EAST HANOVER — Step up to the plate and be a hero by registering as a potential lifesaving bone marrow stem cell donor at the annual charity softball tournament to be held Saturday, August 15 by the New Jersey Career Fire Chiefs Association to benefit the Be The Match® bone marrow registry.
Up to 12 teams will battle for the championship at the charity tournament to be held 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon at Lurker Park on Ridgedale Avenue and Eagle Rock Avenue, East Hanover. If it rains on August 15, the tournament will take place Sunday, August 16.
All proceeds of the tournament will go to the Be The Match national registry which finds blood cancer patients the marrow transplants they need, helps patients overcome financial barriers faced during transplant, and funds lifesaving research. Be The Match representatives from The HLA Registry at Community Blood Services, based in Montvale, will also be at the event to register new potential marrow donors and to answer any questions regarding the registration process and how to host a marrow and/or blood donation event.
To kick off the event, 5-year-old Delaney of Wood-Ridge, will throw out the first pitch at the softball game. At three months old Delaney was diagnosed with stage IV neuroblastoma and needed numerous platelet transfusions during her cancer treatments. Her own uncle, Denis Zamora, who is a police officer in Wayne, registered with Be The Match and recently donated his stem cells for a patient in need of a marrow stem cell transplant. Delaney is the president of Delaney’s Clubhouse, a club for platelet donors at Community Blood Services and she and her family support other patients by hosting marrow and blood donations events. Her mom Kaitlin sponsors blood and marrow drives at Montclair State University.
Every day thousands of adults and children like Delaney are diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell anemia and other serious diseases that eventually require stem cell transplants as a cure. For patients with such life-threatening diseases a cure exists – a marrow transplant. But approximately 70 percent of those patients will not find matches within their own families and must turn to the Be The Match registry to find their donors.
The National Marrow Donor Program’s Be The Match registry leads the fight to advance the science of transplant, support patients at every step of their journeys and empower people to give the greatest gift of all – the gift of life. It costs approximately $100 to add each new member to the registry and much more to help patients through their transplant process.
If you cannot make the tournament but would still like to register you can register online at www.bethematch.org using the code “HLAREGISTRY”. You will be asked to complete a registration form online and your cheek swab kit will be mailed to your home.
For more information on how to register or schedule a marrow or blood donation event go to www.communitybloodservices.org or contact The HLA Registry at 1-800-336-3363.
ABOUT THE HLA REGISTRY
The HLA Registry at Community Blood Services (HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, the genetic information encoded on white blood cells) is a member of the National Marrow Donor Program’s (NMDP) Be The Match Registry. The registry is dedicated to finding compatible unrelated donors for lifesaving bone marrow transplants. Based in Montvale (NJ), it is one of the largest non-governmental donor centers in the U.S. and has registered more than 230,000 potential donors in the NMDP’s data base.
