With the holiday season behind us, it’s customary to share the news of the gifts you’ve given and received from friends and family. But for Hood College senior swim team member Kyle Atras, a gift he received before he celebrated his first birthday is more precious than any bauble or trinket you could buy at even the glitziest retailer.

Kyle was given the priceless gift of life when he received a heart transplant at the tender age of eight-and-a-half months from someone he will never get to meet.

When Kyle was just three months old, his mother, Betsy, noticed that she was having difficulty feeding Kyle—he would become ill shortly after eating and was losing weight rapidly. The Atras’ took Kyle to their family pediatrician in their hometown of Philadelphia. After running some tests, the pediatrician recommended that they take Kyle to a specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The doctors at the hospital did a chest x-ray and discovered Kyle had a dilated cardiomyopathy, or an enlarged heart. Kyle’s heart was able to pump blood but not efficiently enough to maintain proper body function. The doctors immediately put him on medication but were not even sure that Kyle would make it through the night.

The children’s hospital did not have a license to perform pediatric heart transplants, so the doctors referred the Atras’ to Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, about a two-and-a-half hour drive from Philadelphia. A former elementary school teacher, Betsy was still on maternity leave and Kyle’s father, Matt, was granted extended leave from his job as an auto mechanic at a Honda dealership. The Atras’ rented an apartment in Baltimore near Johns Hopkins on a month-to-month basis in order to provide Kyle with the best treatment possible.

Despite Kyle’s young age, his chest cavity was large enough to receive a transplant from someone older or larger than Kyle. After being put on a transplant list in Aug. 1989, Kyle received his transplant on Oct. 21, a day that the Atras family commemorates with as much as celebration as Kyle’s birthday on Jan. 27.

Though they were eternally grateful that their child was potentially receiving a second chance at life, Betsy and Matt also had to struggle with the notion the matching heart came from the body of another young child, whom they would never get to meet, or thank. Though the details are sketchy, the Atras family later learned that Kyle’s donor was a 20-month old child from New York who had been in and out of foster care. Kyle remained in intensive care for three days and the family journeyed back and forth from Philadelphia to Baltimore for observation and weekly checkups for next year.

But living in the comforts of home did not come without some repercussions from the delicate surgery.

“I dealt with rejection in the first year of the transplant,” said Kyle. “Sometimes little things would happen like a blood clot in my leg and I would have to go back to the hospital and make sure everything was ok. Visits are every three months, where I have to get blood work and other tests to monitor my heart function. Then I have an annual visit where they do a biopsy and cathartization. I am still doing the same stuff today.

“The medication for anti-rejection has caused some problems,” Kyle continued. “I dealt with anemia the summer after my sophomore year of high school, which was associated with the anti-rejection medicine. I was fine for five or six years then one summer, it just all fell apart, so they changed the medication. The first thing that popped up was post-transplant lymphoma, I had been on the rejection medicine for so long it opened up the immune system to different stuff. They lowered the dosage of the medicine I was on, so no chemo. Everything is in remission now. We went and got a second opinion from the children’s hospital and they thought they were going to start right in with the treatments but they said lower the dosage and that worked.”

Kyle has defied the odds and has always been very involved in various sports and activities. One Kyle’s favorite pastimes is swimming, a recreational activity that he has enjoyed since the age of 4 when his grandmother signed him up for lessons at a naval station in Philadelphia. After he had mastered all of the requirements in swim lessons, he joined a competitive team at age 8.

The name Kyle Atras is not quite the household name in the swimming community like that of Michael Phelps; but Kyle’s medal count nearly rivals that of the decorated Olympian.

Kyle is one of hundreds of athletes who compete for Team Philadelphia, a group of men, women and children from the donation and transplant communities of eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware that participates in the U.S. Transplant Games every other summer.

At the 2006 U.S. Transplant Games in Louisville, Kentucky, Kyle participated in six events and, after earning three gold medals and two silvers in bowling and swimming, was chosen as the most outstanding male athlete for Team Philly. As a result of his exemplary performances, Kyle was awarded an all-expenses paid trip to the 2007 World Transplant Games in Bangkok, Thailand.

Competing as a 17-year-old in the 18-29 year-old bracket, Kyle proved his mettle once again and racked up three more silver medals at the WTG in the 400 freestyle, the 50 backstroke and the 50 freestyle.

That fall, Kyle received a Dean’s Scholarship to attend Hood College. One of the first things he did after setting foot on campus was join the swim team. “It was more competitive than I thought,” said the modest first-year collegiate swimmer with elite international experience. “It was a huge jump from high school to this. We practice 7-9 a.m. every morning. Waking up in the morning is a challenge. I can’t be going to bed late and wake up in time.”

Kyle was selected as a team captain of the Hood swim team this year, his last with the squad. He joins former teammates Matt Haynes ’09 and Jason Kinder ‘08 as the only three of dozens of men to compete for the Blazers all four years of their college careers.

A distance freestyle specialist, he has competed against some of the best Division III talent in the country, including perennial powerhouse the University of Mary Washington. A true team player in a traditionally individualized sport, Kyle, who stands just 5-4, is willing to compete in any event, no matter the stroke, no matter the distance. “Whenever there was a spot to fill, I always got in there.”

Kyle does not have specialized workouts because of his transplant, he logs just as much yardage as the rest of his teammates. “For the workouts, everything that they are doing, I’m doing too,” said Kyle. “It’s tough but you just work through it. The doctors are really happy that I’ve gotten into swimming because it’s such a good workout for the whole body. The only thing I have to do on a daily basis is take my medication.”

Kyle’s family, including his younger brother and biggest supporter, Chris, come to many meets during the year. “It’s like having a home away from home, it’s also always nice to have a good meal afterwards and catch up on stuff back home,” said Kyle.

Though he is not overtly forthcoming about announcing his transplant to the public, he also does not shy away from it or hide it from his teammates and friends. “I said something about the transplant games to one girl I swam with on a summer team and she didn’t know anything about it at all,” said Kyle. “It’s cool for them to see me like a regular kid, they don’t even notice. Nobody even notices or questions it or wonders and it is cool.

“At the Salisbury meet my freshman year, one kid said his coach told him there was a kid on the Hood team with a heart transplant and he asked if it was me,” said Kyle. “He thought it was cool that I swam.

“(Former teammate) AJ (Smith) and I had a little mini-rivalry inside the team,” Kyle admitted. “It’s cool when I beat someone and the coach is like, ‘that kid has a heart transplant and he just beat you.’”

Kyle is an extraordinary testament to overcoming life-threatening obstacles, and wants to do his part to tell his story to create awareness for the need for more donations.

“I want to get more awareness out there,” said Kyle. “Every (transplant) games, they tell you about the amount of people waiting for transplants and how many die each day not getting them and being left on the list. I was able to receive the gift and hope that maybe I can pass it on to help many others receive as well.

“I do speaking engagements for the Gift of Life program in Philly at grade schools and hospitals in the area and volunteer at the ‘The Dash for Organ Donation’ fundraiser,” Kyle continued. “Some kids that I know when they were getting their driver’s licenses would know that I had a transplant and became an organ donor because of that.”

An avid sports fan and hockey enthusiast, Kyle has aspirations of one day becoming a broadcaster for a professional sports team. A communication arts major with a concentration in broadcast journalism, Kyle looks to add “college graduate” to his list of remarkable achievements this May. He has taken steps toward achieving his broadcasting goal by hosting a radio show on Hood’s campus radio station, Blazer Radio, and has provided color commentary at several Hood athletic contests.

After making the most of his second chance at life, Kyle Atras will undoubtedly put his heart into anything he chooses to do.