Shooting for a Cure

First-year Saint Joseph’s University student Jack Pavlovcak, BS ’29, starts out all of his fundraising pitches the same way: “Coats disease is a rare eye disease that happens when the blood vessels at the back of your eyes start to leak.” 

Coats is a cause that Pavlovcak has been passionate about for over a decade. When he was just 9 years old, his best friend, Sean, was diagnosed with the disease.

“As a 9 year-old, I knew I wanted to help out any way I could, and I knew I loved basketball,” Pavlovcak says. “I pitched the idea to my parents — what if I just shot baskets?” 

Thus, Shots for Coats was born. For the last decade, Pavlovcak has held yearly fundraisers at the basketball hoop in his parents’ Bucks County driveway. During his first foray into the fundraising world back in 2016, Pavlovcak made 117 baskets in 30 minutes and raised just under $2,000 from donations by family and friends. 

“I wish I could replicate now the kind of childlike wonder I had then, not worrying about what would happen if I only made 20 baskets or if only three people donated,” he says. “I just really wanted to help my friend and started doing it.”

As he perfected the craft of timed shooting, his number of baskets made — and amount of money raised — continually increased. In 2022, his highest fundraising year, he raised $8,165. He set his record for most shots made in 2025 with 998 baskets in 45 minutes. Last year, his grand total reached over $55,000. 

“Over the years, I’ve found it really special to learn how much people can care about something that they’ll never see the impact of in their daily lives,” Pavlovcak says. 

Coats is a rare disease, affecting only one in every 100,000 people. Diseases of this designation often struggle for adequate funding, with only 0.1% of NIH funding going toward the 7,000 rare diseases in the country. 

“I’ve toured the facilities where these scientists work,” Pavlovcak says. “I’ve seen the frozen rat eyes they work on. I’m proud to be able to tell people that when they donate to Shots for Coats, every cent of their money is going to a doctor who is actively researching a gene pool, trying to find a similarity in every patient with Coats and working towards a cure.” 

For Pavlovcak, the connections between St. Joe’s and his work with Shots for Coats were there from the moment he visited campus as a prospective student and ran into a current student who had been at his most recent fundraiser. 

“I started seeing these invisible strings everywhere,” he says.

Now in his first year as a Hawk, Pavlovcak feels at home in the culture of involvement and service to others on campus. A sports marketing major, he has found his spot in the SJU American Marketing Association and was featured as their Member of the Month in September. 

“There is a community here that empowers people to do cool things,” Pavlovcak says. “There’s a real sense of self-betterment. Everyone tries to pull the best out of you, and it makes you want to put your best foot forward.” 

Donations to Johns Hopkins Medicine can be made through the Curing Coats website.