UI Children’s Hospital seeking kid captain nominations for next football season

IOWA CITY — Since a 13-year-old Jack Koehn of Mount Vernon stepped into Kinnick Stadium in 2009 as the inaugural University of Iowa kid captain — cheered by tens of thousands of fans beside legendary Hawkeye football coach Hayden Fry — 200-plus kids have followed in his footsteps and UI Health Care is looking for more.

The kid captain program — a UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital collaboration with the Hawkeyes — has opened nominations for the 2026 kid captain program through March 13, seeking current or former UIHC pediatric patients who are 18 or younger.

Only parents and legal guardians can nominate their child, who — if chosen — participate in a full slate of game-day experiences and honors, along with occasional special events involving Hawkeye players and football facilities.

Kid captains receive a commemorative jersey, behind-the-scenes tour of Kinnick, and special recognition that involves sharing their story.

Parents can nominate their child as a home-game or honorary away-game kid captain — although only kids who are 6 or older can be a home game captain due to sideline safety concerns.

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“Our program lifts up each kid captain by highlighting their story and giving them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital Chief Administrative Officer Jim Leste said. “Kid Captains represent the best of us. They’re strong, resilient, brave, and compassionate.”

Captains over the years have ranged from children born with heart and brain abnormalities; living with rare disorders that require ongoing UIHC care; or recovering from an accident or trauma — like Nolan Stevenson, 9, of Oskaloosa, who was the opening day kid captain for the most recent 2025 season.

At just 6, the UTV he was riding with his parents on their family farm flipped, ejecting him and his dad. Nolan was airlifted to a local hospital and transferred to UIHC — where he was treated for, among other things, a crushed pelvis requiring reconstruction of his bladder.

“Dr. Matthew Karam told us that Nolan's polytrauma was a ‘once every 10 years’ type of event,” his mother Justine Brink said about the 2023 accident. “As a parent, that was very difficult to comprehend just hours after the accident. Little did I know we would be asked to make very difficult decisions for Nolan's care in the coming days, weeks, and months. Decisions that no parent wants to make.”

Less than a week after his first 15-hour surgery, Nolan’s left leg was amputated below the knee. A week after that, he underwent a hemipelvectomy to remove the left side of his pelvis due to the severity of the break.

Severe injuries to his skin required 38 daily dressing changes, seven debridement surgeries to remove damaged tissue, and allograft and autograft surgeries to transplant donor tissue and his own skin tissue.

Nolan went home after 84 days as an inpatient.

“The compassion and kindness shared with Nolan and our family will forever be remembered,” Brink said. “The nurses cried and grasped our hands, we were hugged by doctors, and we cried with the staff.”

To nominate a child, visit: uihc.org/childrens/kid-captain

“Having a program that lasts this long and celebrates so many patients offers a glimpse at the human side of medicine and the power of the Hawkeye community that surrounds them,” Leste said.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com