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Team Player
Founder Jay Calnan on Team IMPACT
BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY
story by Antonia DePace
photography by Michael Blanchard
Like most American children, summer Nantucket resident Jay Calnan grew up playing sports. Owner of successful construction firm J. Calnan & Associates in Boston and a former college athlete, Calnan notes, “I learned a lot of great life lessons through sports that were brought to me by my community.” But what Calnan experienced that others did not was seeing his younger brother, Chris, watch from the sidelines—but not out of choice. Born without a fully formed skull, Chris required surgery to replace his skull with a plastic plate, inhibiting him from ever playing sports as contact was too risky.
“He absolutely loved sports and just couldn’t play,” Calnan says. But then one year, after watching countless Bristol Red Sox games, his brother experienced a change in fate. After seeing him in the stadium, the coaches approached him to be the new bat boy. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but by giving him a uniform and making him feel like he was part of the team and having a role, [it] made him feel every bit as included and had every bit of a sense of accomplishment that I was getting by actually playing sports on these various teams,” he adds.
Chris becoming the bat boy on the Bristol Red Sox was inspiration that led to the creation of Team IMPACT in 2011 with co-founder Dan Kraft, son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. The national nonprofit focuses on matching children facing serious or
chronic illness or disability with college sports teams for multiple years.
“A lot of these kids are homeschooled and spend a fair amount of time in the hospital,” Calnan notes. “And so they don’t have the opportunity to create relationships, create a support system, build their confidence, have developed self-esteem and feel included in something.” But Team IMPACT is changing that.
To date, Team IMPACT has made over 3,000 matches across the United States with a vision to help create a world where children facing serious illnesses and disabilities can feel supported by the community around them while jointly transforming student athletes’ views of the world for better and more empathetic leadership. Last year, the Northeast Team IMPACT region made 155 new matches. “These kids and their families are dealing with so many hardships that it’s hard to focus on their well-being. They’re focused on their treatment; they’re focused on their nutrition; they’re focused just on their physical status, but it’s very, very difficult to focus on their state of mind and a lot of these kids … they feel different,” Calnan says.
The process of matching a child to a team is a thoughtful one. It starts with a group of Team IMPACT social workers and child life specialists vetting families who will benefit from the therapeutic program. From there, college teams are also selected— during which they undergo training to ensure that they are prepared for the experience. The last, and possibly best step, comes during “Signing Day,” during which the child celebrates their signing onto the team—often receiving a team jersey, as well. Calnan adds, “It offers those kids the ability to feel like they belong to something.”
After Signing Day, Team IMPACT stays active in the relationship with a dedicated case manager, but also lets it grow organically through the team, coaches, child and family. But Team IMPACT is not only helping children. It also has a strong influence on the student athletes as well. So much so, that Calnan says that some students even decide to change their areas of study to focus more on the medical field and helping sick children. He breaks it down to two words: grit and gratitude. “Those are two of the most important things in life,” Calnan explains. “You think you’re tough, you think you’re hanging in, you think you’re not a quitter?
Well look over and see that little kid who's going through chemo once a week. That's tough. That’s grit. That's where you're learning how life can be really, really hard and that you want to persevere. And these student athletes learn so much perseverance and grit from these young kids based on what they're battling, what they’re going through and the hardships they’re dealing with.” This realization and an emphasis on being grateful for the simple things that you have and normally take for granted are perhaps two of the most life-changing lessons for those teams that participate.
Calnan says, “You'll look over and you see a sick kid sitting on the end of the bench with a smile ear to ear, happy to just be outside, and we teach these student athletes a lot of perspective on what's really important and how fortunate they are.”
While the nonprofit is active in all 50 states, Calnan, the board and new CEO Joe Daniels plan on getting more kids into the program in Raleigh, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; and Florida this year. According to Calnan, there is a waitlist of college teams who are interested in being matched. It is his hope to bring more awareness to Team IMPACT’s mission through building relationships on a national scale—and in turn bringing more children to the program. He concludes, “Our long-term goal is to eventually have a sick child on every college athletic team in the country.”
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