Young Nebraska football fan Jack Hoffman rushes for a touchdown at the 2013 Cornhuskers spring game and becomes a fundraiser for pediatric brain cancer, according to the Jacks Foundation The catalyst, who died Wednesday after a 14-year battle with cancer. He is 19 years old.

Hoffman was diagnosed with cancerous glioma when he was five years old. Doctors told the family that most of his golf ball-sized tumors could not be removed. But his father, Andy Hoffman, did exhaustive research and found a doctor in Boston who removed more than 90 percent of the tumor.

Jack's favorite player was Nebraska running back Rex Burkhead, and before surgery, Andy contacted Nebraska to ask his son to meet him. Burkhead had lunch with Hoffman and played against him on the field, and the family developed a lasting friendship with the former NFL linebacker.

In late 2011, with the Cornhuskers trailing Ohio State by three touchdowns, Burkhead piqued the interest of some of his teammates by mentioning the inspiring boy he had just met. "Hey, Jack isn't going to give up," he told them, "so why should we?" Nebraska rallied and Burkhead scored the game-winning touchdown.

A year and a half later, in April 2013, Nebraska's coaches decided to keep Jack out of the spring game. Jack, then 7 years old, wearing an ill-fitting helmet that popped up when he ran, ran 69 yards for a touchdown as 60,000 fans cheered him on. Videos of the show have received more than 10 million views on YouTube.

Hoffman traveled to Washington to meet with President Obama and received the ESPY Award for Best Sports Moment. The moment, known simply as "The Run," helped Huffman's father create the Team Jack Foundation. The venture, launched in Atkinson, Nebraska (population 1,245), has raised more than $14 million to fund pediatric brain cancer research.

In 2020, Andy Hoffman was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer. He died less than a year later. In September 2020, Jack's mother, Bri Hoffman, told ESPN's family that their hope for Jack was to keep the tumor under control for as long as possible.

"With children and tumors," she said, "what[doctors]tell us is that if you can stop the tumors from growing until they're in their 20s, a lot of times they'll go away."

With the help of clinical trials, Jack Hoffman was able to do the seemingly unimaginable in 2011, despite the possibility of a seizure at any time. He attended Homecoming and played linebacker on the Atkinson High School football team. He goes rafting, boating, fishing, and plays tug of war with his dog Roxy. He cheered for his Nebraska Cornhuskers.

But a brain scan in 2023 showed the tumor had progressed, and he underwent surgery to remove it in the summer of 2024. Pathology results ultimately showed his tumor had developed into a high-grade glioma, "which is extremely rare," according to the Team Jack website.

After undergoing 30 radiation treatments, Huffman began her freshman year in the pre-law program at the University of Nebraska at Kearney last fall. He wanted to be a lawyer, like his father.

In a statement Wednesday, the university called Huffman "a valued member of our Loper community" and noted that he earned a spot on the dean's list last semester.

"Jack was widely admired across Nebraska and beyond for his courageous spirit and dedication to raising awareness about childhood cancer through the Team Jack Foundation," the school's statement read. "Our hearts go out to Jack's family. "Heartfelt condolences to his friends and everyone he touched. His connection to the UNK community is meaningful and his impact will not be forgotten."

In a December CaringBridge post, Bri Hoffman said it was "heartbreaking" to email Jack's professors to let them know he was too sick to take his final exams .

“He worked extremely hard this semester,” she wrote.

In 2020, Hoffman said in an interview with ESPN that he had no idea "The Run" would be so important. He thought it was just being done in front of a few people, but was horrified when he realized that wasn't the case. But he put on a pair of old, oversized football pants and his dad took him to the field. Hoffman wasn't sure where the touchdown line was, so Andy told him to keep going until he hit the fence.

Hoffman adheres to this advice when dealing with unknown problems.

“If you don’t know,” he said, “just run until you hit the fence.”