Robert Herrion is a 9-year-old who loves NBA star Kevin Durant. He devours basketball statistics and checks the previous night’s scores every morning on his dad’s phone, easily committing them to memory.
“Obviously, I’m biased,” said Tom Herrion, a Georgia Tech assistant coach and Robert’s dad. “He’s a terrific kid, unbelievable and he’s very bright. He just has some things that he’s deficient at that we continue to work at to help him grow.”
Most of that work is done in the privacy of the Herrion home. But some of it will be done in a most public setting this weekend, in college basketball arenas and through televisions across the country. About 225 Division I coaches, including every ACC coach (such as Tech’s Brian Gregory) as well as Kentucky coach John Calipari, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and Kansas coach Bill Self, among others, will wear the blue puzzle-piece pins associated with Autism Speaks, the autism science and advocacy organization.
In its second year, the event is the brainchild of Herrion and his close friend, Towson coach Pat Skerry, who also has a son with autism.
“Now, it’s grown way bigger than we even dreamed,” Herrion said.
While Herrion was coach at Marshall, he and Skerry brought the idea to life last year, picking out a weekend on the college basketball schedule and contacting the roughly 80 coaches whose teams would be playing on television that weekend. It would be a way to bring awareness to autism, the group of brain-development disorders that has been diagnosed in one of every 68 U.S. children. Herrion and Skerry, who coordinated the project last year largely by themselves with their staffs’ help, were floored by the overwhelming response from their colleagues.
“There’s so many good things that have happened for these youngsters, and so to help in some way is an easy thing to do,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “And Tom’s a great guy, and so we’ll participate in that, definitely, and feel proud and honored to do it.”
It was a significant moment for autism awareness and advocacy. According to Autism Speaks data, measuring just 19 of the games, almost 11 million households tuned in. Estimating eight camera shots of each coach per game, that’s almost 90 million impressions that the pins made.
World Autism Awareness Day, recognized April 2, is the disorder’s most visible event, “but this one is becoming very near and dear to us, and we’re recognizing in it a great opportunity to continue to grow it,” said Peter Morton, vice president of development for Autism Speaks.
Herrion said he was most gratified by emails and notes from families impacted by autism thanking him for giving the condition a platform. Herrion and wife, Leslie, know well the challenges. Robert’s case is moderate — he is in his third-grade class about 90 percent of the time — but he requires speech therapy and other care. A medical report found last year that the cost of supporting a person with autism can reach as high as $2.4 million over a lifetime.
Said Herrion, “We’ve got to help all these other folks.”
Autism Speaks has come alongside Herrion and Skerry for this year’s event, adding a fundraising component and taking care of much of the logistics. Fans are being challenged to raise $6,800 per school through the Autism Speaks website.
Said Herrion, “I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface on the impact this can have.”
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