Tucked in with a blanket, Vhittorio “Vhito” Nicholas DeCapria sat in his stroller on the sidelines as Penn football prepared to play Harvard in Boston.
“It’s got to be 40 degrees out,” Penn football coach Ray Priore recalled. “I’m looking at [his] parents, [thinking] ‘What are you doing with your son outside the locker room?’”
However, young Vhito was not one to sit inside while the team fought in the cold. Vhito was used to fighting. He wanted to be there for the guys and fight with them, win or lose.
In 2013, at age two, Vhito was diagnosed with atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor, an aggressive and rare cancer and started receiving treatment at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Two years later, Priore became the head coach of Penn football, and he wanted Penn to take part in the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation’s mission and “adopt” a pediatric cancer patient. Priore’s college roommate, Denis Murphy, started the Friends of Jaclyn Foundation after his daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor and found companionship with the Northwestern women’s lacrosse team.
The Friends of Jaclyn Foundation connects young cancer patients with high school and college athletic teams across the United States to encourage and strengthen the kids. Priore met four-year-old Vhito and his parents through the organization.
“Initially, we were a little hesitant because he was in the middle of treatment,” Ashley DeCapria, Vhito’s mother, said. “[But] we ended up deciding to do it, and it’s been the best thing.”
Vhito, his older brother Vinnie DeCapria, and his parents came to every practice and game, even taking the team bus to travel with the team. He was named the team’s honorary captain in 2015 and was given a No. 1 jersey.
In 2015, Vhito was declared cancer-free, but in 2022, the cancer returned. On Sept. 25, at age 14, Vhito died surrounded by his family.
During the time that Penn football got to know Vhito, he grew up from a young child tucked in his stroller on the sidelines to a football-versed middle schooler cracking jokes and uplifting the team during practice.
“He understood everything,” senior running back Julien Stokes said. “Before I got to him, he would come to me and tell me about my play. … He had some jokes to him, which was always awesome to hear. Like, ‘Hey, I would’ve made that guy miss,’ or ‘I would have scored on that one.’”
“He had a lot to say,” Ashley DeCapria said. “He really just lifted them up, and it literally did not matter if we lost. He was still positive and telling them how wonderful they did.”
Stokes talked about the game with Vhito from the sidelines, with the young captain asking him if he would score a touchdown on the next drive.
“Sometimes I wouldn’t even talk to my own teammates. I would just hang out with him for the whole game because he just kept me calm,” Stokes said.
In a game as physically intense as football, that sense of calm is hard to find, especially for Stokes. He distinctly remembers his first game starting as a receiver and feeling “antsy.” But when he ran out of the tunnel, Vhito bumped into him.
“And he looks at me and smiles and says, ‘You ready?’… It just kind of shook me [at] that moment. … This kid was fighting for his life, and here I am being anxious about a game. And it just gave me perspective and I’ve been playing calm ever since,” Stokes said.
Perspective was another gift Vhito gave to the team.
“It’s not how they passed away. … It’s how they lived. How did they fight?” Priore said.
“He just attacked life,” 2019 College graduate and Penn football alumnus David Ryslik said.
Fellow 2019 College graduate and program alumnus Sam Philippi recalled how Vhito would break the team’s huddle.
“As a little kid, he would go, ‘Family on three. One, two, three. Family,’” Philippi said. “And so you’re all huddling around him. He’s reminding us [that] football’s bigger than the game. … When you join together and have a common motivation of ‘Let’s do this to bring joy to Vhito’s life and his family,’ it makes it bigger than you. … Everybody got behind that.”
Vhito reminded every Penn football team from 2015-2025 that there are some things more important than winning and losing: the people in your life. A small child with a wide, bright grin taught tall, big, and strong college football players that real strength isn’t brute strength — it’s resilience, and it’s grit. He taught them that getting a B on an exam was not the end of the world — and losing a football game should not wipe off your smile, if chemotherapy couldn’t do that to Vhito.
It arguably wasn’t a surprise that Penn’s most recent Ivy League titles in 2015 and 2016 came when Vhito first joined the team. According to Priore, he was the team’s “good luck charm.”
Philippi, who was a member of both championship-winning teams, remembered that Priore lifted Vhito up with the entire team after the wins.
“It’s hard to think about now because of how special it was,” Philippi said of the moments. “You couldn’t have dreamed it better.”
Perhaps the time spent together was the best part of it all.
“I looked back on a lot of the photos we had together. Him walking out of the tunnel with us, holding hands with him, walking out onto the 50-yard line. I’m just happy to be a portion of the happiness in his life. I get, honestly, choked up thinking of the time we spent with him,” Philippi said. “I just hope he enjoyed his time with us as much as we enjoyed spending time with him.”
And Vhito did.
“[The team] helped tremendously. He literally looked forward to games,” Ashley DeCapria said. “He lived for the weekends.”
Football, she said, was his first love “because of Penn,” though he always had a passion for sports.
“He was very athletic,” Ashley DeCapria said. “He actually started karate in July [and] wanted to spar. There was a competition in October, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I’m going to enter.’ … Well, we’re like, ‘Who are we to tell him no?’ So we let him enter, and he won first place. He definitely was always very into different sports.”
Vhito also started to play basketball once he reached middle school. When the cancer spread to his right arm, which was eventually amputated, Vhito learned to shoot with his left. He continued fighting. Nothing was going to slow him down.
“If everybody [was] as strong as Vhito, this world would be a much better place,” Philippi said. “He’s somebody that everybody should look up to.”
Vhito’s father would sometimes paint himself green and pretend that he was the Hulk at CHOP.
“It was funny because Vhito was almost more of the Hulk than his dad,” Ryslik said. “He’s the strongest kid I’ve ever met. So [it was] this juxtaposition of where you got this giant guy, and you also got Vhito. It’s like, who’s the real Hulk here?”
Priore went to visit Vhito at the hospital after Penn’s season-opening victory this season. Though in bed, Vhito’s fighting spirit was still burning bright. He had dyed his hair with blond highlights and gave Priore a thumbs up when the coach walked in. Priore gave him the game ball, which was only fitting, as Vhito has always been and continues to be part of Penn football.
“He became a little young man, right before us, right in front of our eyes,” Priore said.
