01
Nils
He was a hockey player in the way that shapes a whole life — early mornings, cold rinks, the particular loyalty of a locker room. The game gave him a community, an identity, and a body of accumulated impacts nobody was counting at the time.
Our Story
It started with one family. It belongs to all of us now.
This is not a biography. It is the story of how a personal loss became a question, how a question became a room full of people, and how that room became an international brain-health movement.
02
JoAnn
Behind every athlete's story there is a family watching it happen. JoAnn became the person who asked the questions nobody had good answers for, kept asking after the answers ran out, and refused to accept that other families should start from zero.
03
The Problem
The research existed. The clinical understanding was advancing. But almost none of it was reaching the people making decisions on a bench, at a kitchen table, or in a car ride home. The gap was not scientific — it was a gap in translation.
04
The First Brain Game
So the first Brain Game did something simple and unusual: it put researchers, physicians, coaches, players, and families in the same room and asked everyone to speak plainly. People stayed afterward for hours.
05
Sweden
Sweden proved the format worked. A hockey community showed up for science, and scientists found an audience that cared urgently about what they had spent careers studying. It stopped being an event and started being a movement.
06
Utah
Utah proves it can travel. A free conference, 300 seats, a memorial game on the ice the next day — the same idea, a new community, and a template other regions can carry forward.
07
The Mission Ahead
Fund research partnerships. Bring researchers directly to communities. Build brain-health education that athletes and families actually use. Grow Brain Game wherever people play.
