Faith, family, and football: The resilient journey of Josh and Andrea Cameron

Josh's older brother, Justin, who is seven years older and eventually attended Baylor himself, played both football and basketball growing up. With that, Josh was around sports from the very first moment he could observe the world.

“He’d be in the stroller with me while I was at Justin’s practices,” Andrea recalled. “Then, as he got older, as soon as he could, he’d be on the side, running around trying to emulate his drills. As soon as he could talk, I knew he’d want to play football. ‘I want to play football, I want to do what brother’s doing,’ he’d say.”

Andrea remembers vividly the first time she realized her youngest son could be special. Josh was playing Little League football in Cedar Park, starting as a running back in second grade. He was so dominant—running through, over, and around fellow 6, 7, and 8-year-olds—that the suburban league created a “Josh Cameron Rule,” where once he hit a certain number of touchdowns, he wasn’t allowed to carry the ball anymore. Seeing this, Andrea knew she needed to get Josh around tougher competition. So she took him within Austin city limits to play for and against tougher competition, placing him on a squad that featured Rice cornerback Sean Fresch and former Texas Tech and 2025 sixth-round Cincinnati Bengals draft pick Tahj Brooks. There, Josh continued to shine.

“His love for the game came really early on,” Andrea said. “He had a school project in third grade, and in it, he said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be an NFL player.’ As a young kid, you hear that a lot. But Josh always had a different level of seriousness, where you could just tell he had a different drive about it. Like, even in third and fourth grade, after football practices, most kids want to go home, go play with their friends, go to the pool, whatever. But for Josh, he would want to stay after practice to do extra workouts and drills with the coaches. So I’d be up in the stands, with my umbrella, watching him go through drill after drill, getting tired myself and ready to head home. But, even at that age, I’d think, ‘Ok, he could really do this.’”

While Josh was building his foundation as a future athlete, Andrea was facing her own formidable adversities. She was initially diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2007, when Josh was just four years old. Doctors told her the prognosis was grim—just two to three years to live. A lung transplant was an option, but even with surgery, the life expectancy remained the same. After long, tear-filled prayers with her husband, they decided against the transplant at that time.

Years later, Josh would face his own trials. Entering high school in 2017, he suffered a devastating injury, breaking his leg in practice the day before the first day of school and missing his entire freshman season. Even then, there was room for faith and miracles. Josh was scheduled for surgery, but doctors were shocked when pre-surgery evaluations revealed that his leg was healing on its own. They elected to put him in a cast for a few months instead.

Josh’s breakout moment came late in his sophomore year. Initially starting out on junior varsity—a stinging disappointment for him —he’d get his shot late in the season during a playoff matchup against Shadow Creek, a Houston-area powerhouse led by former Baylor and current Virginia Tech starting quarterback Kyron Drones. With Cedar Ridge down in the second half, coaches decided to throw Josh into the game. He ended up scoring a touchdown and leading the team in receiving yards, despite the loss.

“There were parents, angry parents, going up to coaches after the game saying, ‘Why wasn’t Josh in the game earlier?’” Andrea giggled, recalling the ire Josh’s performance drew from the parents towards the coaches. From then on, she knew she had a star on her hands. Andrea, ever the “mom-ager,” would pore over film of higher-ranked receiver prospects that Josh would face, comparing their stats and performances with his own.

“I’m the type of person who’s really meticulous, and I like to do my due diligence. So, even in the high school recruiting process, I wanted to make an honest assessment of where he was,” Andrea said. “I never wanted to be the mom with googly eyes, saying, ‘My son is the best, he’s this, he’s that.’ But looking at the stats, looking at the film, there wasn’t anybody I saw Josh play against—even the four or five-star kids—where I saw them doing things that Josh couldn’t do.

Still, as high school progressed, Josh wasn’t getting the opportunities he was looking for.  He had preferred walk-on offers from TCU and the University of Texas, and had supposedly a scholarship lined up and awaiting him at UTSA under then-Coach Will Stein (now the offensive coordinator at Oregon). Stein spoke to Andrea, and one morning, going into Josh’s senior year, he told them that everything was lined up and that he and the staff would be calling Josh later that day, officially awarding him a scholarship, which Josh was prepared to accept as his only Division I offer. However, that turned out to be fool’s gold. 

“We waited by the phone all day waiting for them to call, but the call never came,” Andrea said.

In his senior year, Josh explored opportunities with UT-Permian Basin, as well as Division II programs in North Dakota and Minnesota, but he and his mom knew he could compete at the highest level. When the time came to decide on Baylor, the one school Andrea says was in constant communication with him, with most of the communication coming straight from head coach Dave Aranda, he chose to walk on. With that confidence and drive, Andrea and Josh mapped out a plan for how he could earn a scholarship at Baylor, reviewing Baylor’s roster and taking notes of the surplus of senior receivers on the roster and the lack of wideout commits entering the 2021 season.

