Dream on 3 is an organization dreamed up by Brandon Lindsey in 2012 to make sports-related dreams come true for children with life-altering conditions. This fall, the Colorado State University dream team will be new on campus and making an impact in the Fort Collins community.
Currently the CSU dream team has 12 participants, including athletes from three different sports and some who aren’t participating in a Division I sport at CSU. Two of those participants are co-captains Ryanne Woodall and Delaney McIntosh.
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“I just wanted to be there and get involved and help this organization grow at CSU.” -Ryanne Woodall, Dream on 3 co-captain
McIntosh is a redshirt freshman defensive specialist for the CSU volleyball team, but despite being busy with collegiate sports, she’s still found time to give back to her community.
“I have always been super involved in clubs and community service programs,” McIntosh said. “This is the first time I’ve worked with kids with life-altering conditions, which is a super cool thing to do, and it’s really gratifying to be able to give back to the community in this way.”
Woodall also noted her excitement in being able to give back to her community and work with a nonprofit organization like the Dream on 3 foundation. One of the things she said she was excited for was to gain experience working with all different kinds of kids.
“I just want to really make these kids, you know, happy,” Woodall said. “I want them to be able to do what they want to do.”
Woodall is one of the members of the dream team that isn’t in a DI sport at CSU. Instead she heard about the organization through McIntosh and knew she would like working with the organization.
Woodall is a sophomore at CSU majoring in human development and family studies and eventually wants to go into early childhood education.
“Everything that I really just love to do is working with children and helping people,” Woodall said. “I just wanted to be there and get involved and help this organization grow at CSU.”
While working with kids with chronic disabilities can be very rewarding, there are situations that may be more emotional than others when hosting a dreamer. Even though the group at CSU is new, McIntosh said a lot of the group members have experience working with kids who have life-altering conditions.
“I think we do a good job of screening the applicants that come in to want to be a part of our dream kid (team), and almost all of them have experience with working with kids with life-altering conditions, which I think is a really unique part of our group as well,” McIntosh said.
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Implementing a team onto a college campus comes with its challenges outside of just recruiting people. The team has to fundraise money for their expenses as well as try to gain sponsorships.
“We have a representative from Dream on 3 who’s super connected with getting us the materials that we would need and the information that we need to make this a successful fundraising campaign,” McIntosh said. “Then when it comes to actually granting the dream for our dream kid, there’s a step-by-step layout of how to do that as well.”
With the semester getting started, the CSU dream team will look to begin their inaugural dream. They have already started their fundraising, already reaching over half of their $7,500 goal. The dreamers and their fundraising page can be found on their instagram @csu.dreamteam.
“Getting excited about our dream that we’re going to be able to grant is going to be so cool,” McIntosh said. “It’ll be fun … to be celebrating the two or three days that they’d be on campus participating in their dream.”
Woodall shares the excitement in getting started and in the commitment of the team to give a dream annually, helping develop a relationship between the CSU dream team and the dreamers they get to host.
“We’ve got a really strong start,” Woodall said. “We have a big team of people from all different grades, so I’m hoping that it becomes very well established.”
Reach Damon Cook at sports@collegian.com or on Twitter @dwcook2001.
