Valparaiso Football Captain Donates Bone Marrow, Matches Five-Year-Old in Paris

Mark Johnson, a senior defensive back and team captain for Valparaiso University's football team, matched with a five-year-old boy in Paris through the National Marrow Donor Program registry and underwent a bone marrow donation procedure on June 29. He completed the donation while preparing to start a summer corporate internship at Coca-Cola Consolidated in Charlotte, North Carolina, arranging his schedule with corporate supervisors so he could still make the procedure happen.

Johnson signed up to join the national registry, and once he was confirmed as a match, he said the diagnosis carried weight far beyond himself. According to CBS Chicago, Johnson said he brought hope to the five-year-old patient's life. Under NMDP rules, Johnson will remain on the registry for another year, held in reserve specifically for that patient in case the boy needs a booster or second cellular infusion — a policy the registry uses to ensure a recipient's original donor stays available before returning to the general pool, per NMDP.

Because donor and recipient identities remain confidential under international registry rules for at least 12 months after a transplant, Johnson and the boy's family cannot yet be in direct contact. The same regulations, per NMDP, note that after that waiting period both parties may choose to exchange information or arrange a meeting if mutual consent forms are signed — meaning the recipient and his family may eventually set up a meeting with Johnson, though nothing is guaranteed and the outcome remains unresolved for now.

A Coach's Personal Stake in the Cause

Valparaiso head coach Andy Waddle encourages his entire team to join the donor registry every year, a push rooted in his own family's story. His wife, Kerry Jean, needed a life-saving bone marrow transplant after being diagnosed in 2009 with severe aplastic anemia, a rare disease in which the body attacks its own blood cells. Her two brothers were tested and ruled out as matches — a reminder that even biological siblings have only roughly a 33% chance of compatibility — before a donor named Todd Spencer was found and was willing to donate; the Waddles later named their son Spencer in his honor, and Kerry Jean is now 100% in remission.

Before arriving at Valparaiso in December 2024, Waddle spent 12 seasons at Marietta College, where he and Kerry Jean raised nearly $20,000 and registered more than 2,000 potential donors, and he now serves on the national NMDP Coaches Council. Waddle has said young, healthy men make some of the best donor recruits, a belief borne out by transplant physicians who specifically seek donors between 18 and 35 because research shows younger, healthier donors are linked to better post-transplant survival rates, according to the Institute for Justice. A Valparaiso roster stocked with more than 100 young, healthy men offers exactly that kind of pool.

Why Diversity on the Registry Matters

Johnson has said the racial gap in the national registry weighed on his decision to sign up as a Black male donor. Black patients searching for an unrelated match currently have only about a 29% chance of finding one, compared with 79% for White patients, largely because Black individuals make up only roughly 8% to 11% of the registry overall, per data cited by Valparaiso University Athletics. That disparity is part of why national campaigns increasingly look to diverse college rosters when recruiting new donors.

Valparaiso's push is tied to Get in the Game, a national partnership between NMDP and the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation that includes Valparaiso Football among its participating programs. The campaign registered more than 44,000 new potential donors during its spring 2026 collegiate season alone, according to the Andy Talley Bone Marrow Foundation, bringing its all-time total to more than 2,200 lifesaving transplants nationwide.

Leadership On and Off the Field

Now in his fourth year with the program, Johnson was voted team captain again, and Waddle has said Johnson has been a team leader since the coach arrived the previous year. Beyond the donation itself, Johnson served as a student organizer for Valparaiso's campus-wide donor recruitment drives and volunteered with the Harvest Food Bank and YMCA while balancing his athletic and academic commitments.

In July, Johnson was named one of 175 college football nominees across all divisions for the 2026 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team, an honor recognizing 22 student-athletes annually for exemplary community involvement, according to Valparaiso University Athletics. His nomination cited both his bone marrow donation and his broader volunteer record.

Johnson's case adds to a string of recent stories tying college football rosters to the national donor registry, including an undrafted Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie who saved a stranger's life before his pick-six after registering through the same Get in the Game program at Duquesne. Whether Johnson ever gets to meet the boy in Paris remains an open question that hinges on that family's decision once the confidentiality period lifts.