Highlighting HuskyTHON: An Interview With David Mezzina

David Mezzi­na, @davidmezzina on Instagram

This Episode:

Dur­ing this inter­view, host John Lib­er­a­tore sits down with David Mezzi­na; David is a Senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, and one of the cur­rent Co-Direc­tors of Dancer Rela­tions for HuskyTHON. Do you find your­self won­der­ing what HuskyTHON is, or what David’s posi­tion means? Well, whether you already know or not, this brief inter­view is a great expla­na­tion of what HuskyTHON is, David’s role with­in HuskyTHON, and much more. Lis­ten in to hear great infor­ma­tion and sto­ries relat­ed to the phil­an­thropic effort, and be sure to learn more about HuskyTHON, and support/donate if you can!

Related Links:

https://huskython.org/

https://www.connecticutchildrens.org/

https://childrensmiraclenetworkhospitals.org/

John Lib­er­a­tore 1:01

Alright, David. So before we real­ly dive in, could you explain to the audi­ence what exact­ly it is you do as co direc­tor of dancer rela­tions for HuskyTHON?

David Mezzi­na 1:08

Sure, so each team has their own dancer rep­re­sen­ta­tive, they act as the cap­tain of their team. And so HuskyTHON has over 100 teams involved, so my job is to watch over the 100 or so dancer rep­re­sen­ta­tives so that the infor­ma­tion that comes from the man­age­ment team can be relayed down to all the dancers in our organization.

John Lib­er­a­tore 1:31
And how did you come into that spe­cif­ic position?

David Mezzi­na 1:33
So I was the dancer rep­re­sen­ta­tive for HuskyTHON for Pi Kapp (Pi Kap­pa Phi) last year and I did­n’t know how involved in HuskyTHON I want­ed to be, but work­ing under Jade and Sareya, who were the Co direc­tors of dancer rela­tions before me, just see­ing them work and be a part of that posi­tion like inspired me to want to fol­low in their footsteps.

John Lib­er­a­tore 1:56
Alright, so clear­ly HuskyTHON has become a very impor­tant event that means so much to so many peo­ple. What would you say con­nects you specif­i­cal­ly to HuskyTHON?

David Mezzi­na 2:04
So, a big part of Husky THON is search­ing for your why. And a lot of peo­ple have a lot clos­er con­nec­tions to child­hood ill­ness than I do. I’m for­tu­nate enough to be in a sit­u­a­tion where there isn’t any­one in my life that has been through some­thing like that. But know­ing that I’m a col­lege stu­dent who is able bod­ied and I have a lot of free time on my hands. Like why would­n’t I be involved in such like, an impor­tant cause? And espe­cial­ly like, my cousin that I’m very close with just had a child and if some­thing were to ever hap­pen to that baby, like, I would want some­one to go out of their way to do some­thing for her as well.

John Lib­er­a­tore 2:47
Yeah, I under­stand that. And would you say that, like, I think the close­ness is some­thing that a lot of peo­ple feel to this. It’s some­thing that peo­ple can relate to. And I think that’s a big draw. Would you agree with that?

David Mezzi­na 2:55
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, some­thing that’s also so spe­cial about HuskyTHON is that a lot of the peo­ple that go to Con­necti­cut chil­dren’s for care end up com­ing to UConn. So not only are we see­ing like a direct impact on like these chil­dren, I mean, they’re com­ing back into the cycle of HuskyTHON once they grad­u­ate and are healthy from Con­necti­cut chil­dren’s they’re going and work­ing for HuskyTHON to make that same impact.

