Penn men's soccer makes one final roster change

As the offseason dwindled to a close this August, Penn men’s soccer coach Rudy Fuller noticed that, while his team was coming together nicely, something was missing. An X factor.

“We needed something special that was hard to find,” he said.

Luckily, Fuller didn’t have to look too far. Stepping up to the challenge of igniting the Red and Blue this season will be local seven-year-old Tanner Falato, who was put in contact with the Quakers through the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation.

A hockey player by trade, Falato is currently battling Juvenile Pilocytic Astrocytoma, a malignant brain tumor. An initial surgery in December of 2013 successfully removed 90 percent of the low-grade, slow-growing tumor.

Tanner was then scanned once every three months to ensure that the part of the tumor that remained on his brain stem did not continue grow. After one year, Tanner showed success and was moved to a six-month scan cycle.

Unfortunately, the first of these scans showed growth and, as a result, Tanner is now undergoing chemotherapy once a week at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The good news is that Tanner was discharged from the occupational and therapy programs he was in at CHOP. Now, he is able to play video games, watch his favorite movie — Big Hero 6 — and run with his friends (although at times this is still difficult).

It’s needless to say that emotions were high at the Dunning Coaches Center Monday afternoon when Tanner was presented with his own jersey and a Penn soccer scarf. For Fuller, the event will be embedded in his memory forever.

“I can say without hesitation that this is one of the most exciting days of my career at Penn.”

While all of the team's roster was in attendance to greet its newest member, Fuller noted one player in particular who led the charge to make the event possible.

"[Senior midfielder] James Rushton came into my office one day last spring,” Fuller recounted. “He says, ‘We really need to get involved with something as a team. Our team needs to think about giving back more to the community.’

“For somebody to come forward and say 'That’s all well and good, but we wanna do more’ was really telling about the group of men we have at our program,” Fuller added.

While Tanner and Penn men’s soccer are new to the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation, Penn is not.

First-year head football coach Ray Priore attended college at Albany with the founder of the foundation, Denis Murphy, and the football team has also “adopted” a kid to their squad.

Murphy was in attendance for the press conference Monday and shared the story of how he came up with the idea that has led to over 600 adoptions and a story on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumble.

When Murphy’s daughter was a pediatric cancer patient on the ninth floor of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, her relationship with the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team gave her strength.

According to Murphy, his daughter was able to momentarily escape the gravity of her situation when texting members of the team. Murphy’s goal has been to share his daughter’s experience with other families and children going through similar hardships.

But it’s not just the kids that Friends of Jaclyn plans to help. The experience is designed to serve as an inspiration for the athletes as well.

“The cure is going to come from somebody sitting in this room,” Murphy said.

Undoubtedly, the Quakers added an X factor to their roster today who will surely help them this season. But more importantly, Tanner will remain a part of the Penn family for years to come, and one day serve as the catalyst for a member of the current team to do something great.

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