Carson City Pop Warner helping youth who needs open heart surgery

The Carson City Pop Warner Football organization is coming together to raise money to help a teammate pay for open heart surgery.

Six year old Andre DeLeon was born with one ventricle in his heart longer than it should be and needs to have open heart surgery to repair it.

DeLeon has been on the Carson City Pop Warner football team for two seasons, and his team is coming together to help raise the money to get DeLeon and his parents down to Las Vegas for the surgery.

“He is just such a great kid, he loves life and he’s never down,” said Wendi Tyzbir, DeLeon’s grandmother. “He has always got a beautiful smile and is full of life and energy.”

The DeLeon’s discovered the defect when Andre went to get his physical to be eligible to play football this season. Tyzbir said the doctors told the family if they hadn’t caught the issue in time, DeLeon could have had a stroke on the field and not recovered.

“He just loves football,” Tyzbir said.

Michael Ferretti, one of the coaches with Pop Warner, set up a GoFundMe account to try to raise the $5,000 for DeLeon to get the surgery.

“If everyone can take some time out of their day today to pray for a little boy that’s special too many of our hearts... He is a big part of our Senator Family and he loves his football just like many of our young players,” Ferretti wrote on the GoFundMe page.

Tyzbir said the DeLeons would have to stay in Las Vegas from September through October for the surgery and recovery.

To donate to DeLeon’s GoFundMe visit https://www.gofundme.com/24wv5gcc.