John Lib­er­a­tore 3:22
Alright, a big part of what you guys do deals in fundrais­ing and receiv­ing dona­tions. What would you say is one of your favorite indi­vid­ual meth­ods of get­ting dona­tions get­ting peo­ple involved, or even just get­ting stu­dents to reg­is­ter online/

David Mezzi­na 3:36
So a lot of what I do for fundrais­ing ends up being can­ning, can­ning is the eas­i­est way to just get a bunch of mon­ey all at once, with­out real­ly hav­ing to put too much effort in. You could go out­side and stand out in front of a Stop and Shop or any type of gro­cery store for a cou­ple hours and make $200 And we have the entire year you could go many times and eas­i­ly hit like those high­er goals. So there’s noth­ing bet­ter than just see­ing a bunch of dona­tions com­ing in. And then next thing you know, I’m on my Insta­gram sto­ry smash­ing a bunch of eggs on my head.

John Lib­er­a­tore 4:14
Yean no, that’s def­i­nite­ly, I mean, as some­one who’s both donat­ed to and helped do like the Insta­gram chal­lenges. Some of those can be real­ly fun, whether it’s like eggs, hot sauce, an ice buck­et, you know, all that stuff can real­ly… it gets peo­ple involved, but it also it’s, you know, it’s a fun way of rais­ing aware­ness. Kind of going off of that, would you be able to give us your best quick pitch for donat­ing to or sign­ing up for HuskyTHON?

David Mezzi­na 4:36
Yeah, sure. So my can­ning pitch is like HuskyTHON is a year long phil­an­thropic effort that rais­es mon­ey for Con­necti­cut chil­dren’s. So we all like fundraise through­out the year and then in the spring, we do an 18 hour Dance Marathon that’s kind of cel­e­brates our fundrais­ing efforts. And at the dance marathon we invite fam­i­lies from the hos­pi­tal to come hang out with us we do chal­lenges games. There’s more fundrais­ing efforts there. But the best part about HuskyTHON is hav­ing the mir­a­cle kids come from the hos­pi­tal and hang out with them and kind of get them out­side of hos­pi­tal life for a lit­tle bit.

John Lib­er­a­tore 5:11
Yeah, I mean, I can say from per­son­al expe­ri­ence, you know every­thing there, it’s that pitch. It real­ly sums up a lot of what HuskyTHON is in the year, we know it goes on as well as the that 18 hour Dance Marathon when we have the kids there, and you see how it can change them. And it real­ly brings out a dif­fer­ent side of them.

David Mezzi­na 5:29
Yeah, and espe­cial­ly for stu­dents that are a part of it. There havenot been many things in my life that are quite as impact­ful as HuskyThon; just the raw emo­tions of being there for the 18 hours and then see­ing how full of life these kids are and how they’re just real­ly want to be around us and play with us and have a good time. And then to see that mil­lions of dol­lars that we raise being shown at the end of the night. It it is so worth all the hours I put into it.

John Lib­er­a­tore 6:01
Yeah, it’s real­ly it’s a dif­fer­ent kind of feel­ing, would you say?

David Mezzi­na 6:04
Yeah.

John Lib­er­a­tore 6:05
Now obvi­ous­ly, fundrais­ing strate­gies come in handy on a day like the 18 hour dance marathon for Husky THON, but anoth­er days, like Day of Strength, or when you guys have events like Unite As One, would you be able to explain what both of those events are those who may not know?

David Mezzi­na 6:20
Yeah, so through­out the year, we have a lot of major push days. Our goal is that every­one is fundrais­ing through­out the year, but these two days are specif­i­cal­ly designed for peo­ple to just absolute­ly smash their fundrais­ing. So we nor­mal­ly like to warn peo­ple a week in advance so that they can have some sort of fundrais­ing strat­e­gy going into those push days. And then once those push days come, that’s where major­i­ty of the mon­ey that we raised through­out the year comes from

John Lib­er­a­tore 6:50
Awe­some. And do you have like a favorite mem­o­ry from any of these pre­vi­ous­ly, or like maybe some­thing an incen­tive you had planned or a spe­cif­ic goal that you hit that you weren’t anticipating?

