Gift of Life was excited to partner with the Nashville Soccer Club to introduce a nine-year-old transplant survivor to his lifesaving bone marrow donor. Nashville SC is the Major League Soccer team based in Nashville, Tenn., with its home pitch at Geodis Stadium, where the introduction took place on September 3, 2022 during a match with the Austin Football Club, from Austin, Texas.
At halftime, as bone marrow transplant recipient Colton Higgins and his family were being recognized on the field, a man emerged from the stands and took off his soccer jersey to reveal the trademark turquoise Gift of Life shirt with the words, “Life Given”. It was Colton’s donor, Kevin Koerner, a 23-year-old high school math teacher from Elkton, Md. After several highly enthusiastic high-fives with his new hero, Colton gave Kevin a huge hug, to the delight of fans in the stands.
However, the journey to this incredible moment was not an easy one. Colton was just five years old and in kindergarten when his family noticed he had swollen bruises with no known cause and took him to the emergency room. He was quickly diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and transferred to a children’s hospital. That was in 2018, and at first, treatment seemed to be working. But, in April 2020, Colton had a relapse, and the Higgins family was told by his doctors a bone marrow transplant would be his best chance for a cure.
“We were shocked and devastated,” said his mother, Miranda. “I knew of a few children who’d had cancer and passed away from it, so I was scared. The relapse coincided with the start of the pandemic lockdown, so it felt surreal and out of our control. But, I knew it was possible to find a match.”
Although many family members reached out to be tested as Colton’s donor, none of them were a close enough match to donate, so an unrelated individual who shared Colton’s tissue type was needed.
“We were both relieved and nervous when we learned a donor was found,” said Miranda. “There were so many ‘what-ifs’. Colton even had to wait several days to receive the transplant after his donor had given bone marrow, so they could confirm the donor was negative for COVID.”
Kevin had joined Gift of Life as a volunteer donor in September 2019, during a swab drive at the on-campus board game club at the University of Delaware. A Gift of Life Campus Ambassador came in to talk to the club and collect registration kits from the club’s members.
“There was no reason not to join, but I knew the odds were very low,” said Kevin. “I was in complete shock when I learned I was a match, as it’s only a one in 200 chance. Even though the lockdown was going on, I was absolutely going to donate, no matter what. I could not refuse a simple procedure that would have no long-term effects on me and would save someone’s life.”
After their meeting, the two families finished watching the soccer match together.
As part of the event, Gift of Life Campus Ambassadors from Vanderbilt University, including Amanda Bortner, co-president of the Gift of Life Club at Vanderbilt, and Leetal Shoshan, the campus advisor and Israel Fellow from Vanderbilt Hillel, set up a table in the stadium’s concourse where they helped Nashville SC fans use a cheek swab to join the registry. In recent years, Campus Ambassadors attending Vanderbilt have recruited nearly 3,000 donors resulting in five completed, lifesaving transplants for patients battling blood cancer.
Eric Miller, #15 defender for Nashville SC and Jeffrey Robben, Team Administrator and an alumnus of Nashville’s Belmont University, also swabbed and joined the registry.
Colton has a fraternal twin brother and an older sister, and he loves playing Minecraft, golf, building Legos, and his favorite animals are pandas, foxes, and tigers. He is currently learning to play chess.
Kevin is busy teaching high school math, but he also plays some video games – maybe he and Colton will team up for a Minecraft session! He spends most of his free time with his extended family and friends, and he loves dogs, often volunteering at a kennel when time permits.