Help The Notre Dame Women's Soccer Team Support A Fan In Need

STEVE'S STORY

For years, the Notre Dame women’s soccer team has been known for its assists on the field, but now the Fighting Irish are taking that help into the community to help a special fan in need.

For each goal that the defending national champions score during the 2011 season, fans can pledge any amount they choose towards a fund that will help defray medical expenses for Steve Emrich (EM-rick), a 38-year-old Fighting Irish supporter and father of three young girls from Raleigh, N.C. Each Fighting Irish player now carries with her a pledge card that fans can fill out with the designated per-goal pledge, and this on-line web page also now gives fans another way to make their pledges. At the end of the season, fans will receive a note in the mail with a update on the team’s final goal output and their pledge total.

In addition, the Fighting Irish will wear specially-designed jerseys for their Sept. 30 nationally-televised home match against Connecticut and fans can bid to own those jerseys through an on-line auction that will debut in late September. ½ the proceeds likewise will go to the Steve Emrich Fund. Should fans wish to make a flat donation rather than bid on a jersey or make a per-goal pledge, they will have that option, with special Notre Dame women’s soccer autographed gifts available at different donation levels ($25 – Notre Dame team poster autographed by the 2011 team; $50 – “The Extra Mile” national championship DVD, signed by head coach Randy Waldrum; $100 – Notre Dame soccer ball autographed by the 2011 team).

Emrich has been in the neurocare program at WakeMed Hospital in Cary, N.C., since May 27 following a series of seizures and subsequent cardiac arrest that left him without a pulse for more than 20 minutes. After his wife, Lisa, helped perform CPR and he was brought to the hospital to be put on an ice protocol therapy, Emrich spent more than three weeks in a coma and the early prognosis was poor due to early onset myoclonus, a movement disorder indicating severe brain damage.