For 13-year-old Aiden Deck, video games kept him connected to his dad even when he was deployed for the U.S. Air Force.
The two played together constantly, up until July 11, 2021, the day Master Sgt. Christopher Robert Deck died while on active duty.
“Every single day, even on the day he passed, we played Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed,” Aiden Deck said. “Every time he was at work, he would let me play for him.”
Deck had served in the military for 22 years before his death, leaving behind his wife Marisol, Aiden and siblings Christopher, 19, Mateo, 12, and Luna, 9. The couple met while both were serving in the Air Force.
Now, his love of video games lives on among his family.
The brothers have even gotten Luna into video games. She was only 4 when her dad died, but her older brothers now place her in front of their PC and set up the video games she likes to play.
Together, they are all involved in Gold Star Gamers, a nonprofit dedicated to helping Gold Star children remember the parents they lost in service through video games. The Deck children have attended Gold Star Gamer camps in Texas and around the country, gaming with other kids who have also lost their parents. Since joining in 2022, they have played in multiple national tournaments put on by the organization.
Gold Star Families are those that have lost a loved one during active duty military service.
Last year, the San Antonio family participated in the first-ever Gold Star Gamers’ Cup, an event put on by USAA where children are paired with USAA employees to compete in an esports competition to represent the parents they lost.
The event took place on July 11, 2025, the fourth anniversary of their father’s death. The Deck children came in first place.
At the second annual edition of the tournament on Thursday, the 11 gamers were met with a surprise opponent: Spurs star Julian Champagnie, fresh off the NBA Finals this spring.
The kids, decked out in flight suit uniforms with their gamertags, or online nicknames, written out on their left pockets, waited in line to battle Champagnie in a game of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Mateo had a Spurs shirt underneath his outfit, which he proudly unzipped to show Champagnie when they met. Marisol said she debated wearing a Texas State shirt or a Spurs shirt, and she wished she had gone with the latter.
As die-hard Spurs fans, the Decks had even attended several playoff games and one of the opening homes game of the NBA Finals.
Aiden played, and beat, Champagnie in their matchup, a game that he said was filled with talk about the Finals, the World Cup, Victor Wembanyama’s NBA 2k27 cover unveiled this week — and a lot of trash talk. He wasn’t the only kid who beat Champagnie.
Nixon Flowers, a 9-year-old with blond curly hair who goes by the gamertag “Noodles,” trounced the Spurs star.
Champagnie said his favorite part of the event was getting beaten.
“It was actually pretty refreshing,” he joked, but the Spurs player was quick to point out that he notched a couple wins of his own.
“Everybody did not beat me,” Champagnie said. “I did get beat a couple times, badly too.”
The small forward hung around to pack school supplies for Operation Homefront’s Back-to-School Brigade, a second event USAA orchestrated Thursday to pack 1,400 backpacks for military kids.
“This is Military City,” Champagnie said of the Spurs’ responsibility to give back. “It’s important for us to get in the community and show that love to them as well — because they’re coming through and sacrificing a lot for us.”
