When Valparaiso University hired Andy Waddle in December, it got more than simply a head football coach.
Waddle won a lot of games over the last 12 seasons at Marietta College, but he’s far prouder of the lives that he has saved than the games that he has won. Waddle and his wife Kerry Jean are involved with the “Be The Match” Bone Marrow Registry and have raised nearly $20,000 while registering over 2,000 potential bone marrow donors, a very personal cause for the family.
Kerry Jean had a rare bone marrow disease called aplastic anemia, which acts similar to leukemia, but instead of cancer attacking blood cells, the blood cells are attacking themselves. The first place they look for a match is your family, as siblings have a 33 percent chance of matching. Kerry Jean’s two brothers did not match her, so her only chance at that point in time was the National Bone Marrow Association. She had one perfect match. He said yes.
“His willingness to join the registry saved my wife’s life,” Waddle said. “That started our passion for this program. Once I got to Marietta as a head coach, we had a player of ours whose high school teammate was a Division-I football player and couldn’t find a donor, so we ran a drive on our campus in his honor. We challenged another school, which happened to be my wife’s alma mater, and had the ‘Save a Friend’ Challenge. My quarterback’s friend was sick, and my wife’s maiden name was Friend.”
Waddle met Kerry Jean’s donor, a man named Todd Spencer, and became friends with him and his wife.
“Todd and his wife were driving down the road, and his wife saw a sign that said to join the registry, and she thought that was something that they should do,” Waddle said. “She pushed him to sign up on the registry. It was Todd whose name was called, and we named our son after them. His name is Spencer in honor of the Spencer family.”
The best people to give are young, healthy men between the ages of 18-25, which presented Waddle with an opportunity to influence young people to help save lives through his platform as a head football coach. Waddle connected with former Villanova head football coach Andy Tally, who runs “Get in the Game,” a program to educate college football players and their peers about the importance of marrow and stem cell transplants in saving lives.
“I partnered with Andy Tally and his foundation, and we helped to sign up lots of other colleges in the state of Ohio,” Waddle said. “I hope to get some other schools in Indiana to sign up. A couple of other PFL schools have expressed a willingness to sign up. We’re just trying to spread the awareness that you have the ability to potentially save a life. If you have 100 people on your football team, you have a chance of saving two or three lives.”
The Waddle family experienced a heartbreaking loss in 2014, when their daughter Arlee Grace passed away at birth. A few days earlier, Kerry Jean was at a conference talking about her story, and the person who followed her was talking about organ donation and how that changed their life. A few days later, Lifeline of Ohio called and wanted Arlee Grace’s heart, and the Waddle family made her an organ donor to save another child and hurting family.
“You typically can’t be an organ donor and continue to live, but an exception is bone marrow,” Waddle said. “In this scenario, you get to donate and you get to live your normal life while maybe saving somebody else’s. I say ‘normal life,’ but I don’t know if it’s completely normal, because you’re somebody’s hero after that. That’s why we do it.”
The Valpo football program will host an event to encourage signups for the National Bone Marrow Registry on Friday, April 25, the start of Waddle’s efforts to integrate a cause near and dear to his heart within the Valpo community.
Brandon Vickrey
Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications
Valparaiso University
Office Phone: 219-464-5396 | Cell: 219-771-7504
ValpoAthletics.com
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