My mom lived by herself with two kids. Sacrifice was the name of the game at our house.

Cruz frames his upbringing in terms of single-parent resilience and everyday austerity. By naming “sacrifice” as the household’s defining rule, he emphasizes that his family’s stability depended less on comfort than on continual trade-offs—time, money, and personal ease—made primarily by his mother. The line also functions as an origin story: it implies that his later discipline and drive were learned at home, where survival required prioritizing children’s needs over individual wants. In a broader cultural register, the quote honors often-invisible labor performed by single mothers and links athletic success to formative experiences of scarcity and responsibility.