Transplant games highlight competitive spirit
Although Mike Kristufek competed in swimming throughout high school and college, his wife and daughter didn’t see him compete until last month — 19 years after his last collegiate race and less than two years after he received a heart transplant.
Kristufek, an alumnus of Butler Senior High School, was one of 16 people who competed in the 2024 Transplant Games for Team Alleghenies in Birmingham, Ala. The Transplant Games is an Olympics-style event, where people who have had organ transplants and living donors and their families compete in sporting competitions.
Kristufek took home gold medals in all five of his swimming events, but said the competitive aspect of the games was secondary to its purpose of raising awareness of organ donation and the people who need transplants.
“It was very much a rush, and it was exciting beyond all get out when I took out from the blocks for the first time and felt my body just go,” Kristufek said. “It's a good way to meet people who have gone through what I’ve gone through and help raise awareness.”
The Transplant Games take place in the U.S. every other year, and an international version of the games takes place in the years in between the domestic competition. The games were from July 5 to 10 this year in Birmingham, Ala., and the event included an opening ceremony where speakers shared their experiences of being recipients of organs before officials paid tribute to donors who lost their lives.
Katelynn Metz, communications and marketing coordinator for the Center for Organ Recovery & Education, or CORE, said the agency keeps in touch with people it has helped with organ donations, to offer them a chance to participate in the Transplant Games.
Team Alleghenies had 16 competitors this year, comprised of organ donors and recipients from Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Metz said CORE also raises funds to help team members pay travel and lodging expenses for the games.
According to Metz, the Transplant Games is about fellowship between organ recipients, but it is also a chance for recipients to publicly pay tribute to the people they received their organs from, even though their identity may be unknown or they may be deceased.
“Part of that is being able to thank your donor publicly,” she said. “That is really something we're always telling people, is that volunteering and spreading awareness, talking about your donor, it's part of the healing process.”
Kristufek has written to the donor family of the person he received his heart from, but has not heard back yet. He received a heart transplant in October 2022, after being diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in 2021.
In the years following his diagnosis, Kristufek has continued exercising, with swimming still being his preferred workout. However, the games helped him get his groove back, after being cautious in his exercising for years.
“I definitely felt like I was living with a great deal of caution and fear that something else was going to happen because I got diagnosed so quickly, it did a number on me mentally,” Kristufek said. “I was starting to exercise, but I was still paranoid. The games definitely helped push me.”
Some competitors at the games have been living with a transplanted organ for most of their lives. Guinness Brown, of Butler, received a liver transplant at UPMC Children’s Hospital in 2007 at the age of 4. He was born with biliary atresia, a liver condition that required him to have a transplant to stop bile from building up in his liver and damaging his organs.
Brown competed in the Transplant Games virtually in 2020, and in-person this year in the 200 meter and 400 meter races.
“Every single person down there was so nice and so welcoming,” he said. “If I could sum it up, I would really call it special.”
The most special moment Brown experienced at the games was when he met a teen from Mississippi who had the same liver condition, who also had a transplant at UPMC Children’s Hospital around the same time. Meeting the teen and running a race with him was surreal, Brown said.
“A random kid from Mississippi who had the same doctor as me for his transplant,” Brown said. “It was amazing to go down there and see so many people who have gone through a similar experience as me.”
Metz said the Transplant Games also have events for people more into mental competitions than physical. The 16 members of Team Alleghenies ended up bringing home 12 gold medals, 10 silver medals and four bronze medals from the games this year, Metz said.
“There are big events; there's a 5K run, walk, bowling, basketball, swimming, track and field. Then there’s trivia, card games, Lyrics for Life, which is a singing competition,” Metz said. “One of our favorites is the ballroom dancing competition. We are really people to reckon with in ballroom dance.”
Brown and Kristufek said they would like to compete at the Transplant Games in the future, with Brown saying he is interested in traveling internationally to play in the international games.
Kristufek said the event was therapeutic in many ways, because he was able to hear many different stories of organ donation.
“I met a bunch of people who had heart transplants,” Kristufek said. “It was good to see all those people. Everyone had a slightly different story. Some people were 14 to 20 years out of transplants, some longer, some shorter.”
