For several days, Kendall Williams wrote to her Navy officer father in Guantanamo, saying she wished he could see her cheering her on at the homecoming football game. The 14-year-old girl had no idea that Petty Officer 2nd Class Dale Williams planned to go home from his post for only 24 hours, determined not to miss her performance.

During an emotional reunion, Williams, who hasn’t been home for seven months, surprised his daughter when she was sick on the football field at Erwin High School in Asheville, North Carolina on Friday. When the announcer called the name of the soldiers across the stadium, Kendall thought it was just an honor for her father, who graduated from the same school, until she turned and saw him.

Video footage of the reunion shows Kendall hugging her father as they both sob and the crowd cheers. “I was confused,” Williams told the Asheville Citizen-Times. “I knew I would. They parted ways to sing the national anthem side by side, but when the music stopped, the teenage girl ran up to her father again, crying with joy.