David Mezzi­na 7:01
Yes. So being that I fundraise through­out the year, these push days are a lit­tle bit hard­er for me because I kind of exhaust my resources pret­ty ear­ly. But there’s noth­ing bet­ter than when you set up like this Insta­gram fundrais­er or what­ev­er type of incen­tive. And you don’t real­ly expect it to go that well, because, like so many peo­ple have already donat­ed to you. And then you just get that influx of dona­tions that I was talk­ing about before. It’s like my goal for last year’s day of strength, I think was $300 and I end­ed up rais­ing almost $750.

John Lib­er­a­tore 7:36
Wow.

David Mezzi­na 7:37
So like, the whole effort just feels so good at the end of the day.

John Lib­er­a­tore 7:42
Yeah, so mov­ing on to some more ques­tions relat­ed to the annu­al dance event of HuskyTHON. What would a nor­mal day in the dance marathon look like for you?

David Mezzi­na 7:53
So for me, because I’m on the man­age­ment team, it’s a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent. The Dance Marathon nor­mal­ly starts at six o’clock in the morn­ing, and then goes on till mid­night, that has var­ied through­out the years, so I’m not exact­ly sure if that’s how it’s going to be this year. But let’s just say that it’s run­ning exact­ly how it did last year, I would get there around 3:30 in the morn­ing to set up. And then so set­up runs for that time, and then check in would be like that first hour or so, and then every hour through­out the entire day we do this thing called the Morale Dance. So we have a team of like super fundrais­ers called morale, and they come up with a chore­o­graphed dance that we do every hour on the hour. So that’s kind of our best way to get through the day. Because it’s just like, Alright, we’re almost at the morale mix, we’re almost at the morale mix.

John Lib­er­a­tore 8:50
It’s like a lit­tle reward.

David Mezzi­na 8:52
It’s a lit­tle reward for like mak­ing it a lit­tle bit fur­ther. And then through­out the day, they have like bands and like dif­fer­ent fundrais­ing asks, and they have mir­a­cle sto­ries. And then at the end, the last hour is Cir­cle of Hope, which is by far the most mean­ing­ful thing of the night. The main point of it is to kind of put in per­spec­tive that, yes, like we’re here for 18 hours. It’s a long day, and it’s awe­some, but we’re able to cut off our hos­pi­tal bands at the end of the night and dis­tance our­selves from it. When these mir­a­cle kids go home, they’re not dis­tanc­ing them­selves from their ill­ness­es, they’re going back to the hos­pi­tals and they’re con­tin­u­ing to live this expe­ri­ence. And so to real­ize that our work is nev­er tru­ly done until child­hood ill­ness is no more and then there’s no need for HuskyTHON any­more. After that, that lasts like the last hour, and then we do the reveal at mid­night. And then as some­one on them man­age­ment team, I’m there for anoth­er prob­a­bly hour and a half, two hours clean­ing up. So that’s, uh, so it’s like a 24 hour day.

John Lib­er­a­tore 10:07
That’s a whole day.

David Mezzi­na 10:08
Yeah, it’s a full day.

John Lib­er­a­tore 10:09
But no, like you said those last cou­ple hours I, again, from expe­ri­ence, know are very impact­ful, I mean, some of the emo­tions that are going on obvi­ous­ly through­out the day, those last cou­ple of hours. It real­ly puts things into per­spec­tive. And it’s some­thing to expe­ri­ence it’s, it’s unlike any­thing else really.

David Mezzi­na 10:24
Exactly.

John Lib­er­a­tore 10:25
So of the two Husky THON dance marathons that you’ve par­tic­i­pat­ed in, would you say there’s a par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion that you made with a mir­a­cle child that maybe stood out from the rest?

