This feature was originally published in the football game-day program for Lafayette on September 24, 2022.
 
by Marc Narducci
 
Can one imagine waking up every day, knowing you have saved somebody's life?
 
It's a question many of us could never comprehend, but Mike Burkeitt is one who can answer the question with great authority but also a tremendous sense of humility.
 
A member of the University of Pennsylvania's athletic training staff since the summer of 2018, Burkeitt is also a member of the Be The Match program which looks to help those in need of bone marrow transplants. For more than 30 years, Be the Match has operated the National Marrow Donor Program, helping people diagnosed with life-threatening blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.
 
In 2020, Burkeitt was told he was a match for an adult male suffering from Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), a type of cancer of blood and bone marrow. In October of that year, Burkeitt donated peripheral blood stem cell, or PSBC.
 
The procedure was successful and the person Burkeitt helped is living a productive life, working full time and enjoying every day that he didn't know would be granted to him.
 
So it goes back to the question to Burkeitt about living each day, knowing he has allowed another person to do the same thing.
 
"Honestly, it's a surreal feeling to me, I've never really thought of it that way," he said recently. "It was always something I knew I would do if I got called to do it."
 
According to the program, the donor and recipient are to have no contact for at least a year. Donors can choose to remain anonymous. That wasn't the case with Burkeitt, who wanted to meet the recipient. The feeling was mutual, and they have developed quite a friendship, communicating frequently. They have not met in person but hope it could eventually happen.
 
The person who Burkeitt helped says he owes his life to Burkeitt.
 
"I wouldn't be alive without him," said the recipient, James, who preferred not to provide his last name.
 
There were two matches for James: Burkeitt, and a person from Europe was another. James is 55 and lives in Atlanta, so having somebody from the United States able to donate made things more convenient.
 
James and Burkeitt have formed quite a bond, something that may be expected when going through such a life-altering experience together. The first time they talked on the phone, it was initially a little awkward. After all, what do you say to somebody who saved your life? Yet it didn't take long for both to develop great chemistry. That first phone call ended up lasting four hours.
 
The two either speak or text regularly.
 
"I am living and breathing, and it is not just me but my wife and my family who still have me here," James said. "Despite still having issues—I still take a lot of different meds—I am living and breathing and working full time from home. It is the gift of life I am so grateful for."
 
Burkeitt joined the Be The Match Program while still an undergrad at Temple. In 2013, he submitted his DNA sample by getting his cheek swabbed, a simple procedure.
 
It was seven years before he heard anything.
 
College students are prime to be donors, Burkeitt said. Now 28, he said he was on the older side to donate, 26 at the time, but still young enough.
 
"A college athlete is perfect to donate because it is easier to handle the medication and you have more healthy cells that bounce back quicker," Burkeitt said. "That is why football programs are great—more donors are young males and they're kind of in that perfect bracket. You are young and healthy and can get through it."
 
An involved coach
It was a little more than 24 hours before this year's season-opening football game for Penn, and Penn's George A. Munger Head Coach Ray Priore had plenty on his plate. The preparation for the opener, especially, is intense. There seemingly aren't enough hours in the day.
 
Yet prior to putting his team through final preparations for what would be a 25-14 win over Colgate at Franklin Field, Priore spoke at length about the Be the Match Program.
 
In the early 1990s, former Villanova head coach Andy Talley began getting people to sign up for the Be The Match Registry as potential donors. In 2010, he formed the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, a 5013 non-profit, and took the project to a new level.
 
Over the years Talley has worked specifically on getting college football and other sports programs involved in having youngsters sign up for the Be The Match Registry, to get swabbed like Burkeitt did in 2013.
 
Schools hold what are known as registration drives. Penn has been a participant for more than 14 years.
 
So even with game day looming, Priore took the time to discuss the importance of spreading the word about getting more youngsters to sign up to the registry.
 
"I have been at Penn for 35 years and I think any way that you can feel you have a platform to give back and help people, it's our job to take advantage of that," said Priore, who began at Penn in 1987 as an assistant coaching the linebackers and is in his seventh season as head coach. "There are so many ways you can impact people's lives and so many ways you can do that through college athletics, and this is one of those things where you can truly save people's lives."
 
Talley, for one, wasn't surprised to hear that Priore was making the time to talk about Be The Match the day before his season opener.
 
