{"id":180842,"date":"2025-08-27T22:30:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T22:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180842\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T22:30:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T22:30:22","slug":"uconn-signs-12-year-old-elijah-randolph-through-team-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180842\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn signs 12-year-old Elijah Randolph through Team IMPACT"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORRS\u2013 The UConn men\u2019s basketball<\/a> program filled out its 2025-26 roster<\/a> earlier this month, but perhaps its most impactful signing happened Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Elijah Randolph, a 12-year-old from Farmington, sat beside his parents, head coach Dan Hurley<\/a> and his two current favorite Huskies, Solo Ball and Tarris Reed Jr., as he signed his letter of intent to become an official member of the program through Team IMPACT. Randolph has been battling Blastic Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cell Neoplasm (BPDCN), a rare form of blood cancer, for the last two years.<\/p>\n

In the process, which has included several rounds of chemotherapy and additional treatment, Randolph befriended Hurley\u2019s wife, Andrea, who regularly volunteers at the Connecticut Children\u2019s Cancer Center in Hartford and became his Uno adversary.<\/p>\n

In the midst of their second consecutive national championship season, the team visited the unit, had a dance party and played games with the kids. Randolph spent a majority of that time putting up shots on a mini hoop with Donovan Clingan, Jaylin Stewart and Cam Spencer, who was his first favorite player.<\/p>\n

\"UConn'sUConn\u2019s Jaylin Stewart, left, and Donovan Clingan, right, play hoops with cancer patient Elijah Randolph, 11, center, of Farmington during a visit with their team to the Connecticut Children\u2019s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, in Hartford, Conn., Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024. The team will honor all those who have been affected by cancer in this Sunday\u2019s \u201cCoaches vs. Cancer\u201d game against Xavier. (Jessica Hill\/Special to the Courant)<\/p>\n

Before he met Andrea, Randolph\u2019s interest in sports was all about race cars and Formula 1.<\/p>\n

He had no interest in basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat just changed his life,\u201d said his father, Carl.<\/p>\n

Randolph and his family attended a number of games through the end of the 2023-24 season, including the Final Four in Phoenix, where he shared a meaningful hug on the court with Spencer following the Huskies\u2019 championship. He continued to come around the team last season, often going into the locker room after games and getting to know the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cElijah\u2019s impacted the coaches and players more than we\u2019ve impacted him and his family,\u201d Dan Hurley said. \u201cYou absorb the spirit and the fighter\u2019s mentality of young people that battle the way he\u2019s battled. That becomes part of your identity in your team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relationship was on display prior to the press conference as Randolph showed off a jump shot that drew Steph Curry comparisons with the whole team supporting him, celebrating every time he put the ball in the net.<\/p>\n

\n

Top-ranked UConn men\u2019s basketball team pays rewarding visit to Connecticut Children\u2019s Cancer Center<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cHe brings that positive light,\u201d said Reed, a senior. \u201cGoing through the highs and lows of last year, having a guy like Eli in the locker room after the game really brought a good vibe to the locker room. Knowing him and his story just really inspires us. He said we were his favorite team and me and Solo were some of his favorite players, so as a college athlete, I mean, that\u2019s so huge. Like, \u2018Oh man, a kid really looks up to me.\u2019 You can\u2019t take any day for granted, you can\u2019t take any game for granted. You\u2019ve really got to give it your all (because) you have kids out there watching you that look up to you. A guy like Eli, I love him. That\u2019s like my little brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a good little relationship with him. Sometimes I\u2019ll just be messing around with him, he might take my phone and run off with it, we\u2019ve got a good little connection,\u201d Ball said. \u201cWhen he said I was one of his favorite players, man, I took that to heart. That motivates me every day whenever I come into this gym and whenever I step on UConn\u2019s campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her most recent update to Elijah\u2019s GoFundMe page<\/a>, which has raised over $28,500, his mother, Aurora, posted that the target date for his final day of chemotherapy has been set for Sept. 23, 2025.<\/p>\n

Randolph referred to the Huskies as \u201ca second family\u201d and UConn as \u201ca second home.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he doesn\u2019t need the team to help him forget about what he\u2019s going through. There is always a smile on his face.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just forget it on my own,\u201d he said. \u201cI still do things that somebody traditionally would not do if they\u2019re going through chemo. I just try to act like a normal person, do the things that I used to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Randolph says Dan Hurley \u201clooks a little intimidating on the court, but he\u2019s one of the nicest people I\u2019ve ever met.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWords can\u2019t express what I really feel. You can try to put it in a context where it comes across that it really, really, means everything to you,\u201d Carl said. \u201cBut unless you\u2019re walking in the shoes, you really don\u2019t understand the love and the compassion and the care that they bring toward the families that are going through trying times. They have truly been a beacon of life for us. All of us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STORRS\u2013 The UConn men\u2019s basketball program filled out its 2025-26 roster earlier this month, but perhaps its most…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":180843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102064,102068,1339,102067,17963,7000,30691,102066,7001,728,1317,1337,1338,80466,62,102069,102065,30690,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-180842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-andrea-hurley","9":"tag-aurora-randolph","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-carl-randolph","12":"tag-connecticut-news","13":"tag-ct-news","14":"tag-dan-hurley","15":"tag-elijah-randolph","16":"tag-hartford-courant","17":"tag-local-news","18":"tag-ncaa","19":"tag-ncaa-basketball","20":"tag-ncaabasketball","21":"tag-solo-ball","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-tarris-reed-jr","24":"tag-team-impact","25":"tag-uconn-mens-basketball","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115103100297931623","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}