A stiff-brimmed baseball cap. A bag of uncracked peanuts. A field of spring-green grass. Baseball’s opening day always brings a sense of renewed possibility to players and fans alike, even when the chances of winning a championship are stacked against them.
Sixteen-year-old high school baseball player Diego Alvarado has faced longer odds than most. Diagnosed with epilepsy as a baby, doctors finally managed to treat his seizures effectively by the time he was three, but his illness caused him to be developmentally delayed. Then when he was in middle school, aggressive leukemia struck. Doctors treated him with chemotherapy that badly damaged his joints. Alvarado ended up in a wheelchair and underwent two hip replacement surgeries.
Diego’s father, Colorado State Trooper Ivan Alvarado, told Neil H. Devlin of the Denver Post that he noticed Ivan was laying around the house, “being lazy like a teenager…but he had no quality of life.” He and the doctors decided to discontinue Diego’s chemotherapy, because as Ivan explained to Devlin, “We were faced with the decision of quality of life vs. quantity of life.”
They made the right decision: When the chemo ended, Diego transitioned from the wheelchair to a walker, and then told his P.E. teacher he was ready to go out for the Bennett High baseball team.
Coach Joe Stemo welcomed Diego on the team — Ivan didn’t even know his son had talked his way onto the Tigers’ roster. With two games under his belt, Diego has made contact with the ball, walked a few times and scored a run. Teammate Jonathan Cretti told Devlin, “It’s crazy how far he has come. He couldn’t even stand up in P.E. Now he’s playing baseball. And he’s always working his hardest. It’s one of the most incredible things I’ve seen.”
For the Alvarados, who immigrated to Colorado from Guatemala, Diego’s progress is just the thing that (ballpark) dreams are made of.
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Tag: teens
The Totally Surprising, Heartwarming Power of Teddy Bears
The offerings in hospital gift shops — teddy bears, cards, flowers — might seem like insignificant trinkets that can’t adequately express support when a loved one is ill. But when Nicole Javorsky was hospitalized at the age of 14, suffering from an eating disorder, the teddy bears she received from friends and family buoyed her spirits.
Now 18, Javorsky has recovered from anorexia and is using her newfound energy to launch a charity, Cubs for Coping, which provides teddy bears to kids and teenagers in hospitals, shelters, and eating disorder programs. Her goal? To spread hope and encourage volunteerism among young people.
Javorsky told Taylor Zansberg of Talking GOOD, “I felt scared and alone in the hospital. My friends and family sent me stuffed animals, which made me realize that people do care. Not everyone is so lucky…Hope changes everything. Knowing that there are people out there who care about you is so important.”
The teddy bears from Cubs for Coping aren’t just any generic stuffed animal. Rather, Javorsky and others sew the bears by hand, leaving them unstuffed so volunteers can gather to fill and custom decorate bears at regular events in New York.
You’d think running one nonprofit would be enough for an 18-year-old to handle, but Javorsky hasn’t stopped with bears. She also founded the Mirror Mission club at her high school, at which participants discuss body image and healthy eating. The club made a video for Eating Disorder Awareness Week and raised money through a bake sale for Project HEAL, a national charity working on the issues Javorsky is passionate about.
Javorsky is now in college, planning to start her sophomore year at Barnard next fall. Continuing to be an ambitious volunteer, she’s also an intern at DoSomething.org, a non-profit engaging young people in charitable missions, and through Dancing Dreams, she spends time helping kids with physical and mental disabilities learn to dance. She told Zansberg, “We often feel that the world is too big and complicated to change. Through taking action, I stopped feeling intimidated and instead started to develop a better understanding of the complex world we live in.”
MORE: Meet the Teenager Whose Efforts Keep Hundreds of People Warm
Meet the Teenager Whose Efforts Keep Hundreds of People Warm
Instead of focusing on things like prom and where to go to college, MaryRose Purdue, a high-school senior in Hopatcong, New Jersey, relentlessly serves others.
Purdue has collected over 200 coats and donated them to Project Self-Sufficiency, a nationwide non-profit that serves the needy in her New Jersey area. Its mission is to help low-income people achieve stability through a variety of programs, including parenting classes, G.E.D. preparation, job-seeking help, and more.“She saw a need and decided to do something about it,” her mother, Barbara Purdue, told Lisa Pachnos, the publicist for Project Self-Sufficiency. “She knew that they would be given to people who really needed them.”
MaryRose set up donation boxes at her high school, and her principal, Noreen Lazariuk, helped her spread the word about the coat drive. “I believe that one of the most valuable skills we can give to our students is the awareness of their place in a larger community and the fulfillment they will experience when giving to those in need,” Lazariuk said.
MaryRose gathers coats for the poor for the winter, but she’s also busy helping others every other season as well. She volunteers for the Special Olympics as a “hugger,” greeting the finishers at track and field events, and she speaks out about juvenile arthritis, a condition from which she suffers. Last year, she was chosen to represent the cause in meetings with senators and representatives in Washington D.C., advocating for increased funds for research and lower medication prices. MaryRose plans to study nursing in college, and she wants to specialize in pediatric rheumatology to help others suffering from juvenile arthritis.
Regardless of where she decides to go to school, we’re sure that MaryRose will continue to make a difference in her community.
MORE: A 16-Year-Old Died In A Car Accident. What Happened Next Changed Hundreds of Teenagers’ Lives.
How One School Discovered More Sleep Means Smarter Teens
It’s not rocket science—kids who are better rested are better prepared for school. In a study published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, researchers confirmed this theory by assessing a high school that changed its start time from 8 a.m. to 8:25 a.m. during the winter term. As the Huffington Post reports, researchers found that students were able to get almost 30 more minutes of sleep on school nights, and the number of students getting at least eight hours of sleep a night increased to 44 percent from 18 percent. The later start also meant “daytime sleepiness, depressed mood, and caffeine use were all significantly reduced,” the study said.
Researcher Julie Boergers, Ph.D said, “Sleep deprivation is epidemic among adolescents, with potentially serious impacts on mental and physical health, safety and learning. Early high school start times contribute to this problem.” Getting enough sleep is important for everyone, but apparently a teenager’s growing brain might not be ready for learning at such early hours because it’s still in biological sleep mode.
Minnesota’s South Washington County school recently saw a positive change when they moved their start from 7:35 to 8:35 a.m., the Star Tribune reports. While state reading tests remained the same, the students did better on state standardized math tests. The school also saw their daily average attendance rise. So here’s to more sleep for smarter, healthier students—we’re sure they won’t complain.
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