David Mezzi­na 10:36
So my first year, I was­n’t too involved. So I did­n’t have that con­nec­tion with our first mir­a­cle kid. But because I was a dancer rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Pi Kapp (Pi Kap­pa Phi) last year, the dancer rep­re­sen­ta­tives work direct­ly with the mir­a­cle kids to make sure that they have a good time and go through­out their day, mak­ing sure that some­one is like con­stant­ly with them. And so our mir­a­cle kid Bri­an, he is a ball of ener­gy. He pre­tends to be shy at first, and then the sec­ond like you have like a foot­ball or soc­cer ball in front of him, it’s game on he is just so hap­py to be around. Par­tic­u­lar­ly like old­er guys that just like want to hang out with him and play with him. And so see­ing how excit­ed he is just made every­one else so much more excit­ed to be with him and hang out with him and play with him and have make sure that he has the best day of all time.

John Lib­er­a­tore 11:32
So he real­ly brought the ener­gy for everyone.

David Mezzi­na 11:34
Oh, yeah.

John Lib­er­a­tore 11:36
So I mean, it could be some­thing with or with­out Bri­an, but what would you say has been your favorite activ­i­ty or maybe spe­cif­ic event to take place dur­ing a dance marathon?

David Mezzi­na 11:43
I actu­al­ly have two that I real­ly enjoy. So every year the Zum­ba team like comes and does like a full hour long Zum­ba ses­sion, and like you would­n’t think that Zum­ba is like the first thing I would think of when talk­ing about how great the dance marathon is, but like some­thing about like, how active and how excit­ed they all are to get every­one mov­ing, that hour flies by so much faster than the oth­ers. And then this past year, they did a minute to win it ses­sion. And I was called up on stage and the point of it was just to keep the bal­loon in the air and I end­ed up win­ning it and I got a pin­ny or what­ev­er but that was a lot of fun as well.

John Lib­er­a­tore 12:26
Nice. So kind of mov­ing into this year as opposed to like the past, how would you say things have been going this semes­ter so far in regards to get­ting stu­dents reg­is­tered and kind of rais­ing more aware­ness and even get­ting some dona­tions in ear­ly for Husky THON?

David Mezzi­na 12:39
Yes. So, so far this year has been going real­ly good. I don’t know too many of the num­bers but what I can say is that we already have 3200 par­tic­i­pants reg­is­tered for Husky THON and it’s still Octo­ber, and last year by night of we had just under 4000.

John Lib­er­a­tore 12:59
Oh wow.

David Mezzi­na 12:59
So we are increas­ing our reg­is­trant num­bers quick­ly right now. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that does­n’t mean that our num­ber that we’re at right now is high­er it just means that like it’s awe­some that they’re reg­is­tered we just need to work on acti­vat­ing them and mak­ing sure that their fundrais­ing Yeah, yeah, so HuskyTHON is def­i­nite­ly spread­ing way quick­er than it was last year and awe­some. We just got­ta get going.

John Lib­er­a­tore 13:24
Alright, so last­ly David, before I let you go can you please inform our audi­ence how and where they can sign up donate to or just learn more about HuskyTHON?

David Mezzi­na 13:31
Yeah, so you if you want to reg­is­ter for Husky THON you could text Husky THON to 51555. That’ll send you a link to the HuskyTHON web­site, where you can reg­is­ter and fol­low the HuskyTHON Insta­gram to stay in the loop with all things that are going on. We have a 5k com­ing up in Novem­ber which will be a good time, and then if you have any per­son­al ques­tions for me you can email dancer.relations@huskython.org. And that’s kind of it.

John Lib­er­a­tore 14:00
Awesome.Thank you for com­ing in today, David.

David Mezzi­na 14:01
Of course. Thank you for hav­ing me.

John Lib­er­a­tore 14:02
All right.

I may have said it while speak­ing to David but com­ing from expe­ri­ence HuskyTHON is an incred­i­ble cause sup­port­ing and in sup­port of incred­i­ble peo­ple. The amount of ded­i­ca­tion from David, his col­leagues, and count­less oth­ers is shown through theit efforts. Be sure to learn more about HuskyTHON and get involved if you can. Thanks again for join­ing me, and we’ll talk again soon