Photo courtesy of April Stumpf

April and Chad Stumpf of Riverside didn’t think their daughter Quinn would survive past the age of two.

Four years later Quinn will be introduced in front of approximately 70,000 people Saturday when the Hawkeyes play the University of Northern Iowa at Kinnick Stadium as the kid captain. Kid Captain is a partnership between the UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital and the Iowa Hawkeyes to honor pediatric patients and celebrate their inspirational stories. Six-year-old Quinn has a rare genetic disease known as SPATA5, which includes conditions such as epilepsy, hearing loss, dystonia, and opisthotonos – a condition that causes severe and rigid muscle spasms that result in painful backward arching of her head, neck, and spine. At age three, Quinn was on so many medications that her organs began failing. Her pediatric neurologists and neurosurgeons then consulted with a world-renowned neurosurgeon working in Kenya who suggested implanting a baclofen pump into Quinn’s stomach, to help deliver medications while sparing more damage to her surrounding organs. Quinn was the first and smallest patient at the hospital to have the baclofen pump placed in her stomach and a stent placed in her brain to deliver the baclofen.

Quinn’s mother April shares why she nominated her daughter to be a kid captain, “She has such a story to tell, and my thought was if there was even one family out there that was struggling to know what to do to figure out what was going on just like we were with Quinn for so long, and still are to an extent, that it was worth doing. And so it was really just to tell her story.”

Quinn and the 12 other kid captains got to meet the Hawkeye team during Kids Day last August, in which they each got their own locker, trading card, and personalized jersey. April says seeing the decorated locker for Quinn brought her to tears, and she shares a special moment they had before the team’s scrimmage, “What was really cool for Kids Day, you know just like they walk into the stadium as a team to the Back in Black song holding hands, Quinn was in the first row. I was pushing her in her wheelchair and she was with these enormous players walking, holding her hand onto the field and these kids and families were just cheering and it was an amazing experience.”

Last year Quinn was watching the Hawkeyes play from the hospital as a patient. At Saturday night’s game Quinn will be watching from the sidelines, and will be introduced on the field before kickoff.