However, Andrea was initially under the belief that preferred walk-ons automatically converted to scholarships at the end of the year. Reality hit when she and her husband met the parents of other walk-ons who had contributed for years and were still paying tuition, amid mounting financial pressure and medical bills. It became a “Come to Jesus” moment for her and her husband, and they adjusted their budget accordingly, but her faith never wavered in her son.

“It was $56,000 for Josh’s summer and fall semesters his freshman year. I was at financial aid almost every week, trying to see if they could find some extra money to help us out. Eventually, he got some grants that paid for most of his spring semester. But I knew my Josh could do it, and that he would do it. He’d worked up to being Tyquan’s [current Kansas City Chiefs receiver Tyquan Thornton] main backup, and he was getting a lot of run on special teams.”

When Coach Dave Aranda finally called Josh into his office at the end of his freshman year to let him know he’d no longer have to pay for school, Andrea recounted the emotions Josh felt at the time.

“If you know Coach Aranda, he’s truly always himself. So, he’d called Josh in, and in true Coach Aranda fashion, he didn’t waste any time and told Josh straight away that he’d been put on scholarship. So, Josh immediately started crying and burst into tears."

When Josh called Andrea afterward, he was still so emotional and blubbering that she initially couldn’t understand what he was saying, with the thought that something had gone wrong. 

“I couldn’t understand him, and he was crying, so I was like, ‘Josh, what’s wrong? Did something happen? Finally, he blurted out, “Mom, they put me on scholarship!”

In the midst of this joy, Andrea began to experience pain, the long-term consequences of her earlier illness. First, at her 50th birthday during the height of COVID-19 in 2020, she began suffering chest pains and shortness of breath. Doctors eventually explained to her that the lack of a transplant in 2007 had caused heart complications due to a lack of oxygen reaching her heart. She and her husband made the bold financial leap to finally get the transplant on December 31, 2023.

While recovering in the hospital in Houston, just days before she was scheduled to leave the hospital, on the morning of January 18, 2024, Andrea suffered a cardiac arrest episode. She was later told she’d been clinically deceased for over 20 minutes, and had she been discharged and not on hospital grounds, it would have been a worst-case scenario.

“During that time, I had a true heavenly experience, where I experienced heaven. Like the colors there, I can’t even put into words how vivid those colors looked. It was the most amazing and peaceful thing I’ve ever seen and felt. And, there was absolutely no pain in my body.”

While recovering, before she knew about the cardiac arrest, Andrea says she would lie in her hospital bed, immobilized, in excruciating pain with her chest having been reopened from the previous transplant. She would close her eyes tightly and wish to feel that heavenly encounter again, trying to will her body to the state she’d previously felt. When she learned of the cardiac arrest, she realized she hadn’t dreamed it—it was a real encounter.

“I just cried and bawled my eyes out.”

“But as miraculous as that vision felt, the hard part was still ahead—learning how to live again, one step at a time. Andrea had to relearn nearly everything. Walk, talk, chew, swallow, dress herself—every motor skill, every cognitive task had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

“Basically, anything you can do without thinking, I had to re-learn how to do,” she said. “I remember one of my biggest milestones was when I was able to lift my leg to lie in bed on my own.”

One of the toughest tasks she recounted was relearning to swallow. She underwent countless tests, failing again and again, tears streaming down her face from frustration. “I was just so tired of being fed by the tube. And it was so painful because my brain wasn’t registering how to swallow food properly, so, it kept sending it down my windpipe, and I would choke.”

Through every setback, every obstacle, the Cameron family leaned on faith. Andrea reflected on the ultimate meaning of their journey. Together, Josh and Andrea embody resilience. One thrives on the field, the other in life, each drawing strength from the other, bound by faith, love, and an unyielding commitment to persevere. They’ve learned that victory is rarely immediate, that the path is littered with obstacles, but that determination, preparation, and belief can carry them through.

As Josh snags passes on the field on Saturdays, Andrea sits in the stands, knowing every step, every catch, every touchdown is the culmination of a lifetime of trials, sacrifices, prayers, and unwavering love. And for both of them, the journey—the struggle—is every bit as meaningful as the triumph.

 “Even before Joshua was born, I knew that God was going to use him mightily. We’d both had a lot of adversity,” Andrea says.

“So for us, his journey and our journey — it just reaffirms that God’s purpose for Josh’s life is mighty and powerful, because the enemy has tried every way to stop and deter it. But thankfully, we’ve been able to rise above it.”

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