Kansas State University Athletics
K-State Student, Football Program Team Up for ‘Be The Match’
Apr 12, 2022 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
The decorative concrete brick and fountain are trademarks of Bosco Student Plaza, which is nestled between the student union and Seaton Hall on the campus of Kansas State University. On Saturday afternoon, young adults basked in sunlight as a trombone jazz band performed on a small stage, while other listeners lounged on chairs underneath the shade of large purple umbrellas. Students, seated and standing, breathed life into this picturesque, pleasant scene.
On Wednesday, the same Bosco Student Plaza will serve a more serious purpose. K-State football players and volunteers will converge to encourage student participation in an incredibly simple venture that could ultimately breathe life into a student, or two, or three, or a young boy in Cleveland, or a young girl in Seattle; complete strangers, all of them, yet linked by common plight. There's no telling who K-State football and the volunteers will impact, whose lives they might save, but the Wildcats are the latest of more than 170 college football teams to partner with Be The Match and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation.
The official name of the program is "Get in the Game. Safe a Life," under the Be The Match umbrella, and the program is designed to educate college football players and their peers about their ability to save the lives of people diagnosed with life-threatening blood cancers through bone marrow and stem cell transplants. K-State football players hoping for student involvement as they host their first-ever bone marrow drive between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday at Bosco Student Plaza.
"It's incredibly exciting to be out at Kansas State," says Andy Talley, the retired longtime Villanova head football coach, who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2020. "I think the drive is going to be terrific. They're so well organized at K-State, and I've spent a lot of time with the Be The Match volunteers to get organized, so it should be a tremendous, tremendous drive.
"Nobody in the world does what we do. No one."
Talley founded the non-profit Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation in November 0f 2010. Talley and Be The Match partnered to form the "Get in the Game. Save a Life" program, which utilizes the power of collegiate athletics to recruit blood stem cell donors for the Be The Match Registry. The Get in the Game family has registered more than 120,000 donors, resulting in more than 800 transplants.
A simple cheek swab can save a life.
"There are so many people out there who have no idea about Be the Match, Get in the Game, or the bone marrow registry, or that they could save somebody's life right now," Howard says. "Somebody walking out there right now could save somebody's life."
• • •
Tears welled-up in the eyes of some of the seated K-State football players as Rachel Berland spoke. Rachel, a 21-year-old native of Olathe, Kansas, will graduate from K-State in Chemical Engineering in May. One day in March, she visited the K-State football team in the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre at the Vanier Family Football Complex. She had an important story to share.
"A touching testimony," Gillum says.
Two weeks after her 15th birthday, Rachel suffered breathing complications so troublesome that her parents swept her to an Urgent Care facility. Following a blood analysis, the Berland family went to Children's Mercy Kansas City. That night, Rachel was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. One month into chemotherapy, doctors also discovered Rachel had acute myeloid leukemia. A second month of chemotherapy rendered her almost entirely dependent upon helpers to even get into the shower. Remission did not guarantee zero cancer in the body.
Doctors recommended a bone marrow transplant.
Every three minutes, someone is diagnosed with a blood cancer. Each year, tens of thousands of patients diagnosed with life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia or lymphoma, find themselves in desperate need of a transplant. The chances of a patient finding a family-related donor is only 30%, leaving most patients to rely on an anonymous donor from a registry.
"You can no longer rely on the people you always rely upon to help you," Rachel says. "You become completely reliant upon a stranger signing up as a potential donor. It definitely can be a little nerve wracking because some people never find matches. Just the emotional toll of trying to find that donor can be really tough."
Eventually, doctors found a 100% match for Rachel.
"I actually was able to get into contact with my donor and we talked a little bit," Rachel says. "She was out in California working at Berkeley and received her PhD. She's a very special woman. People ask me how it changed my life and I always say the same thing: 'It didn't change my life; it gave me life.' It's very different.
"Sometimes it's hard to explain just how life or death these situations are. That's literally what it comes down to."
Rachel said that her donor's efforts — the donor had 30 co-workers signed up at her place of employment — inspired her to take the next step in her comeback: giving back. Rachel reached out to Be The Match to become a volunteer. That led to a connection with K-State football, which led to a formal introduction and testimony in front of a room of 18-to-25-year-old males, who are typically deemed the strongest donor candidates.
"I haven't had any complications since the bone marrow transplant. I've been in remission for seven years now."
