ATHENS — Georgia played a spring football game Saturday, an off-season, off-the-books exercise with the staying power of talcum. Come the fall, who will remember spring’s big producer?
But, while the Bulldogs coaches were preparing to scrimmage, their wives worked another kind of project on a nearby campus field. Hosting a tailgate fundraiser for pediatric cancer research, they attempted to lend something lasting to a bright April Saturday.
Energize the Bulldogs coaching staff, you get a feisty team. Energize the wives of the Bulldogs coaching staff, you get a force of nature.
“They are an interesting group,” said Shelton Stevens, who handles all the sports-themed fund-raising for the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation. “Very aggressive, forward thinking, and they don’t take no for an answer.”
What flipped the switch on these coaches wives was one little girl. Kasyn arrived in Athens 11 months ago with her younger brother Kruz, her mom Keely and her dad Kirk Olivadotti, the Bulldogs’ new linebacker coach.
At Kasyn’s fourth birthday party, a couple of weeks after the Olivadottis got into town from Washington, D.C., the other families on the Georgia staff met her. She was the girl with the boundless energy and the long locks that she insisted upon styling herself every morning.
Everything changed with the June 14 diagnosis. A mysterious bruising and a bug bite that refused to heal were the first clues. Kasyn had acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Keely had to spend long days, then weeks, in Atlanta, dictated by the schedule and toll of the chemo treatments. Kirk, the newest guy on a staff about to get neck deep in training camp, was torn between a coach’s responsibility and a parent’s deepest fears. As for Kasyn, that long, beautiful hair fell out — it has attempted a comeback, but that’s an ongoing battle as treatments continue today.
“She’s actually been great with that part,” Kirk said. “She said let it fall out however God wants it to fall out.”
Always out of place
A coach lives by the notion of preparation. But how can he prepare for anything like this? The pages of the child cancer playbook are blank and filled in on the fly.
When Kasyn’s treatments began, her father never felt like he was in the right place. When he was at the hospital, he wondered how his players were doing. When he was on the field, he worried about how his 2-year-old son was coping. His fellow coaches filled in and gave him time to see Kasyn as much as possible during her prolonged hospital stays. Kasyn’s grandparents came up big, too. Still, the family is trying to strike a workable equilibrium, and it will continue to through the course of treatment scheduled to stretch through this year and into the next.
Doctors have told the Olivadottis that there is an 80 to 90 percent cure rate for Kasyn’s type of cancer. A doctor enlisted by Olivadotti’s former employer, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, told Kirk not to be a stats guy for once. “He said: It’s all about the one. All I should care about is Kasyn Grace, all the other numbers are clutter for my mind. Just worry about trying to make her better.”
Support from team
Kasyn’s fight flooded the banks of the family and spilled over to the football team.
One way or another, the Bulldogs formed a relationship with a little girl they had only just met.
In the position meeting room, Olivadotti often would lead off with some story about his daughter. “Players have probably had to hear more about my family than they are used to hearing from a coach. Because that’s where my mind was a lot,” he said. He told them when Kasyn had a bad nosebleed the night before, and joked that it looked like a scene from a slasher movie. When Kasyn said the darndest thing after she and her little brother tussled – “He’s trying to bludgeon me, Daddy” — his guys heard about it the next day.
Players learned to pick up the signs when their coach was worried about his daughter, even as he tried not to let his concerns show. “I felt like our group tried to pick him up if he was ever down,” said linebacker Christian Robinson.
“I think it helped us all bond a little quicker because we cared about him,” Robinson said. “He was going through so much.”
At season’s end, the coach had one more message for his linebackers. He told them that, obviously, this was his toughest year ever. Yet in other ways — in the support he received at Georgia, in the way the players responded — it was one of his best. The coach thanked them for being there for him, listening to him, becoming like family.
Creating a legacy
There was a legacy to the 2011 season beyond a SEC East title, one built around the little girl wearing a bright Georgia scrunchie pictured atop the Kasyn Cares website.
It’s a working legacy, witness the event before Saturday’s G-Day game where those who bought $200 footballs autographed by prominent Bulldog All-Americans were treated to a tailgate lunch hosted by the coaches’ wives.
Each summer, the wives gather at Lake Oconee and plan a community service project. The latest cause came from their own ranks.
“This was something we all could relate to,” said Paige Grantham, wife of Georgia defensive coordinator Todd Grantham. “It was a chance not only to help the Olivadottis, but also help families throughout Georgia.”
They decided there was more they could do than fix the occasional meal for the Olivadotti family or make the sporadic phone call of support. They decided to create a fund in Kasyn’s name that would go toward research at the Atlanta facility where she was being treated.
Hearing the story about Kasyn, early in her treatments, telling her mom how bad she felt for the other children at the hospital, they decided upon a name for their fund – Kasyn Cares.
Working with Stephens, they raised $40,000 during an event last year in which they led fans on a tour of the Bulldogs facility. They raised more during a recent Georgia-Kennesaw State baseball game in Gwinnett. They hoped to pull in at least another $40,000 with Saturday’s tailgate affair.
A coach’s wife surely knows the hold football has on its followers, and if she can herd that passion toward another cause now and then, you bet she will. “This combines fans’ love of the Georgia Bulldogs with a way to help children. It’s a win-win,” said Katharyn Richt, the head coach’s wife.
Stephens said the group already has begun planning other Kasyn Cares fundraising events for the upcoming season. There may be springtime questions about Georgia’s running game, but there appears little doubt the coaches wives’ pet project has plenty of legs.
Witnessing the work done in their daughter’s name has allowed the Olivadottis to see something beyond the day-to-day process of getting Kasyn better.
There has been added to their struggle at least a hint of purpose and meaning.
“At the end of it all, hopefully, we’ll have a happy ending and an inspirational story,” Kirk said.
“However it ends, it’s going to be an inspirational story.”
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