SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Wofford quarterback and current Southern Conference Special Teams Player of the Week David Howerton will miss at least the next two weeks of the season after donating bone marrow on Monday.
 
The Wofford football team partnered with the "Get in the Game, Save a Life" initiative, which is part of Be The Match, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program, to hold an event on campus in April of 2016 to have individuals register their bone marrow. During the event, several hundred members of the Wofford community took time to register with a cheek swab.
 
Howerton received a phone call in August that he was a possible match for a patient. He underwent further testing, and doctors discovered that he was a match. On Monday, October 31, he anonymously donated bone marrow to his match and was back to campus on Tuesday.
 
"It was a long process, but I knew that I was doing the right thing," said Howerton. "It was an easy decision to make when you consider how much you can help another person. I am sacrificing a little bit to help a person who is going through a fight for their life. I appreciate my teammates, coaches and family for their support during this process."
 
Howerton, a senior from Asheville, North Carolina, has played in 16 career games for the Terriers, primarily on special teams. He saw action at quarterback against Johnson C. Smith earlier this season.
 
In last Saturday's game against Mercer, he blocked a punt and recovered it in the end zone for a touchdown in the third quarter. The score gave the Terriers a 21-7 lead as they went on to a 31-21 win. It marked the first career touchdown for Howerton, who was named Southern Conference Special Teams Player of the Week after the performance.
 
"Get in the Game, Save a Life" initiative is supported by the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation. Talley, the head football coach at Villanova, has enlisted over 50 other college football programs to participate in GITG. Each program hosts their own on-campus donor drives each spring. The football players span the campus, educating and recruiting people to take the cheek swab test, thereby registering themselves as potential bone marrow donors on the Registry.
 
Be The Match, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program, is a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to helping every patient get the life-saving transplant they need. As trusted leaders in advancing treatments for those facing life-threatening blood cancers, we provide the ground-breaking research, innovative technologies, patient support and education that save lives.

The Wofford Student-Athlete Advisory Committee also held a registry drive in April of 2015 with the Project Life Movement. Project Life Movement is a national organization that began in 1989 to increase the potential pool of bone marrow and tissue donors by testing and registering college students with a simple cheek swab. The organization is based in Charlotte and Wofford alumnus Dr. Danny Morrison serves on their board. Both the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and the football team will continue to work with both organizations to raise awareness of this important cause.
 
A bone marrow transplant is a life-saving treatment for people with leukemia, lymphoma and many other types of diseases and blood disorders. Prior to receiving a transplant, patients are treated with chemotherapy and sometimes radiation to completely destroy their diseased marrow. The donor's healthy blood-forming cells are then given directly into the patient's bloodstream, where they can begin to function and then multiply. For a patient's body to accept these healthy cells, the patient needs a donor who is a close match.