Yale to Host “White Out for Mandi”
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Yale women’s ice hockey team
is dedicating its game at Ingalls Rink on Friday, Dec. 2, to Mandi
Schwartz ’10 (1988-2011), utilizing the game vs. Princeton as
a fundraiser for the Mandi Schwartz Foundation. Senior forward
Aleca Hughes, Yale’s captain, started the charity in memory
of Mandi, the Yale center who passed away in April after battling
cancer for more than two years.
The goal is to pack Ingalls Rink, with everyone wearing white, as a
“White Out for Mandi” show of support. No admission
will be charged, and donations for the Foundation will be accepted
at the door. The team is also lining up pledges from donors based
on the attendance total, so that every person who walks through the
doors that night will count towards the final donation total.
Special white t-shirts will be sold, and youth hockey teams are
encouraged to come wearing white jerseys. The Bulldogs will honor
Mandi in a special pre-game ceremony.
The event will also help raise awareness of the need for marrow
donors and umbilical cord blood donors. In an effort to save her
life last year, Mandi had a stem cell transplant utilizing blood
from two anonymous umbilical cord blood donations. Stem cells for
patients with life-threatening illnesses like Mandi’s can
also come from marrow donors. Yale hosts an annual Mandi Schwartz
Marrow Donor Registration Drive every spring to help add potential
donors to the Be The Match® Registry. To date, at least six
matches for patients in need of transplants have been identified
through those efforts. One of those matches was a Yale field hockey
player, junior Lexy Adams.
On Dec. 2 the Bulldogs hope to set the record for attendance at a
women’s game at Ingalls Rink. The current women’s
record is 1,539, set on Nov. 1, 2005, when Team USA played an
exhibition game against the ECAC Hockey All-Stars. Last
year’s “White Out for Mandi” drew a crowd of
1,066, the most ever for a Yale women’s hockey game. The
capacity of Ingalls Rink is 3,500.
