(Dylan) Kekoa Crawford to wear the #1 jersey, Rashan Gary #3

MGoCitizens –

Late last summer, my dear friend and fellow Michigan graduate, Andy Ecker, passed away after a lengthy battle with brain cancer.  Andy and I grew up together in New York and both attended and graduated from Michigan in 2009.  He was one of the brightest and wittiest guys I’ve ever known, so brain cancer seems like a particularly cruel way to go, given that it greatly diminished his best asset by the end.

Andy was a true warrior.  He maintained positivity, optimism and his senses of humor throughout the entirety of a brutal course of treatment.  Despite surfacing in his mid-twenties, Andy’s particular type of cancer is commonly found in children.  So he was frequently treated at children’s hospitals and through it all, whenever his friends or family started feeling sorry for him, he’d mention a child who he had befriended in the game room on his wing and say how lucky he (Andy) was that he was afforded so much more time and how much worse it was for the child.

To pass the time during treatments, Andy took up and mastered Settlers of Catan and its ilk (e.g., Puerto Rico, 7 Wonders).  He was honestly impossible to beat, which was particularly frustrating because there’s an element of chance in each game and after a while you think you’d just luck into a win but never actually would.  He joked (in his inimitably sarcastic and dry way) that despite being nearly blind, deaf and unable to speak towards the very end, that we would still never beat him at a game of Catan, which was the sad truth.

After his run of complete dominance bored him, Andy designed his own version of a settler turn-based board game (pictured below), which he had hopes of commercializing.  After kicking around a number of options, we ultimately settled on the name Kekoa Island after throwing a bunch of words into a Hawaiian online translator (HT: MGoGirlfriend).  You can imagine my surprise when I learned months later on the MGoPodcast that Dylan Crawford had adopted the name “Kekoa” for himself.

I’m not religious or spiritual so I don’t think there’s any sort of supernatural connection between my friend and Kekoa Crawford subsequently adopting the name.  It didn’t even occur to me that the word Kekoa really embodied Andy’s personality until after his passing – we simply liked the cadence of it.  I’m just glad that every time Kekoa Crawford suits up in the unmistakable #1 jersey I’ll pause to remember one of the greatest guys I’ve had the fortune of knowing.

We’re doing a fundraiser in NYC on June 12^th in Andy’s honor to raise money for the Making Headway foundation, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to the care, comfort and cure of children with brain and spinal cord tumors.  If you would like to learn more or contribute, please visit the link below.  Any support from the MGoCommunity would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.crowdrise.com/zachmarshall1-RaceForACE