Help Hayden chase his dreams!

Meet Hayden

Since he was born, Hayden has always been special. His parents realized early on that he was unique and brilliant in his own ways. Beginning at 6 months of age, Hayden began experiencing significant allergic reactions to food. On top of this, he developed significant sensory issues with food textures, touch, smells and having the overwhelming sensation with large groups of people. After learning sign language to communicate and getting his food allergies under control at the age of 16 months and after seeing several specialists, he had tubes put in his ears to help with a diagnosed hearing deficit.  His parents were advised to take him to the Melmed Center for evaluation. Immediately, he began intensive speech, occupational and physical therapy that continued for ten years, but after two years, he finally received a diagnosis of Autism. 
Despite his hearing and developmental disabilities, Hayden learned quickly, closing the gap between himself, his peers and the outside world. Through his therapies, he was able to develop his facial muscles, fine and large motor skill.  He went from nonverbal, to verbal in a year. By the age of five, he was able to accomplish what we never thought at the time possible, he began mainstream school at Arrowhead Elementary, and by the time he reached third grade, no longer needed an aide. Being the youngest in his class not only did he keep up but he excelled in school and socially, This is when his family noticed him developing other gifts. Hayden's exemplary memory has made him passionate about food, music, languages, but especially sports. Sports have always been a part of Hayden's life as his dad would always watch the local sports teams. Hayden is intrigued about the analytics, style, and strategy of all sports games no matter what sport.

Hayden today:

Now a teenager, Hayden has fine-tuned his passions. He enjoys cooking gourmet meals (particularly Gordon Ramsay's Beef Wellington), spending time with his friends, playing and watch all sports. Not only is he on the Honor Roll with a 3.4 GPA, attending dual-enrollment college classes but also is currently in his 2nd year of college-level Spanish as a Junior at Mountain Ridge high school.  He is slated to graduate not only with a diploma but with an aalmost completed ssociates degree from Rio Salado Community College.  Ultimately, he hopes to pursue his goal of obtaining his Master's degree in just 4 years in Sports Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.  Not only is he brilliant in so many different ways, but he is kind, funny, responsible, polite and determined. He has conquered more challenges in his short life than most of us will in our entire lives, and he is destined for greatness. Hayden is a true success story with more to come.

Hayden's Goal!

Hayden's ultimate goal is to have is very own commentary sports show before he's thirty. For now, he is concentraiting on graduating High School with Honors. His goal for this year is to attend the Cronkite Sports Broadcast Boot Camp. This journalism camp is exclusively for students currently in high school interested in sports journalism. They only except 30 kids each year. This on-campus summer camp puts Hayden in the middle of the action covering professional sports teams such as the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phoenix Mercury. At this camp, Hayden would learn under the direction of veteran sports journalists. He would be exposed to play by play and sideline reporting, hosting, studio production and more. He also would produce segments and full sports programs inside Cronkite’s state-of-the-art studios and discover how to use digital television field reporting equipment and Adobe Premiere Pro editing software. He would stay in the heart of downtown Phoenix at ASU's Taylor Place residence hall. This experience would truly kick-start to his dream. We are looking to raise $5000 by late March, middle of April 2019 to help Hayden pay for the cost of the camp, food and living expenses.  Help him further his dream and future of being a sports broadcaster and working towards having his own commentary show in the future! Thank you for your support and God Bless!