DECATUR COUNTY — ESPN's College GameDay has rolled into Bloomington.
The show was live from IU Saturday before the undefeated Hoosiers played Washington.
The show featured a special guest, a nine-year-old boy with a rare condition, who got the experience of a lifetime.
Drew Shouse couldn’t imagine his life without football.
“It’s super fun and I like it,” he said.
Just like his favorite football team, the Hoosiers, Drew is a fighter.
He lives with a rare condition called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and has endured months in the pediatric ICU, multiple open-heart surgeries, breathing tubes, and feeding tubes.
“He was in the hospital for the first nine months of his life. He had two open heart surgeries. He came home on a ventilator totally dependent on that for the first few years,” said his mom, Ashleigh Shouse. “He wants to play football but he’s not like officially released cause of the tackling. He plays for his youth league. He helps with the high school team, and we get to be a part of IU’s team.”
Drew has gotten to know his favorite football team personally thanks to a non-profit called Team IMPACT.
He was referred to the program by a hospital social worker.
“We connect children faced with any type of serious medical condition or disability to their own college sports team. The goal for us is really to be able to kind of provide a sense of belonging,” said Kiernan McGeehan, the Midwest Director of Programs.
Drew has got to hang out with the players.
“I went shopping with some of the boys,” he said. “I bought of all the stuff.”
He and his family have also got to cheer on the team at all the home games for the last two years, and he even got a chance to score a touchdown during the spring game.
“He’s probably never going to get to actually play real football just because of his heart condition so the fact that get to be a part of a college team and feel like one of the guys,” Ashleigh said. "We’ve been to the Big 10 Championship, it’s been unreal.”
Drew wants to be a kicker. He and his older brother have practiced with the team on their kicks.
Today, he is closely followed by many specialists at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital.
