Student-Athletes Befriend Kids with Cancer | Little Ways: Outreach

This week, Grotto catches up with Nick Hanahan, a member of the men’s fencing team at the University of Notre Dame. He explains how student-athletes give back to kids with cancer through the Fighting Irish Fighting For Life cancer outreach program. “I can see that I’m making the place I came into better than how I found it,” he shares.

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Video Transcript

Nick Hanahan: My name is Nick Hanahan. I’m on the fencing team here; I’m a senior.

The Fighting Irish Fight for Life is a cancer outreach program, and the way that it works is that we are paired up with a local hospital in South Bend. They just pair them up, actually, with different teams. We have big signing parties, so imagine we bring the kid up, we have all the teammates behind them and they sign the Letter of Intent to be on the team for that year or however long they’re in the program.

I feel like that there’s so many people that are like kids at a younger age, when they see a Notre Dame student or another athlete, they’re like, “Oh my gosh. This person is from Notre Dame.” I would remember that when I was a kid, and for me, I didn’t really put two and two together until I started getting involved with this stuff.

For me, it was awesome. I loved every second of it. I can see that I’m making the place that I came into better than how I found it.