• • •
Will Howard arrived at K-State as one of the nation's top pro-style quarterbacks in the Class of 2020. As a senior, he threw for 2,543 yards and 27 touchdowns to help Downingtown West (Pa.) High School to its first district title since 1996. At the end of his mightily successful high school career, Howard was named the Maxwell Football Club Pennsylvania Player of the Year.
Howard met Andy Talley at the Maxwell Football Club Awards event in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
"He brought up the idea of me bringing Get in the Game started at Kansas State," Howard says. "I loved it."
Later, Talley also met K-State assistant head coach and defensive passing game coordinator Van Malone at the American Football Coaches Association convention.
"With the connection between Will and Van we were able to put this whole thing together," Talley says. "It's incredibly exciting."
The gears began to turn.
Then K-State student Rachel Berland, who was inspired by the donor who saved her life, walked into the life of K-State football players. K-State football players, who were moved by the efforts of Be The Match and Get in the Game and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, were even more moved after Rachel, now Be The Match volunteer, spoke. It's a full circle. All of it.
"Hearing Rachel, it resonated with me," Gillum says. "Often times we get so caught up in our own lives, but when you have the opportunity to impact others and potentially save their lives, yeah, that's what really did it for me that day in the meeting. I'm beyond excited about it."
K-State linebacker Nick Allen jumped on board immediately — and for good reason. In 2016, Nick's father, Dave Allen, 62, was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow cancer.
"Thank God, he got a match through Be The Match," Nick says. "It saved his life."
Dave Allen's donor was from Liverpool, United Kingdom.
"Somebody saved my dad's life," Nick says. "If I ever get the chance to save somebody's life, I won't think twice about it."
• • •
Sweet jazz attracted young adults to Bosco Student Plaza by the dozens on Saturday, as syrupy notes dripped from a trombone and sunlight danced off the bell and oversized purple umbrellas breathed in the crisp wind as if they carried the band's tempo.
Wednesday's forecast calls for pleasant temperatures with a 100% chance of K-State football players eliciting help of the K-State student body to join the Registry. As if out of a movie's introductory scene, one by one the characters will move into frame — Will Howard, Hayden Gillum and Nick Allen, followed by their teammates, and as the scene unfolds and the camera pulls back to reveal a student gathering, Rachel Berland will slide into full view, helping out the efforts — ("I can't even express how amazing this is," she says) — while Krista Ross, executive director of The Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, talks to and directs the student body.
It appears to be a perfect marriage.
"I'm so glad K-State football decided to work with the organization," Rachel says. "All the guys have so much pull around here. They're basically campus superstars and are celebrities. I really think that leading by example is going to encourage a lot more people to really look at the Registry and try to sign up as well."
Malone traces back to the initial meeting that day in March in the Vanier Family Football Complex.
"When you see the person take you through their life and take you through what you'd predict to be dire circumstances and all of the sudden they get a match, it's powerful," Malone says. "You probably can't go to someone you're related to or some of those traditional people you're accustomed to leaning on when times get tough. It's going to be a stranger who saves you.
"Be The Match is encouraging the young men on our team to encourage others who are their age to be a part of it, and that's when you're making a real difference. That gives us great pride just to be a part of it."
It's been seven years since Rachel and her family faced an uncertain future.
K-State football's efforts, coupled with Be The Match, Get in the Game, and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, might help many enjoy a promising future. It all starts on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at Bosco Student Plaza.
"We are excited to be at K-State," Talley says.
Rachel is vivacious as she discusses plans for her new life, which appears destined to touch and impact and inspire those around her, and complete strangers, and young patients and their parents, and potential matches. Her story, which touched K-State football players, might only carry on. While Rachel came to K-State eager for higher learning, she has been blessed to learn much about herself, and is making her life-changing, life-saving experience her life's passion.
"My whole experience has really changed my life," she says. "I saw all these amazing people working in the hospital setting and these people were actively trying to save lives. I really want to pay it forward and try to be one of those people in the future."
She pauses.
"So, I've decided that after I graduate," she says, "I'm going to medical school."
The decorative concrete brick and fountain are trademarks of Bosco Student Plaza, which is nestled between the student union and Seaton Hall on the campus of Kansas State University. On Saturday afternoon, young adults basked in sunlight as a trombone jazz band performed on a small stage, while other listeners lounged on chairs underneath the shade of large purple umbrellas. Students, seated and standing, breathed life into this picturesque, pleasant scene.
On Wednesday, the same Bosco Student Plaza will serve a more serious purpose. K-State football players and volunteers will converge to encourage student participation in an incredibly simple venture that could ultimately breathe life into a student, or two, or three, or a young boy in Cleveland, or a young girl in Seattle; complete strangers, all of them, yet linked by common plight. There's no telling who K-State football and the volunteers will impact, whose lives they might save, but the Wildcats are the latest of more than 170 college football teams to partner with Be The Match and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation.
