When Conor Crimmins picked up his son Fionn from school on Nov. 18, the 5-year-old had a ton of questions. His parents had told him he was supposed to go bowling, but he wanted to clarify a few things.

Were they actually going bowling with the Terrapins men’s lacrosse team today? Yes. 

Who were they bowling with? Midfielder Isaiah Davis-Allen, goalkeeper Dan Morris and attackman Louis Dubick.

Where were they bowling, and were they going straight there?

After three trips to the hospital in the past two weeks to treat his acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Fionn finally had something to look forward to.

In October, the Terps drafted Fionn through Team IMPACT, an organization that pairs children facing life-threatening and chronic illness with local college teams. Wednesday at TerpZone, Fionn hit the lanes with some of his new teammates. For a few hours, he wasn’t thinking about the hardships associated with living with cancer. He was too busy having fun. 

“It’s something exciting that makes him feel like a 5-year-old and distracts him from going to the hospital and having treatments,” Conor Crimmins said. “If you look at him and watch him, you have no idea that he’s dealing with anything.”

Fionn was diagnosed with ALL around Memorial Day in 2014 — close to his fourth birthday. 

When doctors discovered the cancer, he spent five days in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit for kidney failure before transferring to the oncology department for a 28-day chemotherapy treatment. He achieved remission on the eighth day while the rest of the medicine finished.

Over the next several months, Fionn spent one week out of every month in the hospital for more treatment. His parents would rotate sleeping there while going to work and taking care of their younger son, Deaglan, who was 1 year old at the time of Fionn’s diagnosis. The Crimminses estimate Fionn spent 74 nights in the hospital between his fourth and fifth birthdays.

Now Fionn is in a maintenance phase, receiving a lower dose of treatment once a month, with the final round scheduled for Oct. 7, 2017. But as cold and flu season arrives, his parents have to take him to the emergency room every time he runs a fever, a common occurrence leading up to his bowling trip. 

“Every time we think about a vacation or an outing like this,” Crimmins said, “we don’t know until about 15 minutes before.”

On Wednesday, the Crimmins family put on Terps apparel and made the trip to College Park for an evening with Davis-Allen, Morris and Dubick. Coach John Tillman and director of operations Todd MacFarlane joined in, too. 

As the Terps sorted out everyone’s shoe sizes, Fionn sat stone-faced in a chair away from his teammates with a lime green bowling ball in his lap. The 5-year-old swung his legs and watched his teammates tie their laces.

Soon, Fionn stepped up to the lane with the green ball in tow and gave it an underhand shove. Davis-Allen knelt beside him and reached out for a high-five as the ball bounced off the bumpers.

That’s when his shyness ended.

Fionn spent most of the time darting between the ball return rack and the lane. At one point when Davis-Allen was in between attempts, Fionn slipped in front of the midfielder and took his second shot.

Fionn also rotated between the group’s two open lanes, using a method his dad described as “just chuck it, and then race back and try to beat the machine.” He did that at one point when his second shot bounced off the pin-setter before it finished clearing.

Fionn only took a break to eat half a slice of pizza, before returning to the game with a handful of peeled-off pepperoni.

“He’s a protein man,” joked his mom, Casey.

Fionn first met the Terps in October, joining them for a fall scrimmage. First, Tillman had a few of his players approach Fionn to ask some easy questions and “break the ice.” They then brought Fionn into the team room where the rest of the Terps welcomed him.

Fionn was initially overwhelmed. But soon, he saw the jersey, helmet and stick waiting for him in the middle of the room. By the end of the day, he was running around the field in the equipment and leading cheers in the huddle. 

“It got our guys really excited and really fired up, so it was an awesome sight,” Tillman said. “It was a win-win for everybody.”

When Fionn returned to his Kensington home that night, he told his dad he “loved hockey.” While his parents still have to correct Fionn that the Terps are, in fact, lacrosse players, Fionn wants to learn the game. He also wants a pair of elbow pads to complete his uniform.

Those will likely come in the future, as the team has several more surprises planned for Fionn this season.

But in the basement of Stamp Student Union last week, Fionn wasn’t thinking about any equipment accessories. He wasn’t thinking about cancer, either.

Fionn Crimmins

He threw his fists in the air and slapped high-fives with Morris to celebrate his “three strikes in a row.”

The shots actually resulted in spares, and not all of them came under Fionn’s name on the scoreboard. But everyone laughed and cheered.

“A bunch of us are super spoiled here,” Davis-Allen said. “That’s one thing with being a student-athlete. You get a lot of extra stuff, but seeing him — a person who maybe wasn’t given a fair shake — makes all of us actually think and be more grateful.”