A 2-year-old girl and a 59-year-old man, and their families, will have a happy holiday season because of the sacrifice made by a pair of young men who, as of Wednesday, neither had met.
That the two young men responsible happen to both be star football players at small colleges located less than an hour apart (across the Schuylkill River separating Pennsylvania and New Jersey), who grew up about two hours apart in south Jersey, is almost a complete coincidence.
The odds against it happening are hard to calculate, and incredibly long.
Yet, it is not a complete coincidence that the infant girl and the older man -- both of whom suffer from a form of leukemia and received bone-marrow transplants within a recent six-month span -- were given new leases on life from the two players: Villanova senior wide receiver Matt Szczur and Rowan senior defensive end Matt Hoffman, respectively.
Szczur and Hoffman became donors either directly or indirectly through the efforts of Villanova coach Andy Talley, who has spent nearly two decades spearheading bone-marrow donation campaigns in the Philadelphia area, and who started a program for college football teams, called "Get in the Game, Save a Life,'' two years ago.
"He's done a wonderful job promoting that, not just at our school, but at other schools,'' Szczur (pronounced SEE-zur) said this week, as the defending FCS champion Wildcats prepared for Friday's national semifinal at Eastern Washington.
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