The official name of the program is "Get in the Game. Safe a Life," under the Be The Match umbrella, and the program is designed to educate college football players and their peers about their ability to save the lives of people diagnosed with life-threatening blood cancers through bone marrow and stem cell transplants. K-State football players hoping for student involvement as they host their first-ever bone marrow drive between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday at Bosco Student Plaza.
"It's incredibly exciting to be out at Kansas State," says Andy Talley, the retired longtime Villanova head football coach, who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2020. "I think the drive is going to be terrific. They're so well organized at K-State, and I've spent a lot of time with the Be The Match volunteers to get organized, so it should be a tremendous, tremendous drive.
"Nobody in the world does what we do. No one."
Talley founded the non-profit Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation in November 0f 2010. Talley and Be The Match partnered to form the "Get in the Game. Save a Life" program, which utilizes the power of collegiate athletics to recruit blood stem cell donors for the Be The Match Registry. The Get in the Game family has registered more than 120,000 donors, resulting in more than 800 transplants.
A simple cheek swab can save a life.
Which brings us to Wednesday's drive. K-State quarterback Will Howard, center Hayden Gillum and linebacker Nick Allen have spearheaded the Get in the Game efforts. Other K-State teammates will be on hand as well. So will Willie Wildcat. The event will feature giveaways and prizes and a quarterback net for folks to test their arm while also taking a cheek swab test — these literally take a minute to complete — thereby planting themselves as potential bone marrow donors on the Registry.K-State Football 🤝 @BeTheMatch
— K-State Football (@KStateFB) April 5, 2022
April 13 | 10am-2pm | Bosco Student Plaza pic.twitter.com/k2gZ7R8Co3
"There are so many people out there who have no idea about Be the Match, Get in the Game, or the bone marrow registry, or that they could save somebody's life right now," Howard says. "Somebody walking out there right now could save somebody's life."
• • •
Tears welled-up in the eyes of some of the seated K-State football players as Rachel Berland spoke. Rachel, a 21-year-old native of Olathe, Kansas, will graduate from K-State in Chemical Engineering in May. One day in March, she visited the K-State football team in the Steel & Pipe Team Theatre at the Vanier Family Football Complex. She had an important story to share.
"A touching testimony," Gillum says.
Two weeks after her 15th birthday, Rachel suffered breathing complications so troublesome that her parents swept her to an Urgent Care facility. Following a blood analysis, the Berland family went to Children's Mercy Kansas City. That night, Rachel was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. One month into chemotherapy, doctors also discovered Rachel had acute myeloid leukemia. A second month of chemotherapy rendered her almost entirely dependent upon helpers to even get into the shower. Remission did not guarantee zero cancer in the body.
Doctors recommended a bone marrow transplant.
Every three minutes, someone is diagnosed with a blood cancer. Each year, tens of thousands of patients diagnosed with life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia or lymphoma, find themselves in desperate need of a transplant. The chances of a patient finding a family-related donor is only 30%, leaving most patients to rely on an anonymous donor from a registry.
"You can no longer rely on the people you always rely upon to help you," Rachel says. "You become completely reliant upon a stranger signing up as a potential donor. It definitely can be a little nerve wracking because some people never find matches. Just the emotional toll of trying to find that donor can be really tough."
Eventually, doctors found a 100% match for Rachel.
"I actually was able to get into contact with my donor and we talked a little bit," Rachel says. "She was out in California working at Berkeley and received her PhD. She's a very special woman. People ask me how it changed my life and I always say the same thing: 'It didn't change my life; it gave me life.' It's very different.
"Sometimes it's hard to explain just how life or death these situations are. That's literally what it comes down to."
Rachel said that her donor's efforts — the donor had 30 co-workers signed up at her place of employment — inspired her to take the next step in her comeback: giving back. Rachel reached out to Be The Match to become a volunteer. That led to a connection with K-State football, which led to a formal introduction and testimony in front of a room of 18-to-25-year-old males, who are typically deemed the strongest donor candidates.
— K-State Coach Van B Malone (@VanBMalone3rd) March 22, 2022"It was so neat seeing the football team interested in getting involved and trying to get people on the registry," Rachel says, "because at the end of the day, the more people you have on the registry, the more likely it is for someone to find that person that gives them a life. I felt so blessed and honored that they had me get involved.
"I haven't had any complications since the bone marrow transplant. I've been in remission for seven years now."
