I was represented for being myself, and that felt amazing."
As proud representatives of their Latino heritage, the seniors also take their roles as mentors and leaders seriously, and this award allows them to continue shining a positive light on their communities.
"It's definitely very meaningful in terms of how I get to set an example and be that role model, especially for a lot of younger girls, Latinas, flag football players," Trejo shared, "just to be able to show them that no matter how many barriers you may face, how many challenges you may come across, that you really just can persevere, and that you can reach for the sky and accomplish more than you might ever expect."
For as long as Cervantes can remember, he's been a Bears fan. His very first little league football team was named the "Elgin Bears," with the program using the same iconic logo and colors.
His grandfather and mother, lived in both Lake in the Hills and Carpentersville, cheered for the Bears every Sunday and passed that deeply rooted fandom down. When Cervantes walked onto the grass at Soldier Field, he felt like he was representing his family as much as himself.
"I've been a Bears fan for a long time now," Cervantes said, "and I always told my mom that one day I'd be on the field with the players, so it was like a huge dream come true, something that was just really hard to believe. And it was amazing. It was everything I could imagine and more."
Cervantes said football has been "the biggest part of my life" since his early days in Elgin. It is his biggest stress reliever and his biggest teacher. Through football, he's learned how to be a leader, how to work with a team and how to navigate challenges with a positive outlook.
A varsity starter since his freshman year at Belvidere, Cervantes is a talented two-way player for the Bucs as a linebacker and running back. He has also been voted a captain by his teammates for three straight years.
Being a captain for his team is an honor Cervantes will never take for granted. He remembers growing up in Elgin and loving football, but his friends primarily played soccer. While it wasn't typical for a young boy of Mexican heritage to choose football over soccer, he embraced it, and even went as far as expanding his friends' view of the American sport.
"It made me realize, I'm a little bit of like a barrier breaker, like I'm introducing the sport in a positive way to my own people," Cervantes said. "I remember in Elgin we lived in a townhouse and I used to go outside and play with all the neighborhood kids. They played soccer and I asked them, 'have you guys ever heard about football?' and they're like, 'no, what is that?'
"It was like 14 kids, and I showed them how to play football. For three months straight, all we did was play backyard football and it was just awesome to be able to represent a sport that was so amazing."
Cervantes has carried that mentality over into his young adult life as well, dedicating some of his free time to volunteering for the Belvidere youth football league, where he assists with sideline operations, PA announcing and mentoring young players.
In addition to helping the younger kids on the field, Cervantes also tries to teach them about the importance of education in conjunction with football. As someone a 4.4 GPA, Cervantes takes an equal amount of pride in his schoolwork as he does in his athletic achievements.
With hopes of attending a four-year university to study construction management or business development, Cervantes credits his family for teaching him the value of education. And he knows this award from the Bears wouldn't have been possible without it.
"School has always been a first priority," Cervantes said. "My older sister graduated with a 4.0, and my mom always said, 'your only job is to have a good grades, your only job is to graduate high school and you need to be the best you can.'
"So I always just do my best in every class I have. I ask a million questions, I stay late if I need to, or I go to one-on-one sessions with the teachers. It means a lot, and I know it means a lot to my family, too, maybe a little more than it means to me, because in my eyes, it's always nice to see a Hispanic rewarded for their academics."
Nothing could have compared to Trejo being able to take her father, brother and sister to the Bears game Sept. 21.
While Trejo classifies her family as huge sports fans in general, she knew having her family watch her be recognized on the videoboard in front of thousands of fans at Soldier Field would be the experience of a lifetime.
"My dad, I think he watches the FOX interview that I did about three times a day," Trejo said, "which is just incredible to see the pride that my family felt and seeing the smile on their faces when I was at the field and the stadium.
"It was just awesome to be able to show my younger self, to everyone watching that you can do it and that we can make it despite everything or everyone that might tell us that we can't."
As a daughter of Mexican immigrants and a proud first-generation student, Trejo believes her heritage and family have shaped her resilient, strong mindset as both a student and an athlete.
Trejo first learned of girls flag football a few years ago through TikTok and immediately felt drawn to it, hoping it would become a sport at her high school before she graduated.
After girls flag football became sanctioned by the Illinois High School Association in February 2024, she heard rumors of it being available at Romeoville that coming fall. Those rumors quickly became reality and Trejo knew she was destined to join the team.
"Once I got the idea in my head, my parents, especially, told me no a lot," Trejo said. "They were like, 'no, you don't have time, you're gonna get injured.' But I was pretty stubborn about it and I mean, it's pretty awesome now.
"Even though a lot of people were telling me, 'no,' I just kind of persisted through it and it's led me to a really incredible place now, so I'm really grateful for it."
Girls flag football has not only provided Trejo unbelievable opportunities, like being honored by the Bears at Soldier Field, it has empowered her in new ways as well. In addition to being the captain of the varsity soccer team, Trejo was selected to captain the girls flag football team in its first season in 2024, and again this year.
"It's really awesome to be able to see how girls play the sport," Trejo shared, "and how we're able to show that we do belong in these spaces that are male dominated and that we are able to take up space, that we are able to pioneer these things.
"To be able to see how we're able to accomplish all of this, when so many people tell us, 'well, that's not a girl sport, that's not something you should be doing, that's just a guy's thing,' is pretty amazing."
Trejo is used to being a pioneer at her school. As a freshman, she joined the Latin American Student Organization, which had just 15 to 20 members, only five of whom consistently showed up for meetings. Through the past three years, Trejo, who now serves as the organization's president, has been the driving force behind LASO growing to more than 100 students.
The organization also now participates in various events and field trips such as attending the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute in Chicago or bringing in guest speakers during Latino Heritage Month each year.
"All of that has just really been a meaningful part of my life, where I get to help out so many people and just show, especially the younger underclassmen, that they can be represented and they do have a voice," Trejo said. "Being able to give them all those resources to have success is definitely something I've very proud of."
Along with being a part of LASO, Trejo also leads Student Government, Key Club and Sparty Nation at her school and holds board positions in Interact Club and Snowball Club. In her community, she teaches religious education at St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church and serves as Vice President of the Romeoville DUCAP Teen Leadership Board, where she helped launch the inaugural Teen Leadership Conference.
Her work in education at her church's school has influenced her desire to pursue a dual-language elementary education degree at a top 20 university.
As Trejo finishes out her high school career and prepares to embark on her next journey, she will carry the influence and empowerment of the Latino Heritage Month Youth Leader Award with her.
"Words honestly couldn't describe how much this means to me," Trejo said. "It's just amazing again to see how no matter how many barriers I may face, I was able to persevere throughout all of them because no matter how many times I may have fallen, no matter how many times my family struggled, all of their sacrifices paid off.
"Being the daughter of immigrants, being a first-generation student definitely showed me how much people can struggle, how much I can struggle, but even despite those challenges, that I can still make it and that I can still be in these places."
