The Spider football team helped recruit over 1,500 potential bone marrow donors
Campus Life
One spring afternoon on the Forum, a group of boisterous UR football players stood waving oversized swabs, trying to raise awareness about the National Marrow Donor Program as students and faculty walked by.
“We usually try to catch people on their walks to and from class and try to explain how much they can help those in need. Many people often look at the tent with curiosity and sometimes approach us on their own,” said senior Brian “Big Cat” Catanzarite, a long snapper for the team and rhetoric & communications major.
The team launched the annual drive in 2018. They were inspired by Old Dominion University football player Joseph Pulisic, who came to campus to speak about his lifesaving donation.
Over the past seven years, UR players have signed up more than 1,500 people to be listed as potential bone marrow donors. Some years the entire football team was included on the registry. This year's event brought in 400 donors.
“All you do is scan a QR code and complete a quick questionnaire. Then, we give you a swab kit, and you swab both cheeks on the spot,” Catanzarite said. The kits are then shipped out to NMDP.
Sophomore Harrison Wood, senior Brian Catanzarite, and sophomores Will McManus, Jordan Wilkes and TJ Baldwin stand up for a good cause.
Donors become part of the registry. If matched with a patient, they may be asked to donate peripheral blood stem cells. This process involves extracting the donor’s healthy blood stem cells and transplanting them into the patient so that their body can begin producing healthy blood cells again. The donations assist patients with blood cancers, blood and immune system disorders, and inherited metabolic disorders.
One Spider football player, 2021 alum Ben Maffe, successfully donated his blood stem cells to save the life of a patient in his mid-50s with Stage IV leukemia. The week prior, Maffe received injections of white blood cells. Afterward, he and his mother flew down to the regional center for the donation in Boca Raton, Florida. He remained conscious during the blood transfusion procedure, which took an hour and a half.
Maffe initially thought the medical team would have to drill into his hip for the marrow. Instead, he underwent a different procedure where the stem cells usually extracted from the marrow are drawn through the veins.
“They hook you up pretty much as they would when you donate blood,” he said. As blood was siphoned from one arm, the stem cells were extracted, and then the remaining blood was returned to his other arm. “It really was painless.”
Maffe said he felt drained the first day but returned to normal by day two. He was able to speak to the recipient on the phone, who thanked him for his donation. Two years later, the recipient is still doing well.
Millions of people around the country have volunteered to join the donor registry. Multiple donors may initially be matched to a patient, but the list is narrowed until the best match is identified.
Maffe received his first match notification three months after being swabbed, but the process stopped there. Then, about a year after he graduated, he learned he was selected for a pool of 16 for another patient. Later, he found himself among the final two and was eventually chosen.
“I never thought it would happen because the chance of matching with someone is very small,” Maffe said. “When I learned I had the opportunity to help save someone’s life, there was no way I could turn it down.”
“And I would certainly do it again.”