• • •
Will Howard arrived at K-State as one of the nation's top pro-style quarterbacks in the Class of 2020. As a senior, he threw for 2,543 yards and 27 touchdowns to help Downingtown West (Pa.) High School to its first district title since 1996. At the end of his mightily successful high school career, Howard was named the Maxwell Football Club Pennsylvania Player of the Year.
Howard met Andy Talley at the Maxwell Football Club Awards event in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
"He brought up the idea of me bringing Get in the Game started at Kansas State," Howard says. "I loved it."
Later, Talley also met K-State assistant head coach and defensive passing game coordinator Van Malone at the American Football Coaches Association convention.
"With the connection between Will and Van we were able to put this whole thing together," Talley says. "It's incredibly exciting."
The gears began to turn.
Then K-State student Rachel Berland, who was inspired by the donor who saved her life, walked into the life of K-State football players. K-State football players, who were moved by the efforts of Be The Match and Get in the Game and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, were even more moved after Rachel, now Be The Match volunteer, spoke. It's a full circle. All of it.
"Hearing Rachel, it resonated with me," Gillum says. "Often times we get so caught up in our own lives, but when you have the opportunity to impact others and potentially save their lives, yeah, that's what really did it for me that day in the meeting. I'm beyond excited about it."
K-State linebacker Nick Allen jumped on board immediately — and for good reason. In 2016, Nick's father, Dave Allen, 62, was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow cancer.
"Thank God, he got a match through Be The Match," Nick says. "It saved his life."
Dave Allen's donor was from Liverpool, United Kingdom.
"Somebody saved my dad's life," Nick says. "If I ever get the chance to save somebody's life, I won't think twice about it."
• • •
Sweet jazz attracted young adults to Bosco Student Plaza by the dozens on Saturday, as syrupy notes dripped from a trombone and sunlight danced off the bell and oversized purple umbrellas breathed in the crisp wind as if they carried the band's tempo.
Wednesday's forecast calls for pleasant temperatures with a 100% chance of K-State football players eliciting help of the K-State student body to join the Registry. As if out of a movie's introductory scene, one by one the characters will move into frame — Will Howard, Hayden Gillum and Nick Allen, followed by their teammates, and as the scene unfolds and the camera pulls back to reveal a student gathering, Rachel Berland will slide into full view, helping out the efforts — ("I can't even express how amazing this is," she says) — while Krista Ross, executive director of The Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, talks to and directs the student body.
It appears to be a perfect marriage.
"I'm so glad K-State football decided to work with the organization," Rachel says. "All the guys have so much pull around here. They're basically campus superstars and are celebrities. I really think that leading by example is going to encourage a lot more people to really look at the Registry and try to sign up as well."
Malone traces back to the initial meeting that day in March in the Vanier Family Football Complex.
"When you see the person take you through their life and take you through what you'd predict to be dire circumstances and all of the sudden they get a match, it's powerful," Malone says. "You probably can't go to someone you're related to or some of those traditional people you're accustomed to leaning on when times get tough. It's going to be a stranger who saves you.
"Be The Match is encouraging the young men on our team to encourage others who are their age to be a part of it, and that's when you're making a real difference. That gives us great pride just to be a part of it."
It's been seven years since Rachel and her family faced an uncertain future.
K-State football's efforts, coupled with Be The Match, Get in the Game, and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, might help many enjoy a promising future. It all starts on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at Bosco Student Plaza.
"We are excited to be at K-State," Talley says.
Rachel is vivacious as she discusses plans for her new life, which appears destined to touch and impact and inspire those around her, and complete strangers, and young patients and their parents, and potential matches. Her story, which touched K-State football players, might only carry on. While Rachel came to K-State eager for higher learning, she has been blessed to learn much about herself, and is making her life-changing, life-saving experience her life's passion.
"My whole experience has really changed my life," she says. "I saw all these amazing people working in the hospital setting and these people were actively trying to save lives. I really want to pay it forward and try to be one of those people in the future."
She pauses.
"So, I've decided that after I graduate," she says, "I'm going to medical school."
Players Mentioned
K-State Volleyball | Postmatch Press Conference vs Nebraska (NCAA Tournament Second Round)
Sunday, December 07
K-State Football | Head Coach Collin Klein Introduction & Recognition at Men's Basketball Halftime
Sunday, December 07
K-State Football | Collin Klein Q&A with Wyatt Thompson
Saturday, December 06
K-State Volleyball | Match Highlights vs San Diego (NCAA Tournament First Round)
Saturday, December 06