London's Goal: Well-Rounded Players
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April 12, 2010
2:18 p.m.
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Mike London wants his players to be serious about football, serious about their schoolwork and serious about serving the community.
When London was head coach at the University of Richmond, his team participated in “Get in the Game, Save a Life,” a registration drive that helps find matches for people with blood and bone-marrow cancers. That program is one with which London’s Wahoos also will be involved.
“It’s a worthy cause,” he said last week, “not just because of my daughter Ticynn, but because it actually saves lives.”
In 2003, when he was a UVa assistant coach, London donated bone marrow to his daughter Ticynn, who was suffering from a rare blood disorder.
London and his players volunteered Thursday at a registration drive on Grounds.
“We had 240-something people [sign up], and it was just tremendous,” London said Saturday after UVa’s spring game at Scott Stadium.
“When I was at Richmond, we did it at Kings Dominion, right in front of the Eiffel Tower, thinking that we’d get a whole bunch of people. We got, like, 150-something, I believe.”
At last week’s event, London said, his “whole team was involved with the drive, and a lot of the guys, after they did the drive, they turned around and they signed up themselves.
“That’s part of the community-service part of it, [along with] the academic part, the football part. That’s what kind of program I’m trying to build, with guys being accountable and responsible to a lot of things. Having that bone-marrow drive was the first time, and hopefully next year we’ll make it even bigger and better.”