Former football player donates marrow On March 25, former Rhode Island football player Evan Shields (No. 4, below) became the eleventh person to donate bone marrow and help save the life of a stranger through the football team’s annual marrow registration drive.
Shields, whose senior season was 2011, was in his home state of Maryland when he got the call from the Rhode Island Blood Center that he was a match for a leukemia patient. “Initially I was caught off guard, but other people on my former team had already donated marrow, so that made me feel more comfortable,” Shields says. He researched the impact that donating would have on his own body, but in the end, the deciding factor was learning that statistically, very few minorities ever find a match. Donating was a profound responsibility that he accepted gladly: “I knew it would be
painful, but I thought if I didn’t do it, the person could die,” Shields says. “A little bit of pain I’d be receiving was nothing in comparison to years of pain the patient may have been experiencing. Honestly, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I feel honored.” Shields’ marrow was harvested at Georgetown Hospital in Washington, D.C. He learned more than he ever thought he’d know about what it means to be on the other end of a donation: “You don’t know the entire time until the actual procedure is done whether it’ll work. Along with that, prior to the procedure you aren’t told whether or not the donor agreed to go through with it.” For donors, the process involves general anesthesia, sometimes a night in the hospital, and a few days or weeks of discomfort and occasional fatigue. URI’s football team has led annual registration drives since 2009, successfully matching, six current or former athletes and another five registrants. Would Shields go through it again? “You have to treat others the way you’d want to be treated,” he says. “Imagine if you were in their position—dying. I can’t imagine being in a hospital bed, knowing that the only thing that would help me survive is an exact match from a stranger. Of course I’d do it again.”
Soccer players clean up Hazard Rocks With beach season approaching, the women’s soccer team assisted with cleaning up Hazard Rocks in Narragansett Saturday, April 5. Team members walked along the rocks with gloves and trash bags and picked up everything they could find. “Community service is something that is very important to our soccer program, athletic department and University as a whole,” Head Coach Michael Needham says. “We were happy to spend the morning at Hazard Rocks cleaning up the trash that had accumulated there. I think many times our players forget, in their day-to-day grind, that they have the opportunity to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the United States, and I believe it is our responsibility to help keep it that way. “Our athletic department as a whole values the contributions our athletes make in competition, in the classroom, and in the community, and this project was just one example.”
Rhody Reads During April, more than 75 student-athletes representing all 18 varsity teams spent time reading at four local elementary schools. As part of the second annual URI Life Skills community service project, URI athletes visited 56 different classrooms at Melrose, Matunuck, Wakefield and Peace Dale elementary schools, reaching nearly 1,000 children. “It humbled me as a person,” says men’s basketball player T.J. Buchanan. “I appreciate the opportunity to play at this level and give back to the community.” “It showed me how much of a role college athletes actually play in younger children’s lives,” says Tyrone Jenkins, a member of the football team. “We really can have an impact. It felt so good to have those kids looking up to us.”
PHOTOS: JOE GIBLIN, MICHAEL SCOTT, COURTESY URI ATHLETICS
12-14PressBox.indd 13
Left, Emily Thomesen, swimmer; right, football’s Andrew Bose and Tyrone Jenkins.
UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 13
5/27/14 10:02 AM