University of Colorado Football team, along with Be The Match and the Bonfils Colorado Marrow Donor Program, will host a Marrow Donor Registry Drive on Friday, April 25, at Balch Fieldhouse from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The drive will encourage participants to sign up for the Be The Match Registry, which is used to match potential donors to those whose only or best hope for survival is a marrow transplant.

“I got involved with the Marrow Donor Registry at San Jose State, and we did this last year,” CU Head Coach Mike MacIntyre said. “About 12,000 people a year look on the registry and only about 5,000 find matches, and this is a last resort. You could save a life.”

Once a person is registered, they have the opportunity to save a life until the age of 61. Healthy young adults are especially needed for the registry and patients are most likely a match of someone of their own racial and ethnic heritage, meaning often times a person’s unique ancestry may make them the only person who can save another’s life.

“It’s an honorable and life-changing thing to do, so I’m excited our guys will be a part of it,” MacIntyre said. “We’ve had kids that have matched before, it’s really a neat deal and worthwhile for our players and the entire community to look into it.”

There are two ways to donate marrow, either from a peripheral blood stem cell donation or a marrow donation. The PBCS donation is a non-surgical, outpatient procedure after which a donor would be back to their regular life in one to two days. The marrow donation is a surgical procedure that is usually an outpatient procedure after which the donor would be back to their regular life in two to seven days.

CU’s Balch Fieldhouse is located on the west side of Folsom Field on the CU-Boulder main campus. There are parking meters and a metered parking lot located on Colorado Avenue west of Folsom Avenue.

Source: CU