Behind the Scenes of Brown’s Bench Press for Cancer with Yelena Cashion ‘09
10/20/2022
by: Tim Geer, Brown Athletic Communications
Before Yelena Cashion ‘09 had even applied to Brown, she knew she wanted to work in football. Her interest piqued in high school, right when the Patriots were starting to build their dynasty about 20 miles up the road from Brown’s campus.
“I knew that I wanted to end up working in football in some capacity, and I was thinking about applying to the University of Michigan because they had one of the top sports management programs that I was really excited about,” Cashion recalled. “But I wanted to apply to Brown early. It was a reach school for me, but I was really excited about the open curriculum that Brown had to offer.”
Much to her delight, Cashion (known as Yelena Cvek during her days on College Hill) was accepted to Brown for the fall semester of 2005, but due to the lack of a sports management program, her first challenge was using the open curriculum to her advantage.
“When I did get in, I had to figure out how I was going to make sports management work for me,” Cashion said. “I knew I wasn’t going to major in it anymore, but I still wanted to be involved in some capacity.”
Having already volunteered in high school at Patriots Training Camp, Cashion sought to continue her football involvement at Brown and called up the football office in an effort to help out any way she could. It was then she developed a connection with then-assistant coach and current Director of Player Development, Paul Frisone.
“Coach Frizz reached out to me and was so friendly and welcoming,” Cashion said. “He had me come down one day in the summer and said they had student management roles on the team and I’d be able to help out with practices, in the office, and just find ways to be involved with the team.”
Cashion began her journey at Brown a couple weeks before of the rest of the student body, arriving on campus at the same time as the football team and getting to work on day one of preseason practice.
“I ended up sticking with it through all four years,” Cashion said. “It was an awesome experience.”
Fortuitously, Cashion’s career at Brown coincided with the start of a new concentration on campus, one that allowed her to supplement her in-class learning with her real-world experience with the football program.
“I was lucky enough to be able to be the first class to graduate with a degree in Commerce, Organization and Entrepreneurship (COE),” Cashion said. “It was so exciting to be a part of the first class that took on this new equivalent to a business degree that we never had before. What I was able to do at Brown was experience a new business major that was just being born and take some of those classes the first time they were offered and really pair that with being on the football field throughout the week, and learning about the hands-on experience of what it means to be part of a team. Football taught me to have a mentality of discipline, loyalty, and teamwork to achieve a common goal, in this case: the Ivy League Championship. I learned a lot about putting in the daily grind alongside football players who worked so hard every day. We operated as a mini-business, everyone doing their job, ultimately paying off in the form of two Ivy League Championships ('05 and '08).”
After getting involved with the team, Cashion quickly learned about a young man who had a profound impact on the Brown football program.
Former captain Lawrence Rubida ’05 was still fresh in everyone’s mind after he passed away in January of 2005 from Ewing’s Sarcoma. The football program had been involved in many different initiatives and fundraisers, such as selling bracelets, and a bench press-a-thon, to honor Lawrence’s memory.
One day, Cashion’s friend and lacrosse student-athlete Mackenzie Staffier mentioned an idea that she had seen another school implement a bench press style fundraiser. Eager to expand her responsibilities beyond practice and office work, Cashion ran with the idea, and used it to help modify the bench press-a-thon that had been underway for a couple of years. Beginning in 2007, the revamped Bench Press for Cancer began in its current form, and to date, has raised over $200,000 for various cancer programs.
“We thought it would be a great way to bring the whole community together,” Cashion said. “Lawrence was around before my time, but all of the friendships from the previous teams were still really close from Lawrence, and there were still desires about wanting to do good in the community and raise funds for cancer research. So, there was already some seeds of wanting to do a fundraiser there.”
In 2007, the event featured just the football team. It was held on the Main Green, which really helped the event take off and helped the team connect with a larger swath of the campus community.
“People would pass by and see what the team was doing,” Cashion said. “It was a great way to tie athletics, which is normally on a different part of campus, and bring it back to the academic side on the Main Green. It grew from there.”
In subsequent years, the event grew and was sponsored by brands like Under Armour and Muscle Milk, and even involved other athletic programs at Brown for a few years. Initially, the money raised was donated to the American Cancer Society, before being shifted to stay in the local community. According to an October 2008 article from the Brown Daily Herald, the revamped 2007 Bench Press for Cancer raised $11,000, with year two raising over $22,500. Today, all proceeds go directly to The Miriam Hospital in Providence to support their cancer survivorship programs.
“It was amazing to be able to write that check and send it off (to the American Cancer Society) and feel like we were making a difference, but when they changed it to being local, I thought that was such an amazing move by the team,” Cashion said. “I went down to the Miriam Hospital one year to visit, and was able to see the impact it had in the local community, which was really amazing to be able to see some of those families and the impact it was having in Providence.”
“It's grown so much over the years in participation because people remember it from when they were students and were playing here,” Frisone said. “When it comes up again each year, people remember what a cool thing it was and feel the desire to contribute. We’ve made it more of a grassroots and homegrown effort with our partnership with Miriam Hospital. That has been one of the best evolutions of this. We tailor made it into making it most impactful for people right here in our community.”
Now a mother of three, Cashion has had life pull her in a number of directions since graduating in 2009, and although she has not been able to be directly involved with Bench Press for Cancer, she has made it a point to donate every single year and would love to get involved again in the future.
True to her roots, she has found time to give back to the Brown community and be a mentor to generations of Brown students after her. Cashion credits her experience in the classroom and with the football program at Brown as the springboard to working in the field of brand management after graduation, first for five years with the Patriots, and four more years with the Boston Bruins. She has returned to campus for the football program’s career days, and has been a point of contact for people like Professor Barrett Hazeltine who have students looking to get into the sports industry.
“I have loved being a mentor figure for those that are entering the industry. In the last three years I have moved out of sports, still doing brand management, but now in a different industry. It always has such a strong place in my heart and I love helping out any way that I can.”
“It turned out that my business and art degrees from Brown and my first-hand experience with Brown Football were an invaluable combination, giving me leverage to start applying to and getting traction with sports business jobs right off the bat after graduating,” Cashion said. “I think the most valuable piece to that was the network that you get, not just from being at Brown, but the football network as well. The dedication of the players and the bond that the team has, being a part of that has been incredible because before I even gradated, I was in the office of the president of HBO Sports and already talking to people at ESPN, so it was just this sort of natural foot in the door, and that in itself just opened up so many opportunities. It was really nice being accepted into that community.
“Some of my best friends are alums of the Brown Football team,” Cashion said. “I also concentrated in art while at Brown. I remember my first art show, I was really nervous that no one was going to show up. Then one of the guys on the team got everybody to rally around it and almost the whole football team showed up to support, so that community is just something that’s really built in from the beginning.
“The community piece is still very tight knit,” Cashion said. “Beyond just donating, I have thought about and would love to get involved with Bench Press for Cancer again. Hopefully that does change.”
Brown’s annual Bench Press for Cancer will return this coming Monday, October 24 and will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., rain or shine, on the university’s Main Green. For those interested in getting involved or making a donation, please visit brownbears.com/bp4c.
