Quarterback given opportunity to keep childhood promise

Going to the prom with the star of the football team is something most girls dream about, but it’s something Mary Lapkowicz got to experience firsthand. 

She went to the prom with Ben Moser, the quarterback for a team at a neighboring high school. 

What’s more remarkable is that Lapkowicz has Down syndrome and Moser is able-bodied. Lapkowicz and Moser have known each other since the fourth grade. Like a true friend, Moser always tried to ensure Lapkowicz was included in school activities. 

"He watched over her constantly," their fourth-grade teacher, Tracey Spogli, said to PennLive in 2015. "If she was looking like she wasn't having fun, he would go over and talk to her. He would pull her in to whatever activity they were doing. He just always watched out for her."

It was also during that fourth-grade school year that Moser promised to take Lapkowicz to prom when they got older. 

When it was prom season, Lapkowicz thought Moser had forgotten until she got balloons from him with the word “prom” written on them. 

"Today with joyful tears in my eyes and down my face I watched a promise made, seven years ago, to a beautiful girl fulfilled," Ben's mother, Lisa Moser, posted on Facebook, according to ABC News.

The pair went to prom on May 8, 2015.