Staten Island, NY - On Wednesday, April 25, the Wagner College football program supported the National Bone Marrow Donor Program by hosting its fifth annual Bone Marrow Registration Drive and, for the fifth straight year, samples from more than 200 donors were collected and will be entered into the National Donor Bank to determine if a match can be found with a cancer patient seeking a bone marrow transplant.
 
Throughout the day, members of the Wagner Football Team worked alongside representatives from the National Bone Marrow Donor Program, to collect samples from the many generous volunteers.
 
A simple cheek swab was taken from each volunteer, a process that takes just seconds to complete. If a match is found, the volunteer will be further tested to see if he or she is, indeed, a match.
 
Wagner is one of 34 college football programs from across the nation that takes part in a Bone Marrow Registration Drive. The driving force behind college football supporting this worthy cause is veteran Villanova head football coach Andy Talley, a close friend of Seahawk head coach Walt Hameline. In 2008, Talley founded the Andy Talley Bone Marrow foundation which supports the “Get in the Game, Save a Life” initiative by organizing nationwide college campus opportunities to join the Be The Match Registry.
 
“We have over 60 college football players that have donated and saved a life,” said Talley in a story that appears on the Andy Talley Foundation website, www.talleybonemarrow.org. “So it's just wonderful to see the strength and the competitiveness and teamwork in college football carry over to such a great deal like this; to actually save a life.”
 
Former Villanova offensive lineman Andrew Berggren, who will enter his sixth season as an assistant coach at Wagner and third as offensive line coach, has been chiefly responsible for organizing Wagner's annual Bone Marrow Drive since its inception in 2008.
 
“To have one of Andy's former players here on staff spearheading this effort each spring is special,” said Hameline. “Andy's passion for this cause runs so deep and “Berg” does just a fantastic job each year rallying our assistant coaches, players and people throughout the campus in support of the bone marrow drive.”
 
On any given day, more than 6,000 men, women and children are searching the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) Registry for a life-saving donor. These patients have leukemia, lymphoma and other life-threatening diseases that can be treated by a bone marrow or cord blood transplant. For many of these patients, a transplant may be the best and only hope of a cure.
 
To learn more about the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), visit marrow.org or call 1-800-MARROW-2 (1-800-627-7682).