STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Penn State football games at Beaver Stadium are one of the loudest environments in college sports and for some fans, the noise and the amount of people can be overwhelming.
To ease that stress, a new space has been built for fans with sensory issues and it's located on the concourse level behind section SF.
"What we are trying to do is desensitize the senses, the hearing, the smells, the sight, the sounds, the touch of people bumping into you," explains XEL Foundation President Elisa Krakowski. "Penn State being the amazing stadium that it is, it’s loud, there’s a lot of people, people are excited. To be able to come in here, in a room that’s a little bit quiet, the coloring of the room is softer, there’s the bean bags on the floor, you can sit down and relax. We also have noise-canceling headphones that you can take with you once you reset your senses and go back into the game.”
Elisa's son Lex was diagnosed with autism six years ago. At her parents' urging, she started the XEL Foundation with two goals in mind, inclusion and research.
Lex is the inspiration for the foundation, which is his name spelled backward. They had two missions for the foundation, inclusion and research.
“The research was the easy part because it was well-defined, so there are doctors that dedicated their whole life to autism research," said Rich Francis, Elisa's dad and the CEO of the R&R Family of Companies. "All we had to do there was interview doctors and see which ones aligned with our priorities. So that was easy, the inclusion part was the harder part because it’s so broad in nature, and the spectrum is so broad. That’s where Elisa’s research led us to the sensory rooms.”
"When he was diagnosed, I immediately started looking for resources and Kulture City was one of the organizations that I came across," said Krakowski. "I found them to be very exciting because of the inclusivity that they brought to venues."
“The reason was that Kulture City has sensory rooms in 15 hundred different venues all over the world so to make an impact, it just seemed like it was hard to pick one," Francis added. "Elisa and I are both Penn State alumni, both big football fans. We thought, 'Wow, if we could see if Penn State has one. If they don’t, we could offer to put one in,' so she reached out to Pat Kraft who liked the idea and we started."
Dr. Patrick Kraft is the vice president of Intercollegiate Athletics at Penn State. He made it clear the sensory room is an idea that epitomizes what makes Nittany Lions fans special.
“Our fans are why we are who we are and we have the greatest base in all of sport," Kraft said. "We should be doing these types of things, it’s a process every year to keep doing [them]."
The sensory room occupies a small space that ultimately could grow in size after the renovation. The idea can have a big impact for all kinds of fans with sensory issues.
“While autism is important to our family, one in four actually suffer from some form of invisible disability, things such as PTSD, Alzheimer's, dementia, the list goes on," Krakowski detailed. "For us to be able to provide- not only for autism- a safe space but for a lot of individuals, I would say the message is we’re here, it’s safe, you can join. It’s inclusive, we want to be there, we’re going to be able to provide safe spaces and ultimately, we just want everyone to be included in our mission.”