At Recent Bentley Hockey Game, A Win For Declan

WALTHAM, MA — For the past three years, a young Massachusetts resident has been on the minds of the entire community.

Declan Lyons, 3, is fighting a rare form of cancer. At a recent Bentley University hockey game, Lyons and his family took over the local spotlight again.

At the #ThumbsupforDeclan game against Sacred Heart on Jan. 12, more than $30,000 were raised through ticket sales, raffles and "chuck-a-puck".

Declan wasn't in attendance for the game, but his family was and took part in a ceremonial puck drop at the beginning of the match.

Head coach Andy Jones, when speaking about Declan, acknowledged that having a 3-year-old of his own immediately gave him a connection to the family.

"The situation resonates pretty strongly," Jones said. "As a team we talked about, you know, there's only so much we can do but when you live in a community, people can improve communities, communities can help people, teams can help communities, and what we talked about before the game was just the fact that this was an opportunity for us to lift the community up."

Declan is the son of WBZ meteorologist Sarah Wroblewski, who keeps a Caring Bridge journal that shares updates about Declan, and also provides people a place to donate.

The link to her journal entry about the game is here.