Please join us in supporting The Alex Manfull Fund (TAMF) as we row in honor of Alex. “This is a sport that Alex absolutely loved,” says Susan Manfull, PhD, Alex’s mother who, with her husband, founded TAMF about five years ago when their daughter died at 26 years old due to complications from PANDAS, a little known autoimmune condition triggered by strep. “Coxing and competing in races like the Head of the Charles was who Alex was. Until she was afflicted with this horrific disorder, Alex was a vibrant young woman.”

The Alex Manfull Fund team consists of male rowers who were coxed by Alex and female rowers who were part of the close-knit rowing community that once included Alex. The team will compete in the Director’s Challenge Mixed Eight Race, scheduled for Sunday, October 22 at 3:56 PM.

Funds raised from this event will go toward TAMF’s work to raise awareness about infection-related neuroimmune disorders like PANDAS and PANS, advance education for physicians and mental health providers, and research. A portion of the funds raised for this event will support research conducted by Dr. Kyle Williams and his team at the Pediatric Neuropsychiatry and Immunology Program in the OCD and Related Disorders Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.

This is a great opportunity to reach the public and underscore that these autoimmune disorders, triggered by common infections like strep, Lyme, and even COVID, can happen to anyone – even happy, healthy, even-keeled individuals with no history of neuropsychiatric disorders,” said Susan Manfull. “Alex would be alive today if one of the many doctors she saw early on had recognized PANDAS.”

About Alex Manfull, the Coxswain
Alex spent eight years of her abbreviated life coxing young men at Phillips Exeter Academy (PEA) and Princeton University. Alex was so well respected by her team at PEA that they voted her co-captain of the 2009 men’s team, a position not earned by a young woman before or since. By the end of her high school years, she was nationally recognized for her skills as a coxswain and went on to cox for the lightweight men’s team at Princeton.

“In the roughly 50 years that I have been coaching and teaching, I have never worked with a better coxswain than Alex Manfull. Far more importantly, however, I never worked with a more graceful, humble, supportive, talented, or upstanding young person. Alex made all of us around her better,” said Lawrence Smith, PEA Boys’ Varsity Crew Coach (1989-2011).

On October 20-22, 11,000 athletes from around the globe will gather in Boston to compete in this premier head race, the world’s largest three-day rowing event. Among the estimated 2,000 boats set to race on the 3.2 mile course will be a mixed-eight shell filled with four men, four women, and a coxswain that comprise a team rowing to honor the late Alexandra “Alex” Manfull.

TAMF will have a hospitality tent located in Reunion Village on the Cambridge side of the Charles river on Saturday, October 21 and Sunday, October 22, 2023. Please come to meet the team, talk with people whose lives have been impacted by PANDAS/PANS and other neuroimmune disorders, and chat with experts about these disorders. For details, visit… TheAlexManfullFund.org/HOCR.