By Brion O'Conner Boston Globe

With all the talk surrounding the World Series champion Red Sox, asking a 5-year-old diehard baseball fan from Middleborough what his favorite baseball team was seemed like a rhetorical question. But Dylan Berio runs contrary to type.

“The Bridgewater Bears,” he said, emphatically.

Berio, along with his 14-year-old brother Hayden, are members of the Bridgewater State University baseball squad, having joined the Bears last spring through Team IMPACT, a Quincy-based nonprofit that connects children who have debilitating or life-threatening illnesses with college athletes.

But the Berio brothers aren’t simply mascots. Team IMPACT (Inspire, Motivate, and Play Against Challenges Together) is an immersion program, with the youngsters getting their own signing day, lockers, uniforms (Dylan is No. 8), and place on the sidelines.

In short, they get a true spot on the team.

“Once you explain to these athletes, these college kids, what these young children have been through, the magic is pretty instant,” said Dan Walsh, a Team IMPACT founder and the group’s former executive director. “And the guys really treat them like a teammate. So if the child is in the hospital, of course the guys would go to the hospital. It’s their teammate. Of course they call to check to see how a test went, or how treatments are going, everything, both on and off the field. It’s a pretty intoxicating thing to be around.”

Dylan Berio has three brain tumors, or pilocytic astrocytomas, and was recommended to the program by one of his doctors at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said his mother, Dawn Berio. However, she acknowledged that she and her husband, Phil, had concerns, suspecting that not every college athlete would embrace the idea of having a sick child on board.

“These are college boys, so they’re built differently, and they don’t have that maternal instinct,” she said. “And I don’t mean that in a bad way. But I think they’d be caught up in their sport, and think, ‘Oh, we don’t know what to do.’ And if they don’t have siblings themselves, they might not know how to react to the child, especially with the illness that the child has. These boys are caught up in the love of their game. I get that.

“So I didn’t have any expectations,” Dawn Berio said. But the program “definitely exceeded beyond what I would have imagined. The college boys are wonderful. I think it took a little while for my boys to warm up to them, and maybe a little bit vice versa, but they’re all wonderful.”

According to Walsh, the relationship between the Bridgewater Bears and their two young teammates was entirely predictable. He has found that the Team IMPACT framework builds character.

“For me, the biggest surprise has been how invested these college athletes can be,” said Erin MacNeil, a Team IMPACT case manager. “I’ve heard from so many athletes who said that was the most influential experience of their career. That just blew me away.”

Team IMPACT is the brainchild of several close friends, most of whom attended Tufts University together (including Walsh, Dan Kraft, son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and Jay Calnan, who provides office space at his J. Calnan & Associates business in Quincy). The group decided it wanted to take the traditional mentoring program to a new level, said Walsh.

“The concept itself has been around forever,” he said. “On our website (goteamimpact.org), we reference at least a half-dozen other programs. Among the oldest is ‘Picking Up Butch’ at Middlebury College. It’s a really simple concept, really powerful. Everybody wins.”

When they started out, Walsh and his friends began working with a nonprofit specializing in brain tumor patients, but quickly decided the scope was too limited. “We thought this needs to grow,” he said.

The friends raised their first funds out of pocket, and launched the program with the St. Anselm College hockey team in Manchester, N.H., in 2011.

Today, Walsh estimates that Team IMPACT oversees partnerships in 37 states nationwide, with roughly 12,000 participants, including children, siblings, and athletes. The baseball squad is one of four Bridgewater State teams with a Team IMPACT child on the roster. Other local institutions include Stonehill College in Easton, with six, and Curry College in Milton, with four. Those numbers are in constant flux, as the program looks to match more children with teams. There is also the heartbreaking reality that some children won’t survive.

“With miracles of modern science, most of these kids will make it,” said Walsh. “But these are life-threatening illnesses, and we probably have [in the program] as many as 46 different afflictions. We have lost children. We’re finishing up our second full year, and we’ve probably lost eight children (including one young girl with the Bridgewater State softball team). That’s clearly one of the most difficult parts of the program.”

Remarkably, said Walsh, coaches won’t hesitate to bring even a very sick child on board. Still, obstacles remain, including recruiting children and their families. References can come from any number of avenues, including medical professionals, social service agencies, schools, and even friends. However, the pool of available teams currently outnumbers participating children.

Even those families who know of Team IMPACT might be hesitant to join, which is a response that MacNeil said her group understands. “The major concern is that these kids have been through so much, whether it be weeks, months, years. If it’s a chronic condition, it could be their whole life,” she said. “And they know they’re going to be facing some really rough days.”

The program is not concerned solely with connecting children and teams. The founders want Team IMPACT to stay involved every step of the way. They also advocate drafting siblings, to recognize the hardships of a single child have a significant impact on the entire family.

“Everyone is focused on the child who has the illness and is battling, and they sometimes forget about the other siblings,” said Dawn Berio, whose son Hayden isn’t sick. “It’s a big thing, because that sibling or siblings get pushed into the background. We’ve seen it firsthand, and it’s not something you want to see a sibling go through. It’s difficult.”

For Bridgewater State assistant coach Josh White, the Berio brothers help remind his Bears that baseball, at the end of the day, is still a game. “When we first brought Team IMPACT to our guys, I’ll be honest, the guys welled up a little bit when they heard about Dylan and what was going on,” he said. “I think it’s very humbling for them. And they’re learning not to take life for granted. It’s really an eye-opener for a lot of them.”

“Given everything else that’s going on in the world today, with Dylan and Hayden the guys are totally different. They almost revert back to being kids,” said White. “To watch 22-year-old kids dive around the field, playing Wiffleball with a 5-year-old boy, you just don’t see that.”

That renewed sense of play, said Bridgewater second baseman Kevin Sugermeyer, gives the players a refreshing outlook on the game. “I’m sure some people look at sports with the idea that it’s all about wins and losses,” said the 20-year-old junior from Hampden.

“But once we have someone come along like Dylan, it changes the whole game,” Sugermeyer said. “Now you’re doing it for someone else at the same time. It’s not just all about you, or just your team, but someone who is looking up to us.”

Dawn Berio said one of the most rewarding aspects of Team IMPACT is that her boys have additional male role models – “older brother figures” – outside the home.

“I think they got a sense of what it’s meant to be a teammate, and how compassionate the boys are,” said Dawn Berio. “It’s not what you get out of life, it’s what you give to another human being. And I think they really saw that through these boys. And they saw what leadership is like with these boys, and what it’s like to be part of a team. To work together.”

The Berio boys and the Bears spend considerable time together off the field as well, including a tailgate party at the Bears’ homecoming football game, or trick-or-treating on Halloween. But the baseball diamond is still a favorite gathering spot.

“It got to the point last spring that the minute Dylan and Hayden showed up, they came right into the dugout, asking for seeds or asking for gum,” said White, laughing. “For as long as I can remember at Bridgewater, we’ve had pickles in the dugout. And Dylan and Hayden starting bringing pickles to the dugout. That was just their way of saying ‘Hey, we’re part of this team.’ ”