"Anybody getting ready for their first game would be on pins and needles, and the last thing they want to be talking about is a charity they are involved in," Talley said. "But that's Ray. That is why we asked him to be part of our foundation."
 
Talley then expanded even more.
 
"You know, I made the right choice when I got him," he said. "He's a great person, a terrific coach, and we are so fortunate to have him involved with Be The Match."
 
Need for donors
There is a tremendous need for potential donors.
 
The words are on the Andy Talley Bone Marrow foundation's website: "Every three minutes, somebody is diagnosed with 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 percent, leaving most patients to rely on an anonymous donor from a registry."
 
That is why Priore is so passionate about this cause.
 
Each year, Penn holds drives to register people for Be the Match. Of his latest statistics, Priore says 2,881 have registered and, through that, 24 donors have been identified from those events. Of that total, five have been Penn football players and all of them have donated. In addition, there are two current players and a recent graduate who are potentially being matched up as donors.
 
Two of the people with recent Penn football ties, Anthony Lotti and Sam Philippi, not only participated as donors but were honored on one of the biggest stages for their effort.
 
Lotti is a former team manager. Philippi, a defensive back, was a team captain in 2018 and 2019 and a Harry Gamble Football Club Award recipient who went through the donation procedure after the 2016 football season.
 
A few years later, in November of 2019, the NFL called both Lotti and Philippi requesting an interview to discuss their experience and about the importance of registering potential donors. Only it wasn't really an interview: on the other end of the line was none other than commissioner Roger Goodell. The NFL was promoting the Be the Match program and Goodell was inviting them to the Super Bowl—a way of rewarding them and promoting their community service.
 
They got to attend Super Bowl LIV on February 2, 2020 in Miami when the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, 31-20. Now 26, Philippi received an extra ticket and got to take his younger brother Joey, who is now 23.
 
What he liked most was the invaluable publicity it generated, as he used several interviews he did with various media outlets to get the word out about signing up for the registry.
 
"For me, it wasn't about me but instead spreading the awareness," Philippi said. "The more people who hear my story, the more likely they hopefully are to sign up for the Be the Match program."
 
Philippi, who was a two-time second-team All-Ivy selection, was eventually able to talk to the person who he donated to, a male adult.
 
"It was an emotional phone call when I first talked to him; the entire family was on the phone and they couldn't have been more thankful," he said. "It was a pretty moving phone call to hear from them."
 
One of the other things that Philippi expresses, when talking about the subject, is how it wasn't the hardship to donate that many perceive.
 
According to the Be the Match website, there are two methods of donation: peripheral blood stem cells PBSC, and bone marrow. Philippi donated through the PBSC method.
 
A PBSC donation is a non-surgical procedure. For five days leading up to donation, the donor is given injections of filgrastim, which is medication that increases the number of blood-forming cells in the bloodstream. On the day of donation, blood is removed through a needle on one arm and passed through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells. The remaining blood is returned through the other arm.
 
"I was only down, really couldn't do anything for a week afterwards, but I really felt good after a couple of days," Philippi said.
 
Talley says that Penn's program has contributed to the great success of his project over the years. In addition, he has recently put together a board of college coaches to help recruit their peers. Priore is on that board.
 
"Ray has done a terrific job of getting other teams, friends of his who are coaches, to come and work with us and do drives with us every year," Talley said. "Penn has been terrific, Penn football in particular, and I know every year they are going to have a great drive and Coach Priore is the main man there who pushes it."
 
It's simple math – the more in the registry, the better the chance of finding matches and saving lives.
 
"Every time somebody goes in the registry, you can be a potential match," Priore said. "And I think that can be a powerful thing."
 
Priore has made this a true passion because of so many positive outcomes that have occurred.
 
"There is no better present than giving someone their life back," Priore said. "It's not just one person; it's also the families and friends of those people. It's a lot, when you think about it."
 
Reflecting on the process, Priore added, "I know that experience must be a very powerful experience for both the donor and the recipient."
 
So Priore's goal, like Talley's, is to get more potential donors involved. With that in mind, he is in the process of including Penn's other sports programs. He says he has received positive feedback from other Penn sports coaches and that is one of the next steps.
 
Priore is always looking to increase the list of potential donors, which is why Be The Match is a program that he is always willing to discuss and promote any time—even if it's the day before the opening game of yet another exciting Penn football season.