- March 28, 2024
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When Rollins lacrosse team captain Will Hauver was nominated to do the ALS bucket challenge last fall, he decided his video needed a twist. Instead of dumping ice water onto his head, he filmed himself cracking a raw egg on his forehead to spread awareness of diabetes.
“I'm gonna change the game up – I'm gonna get outta your cookie cutter world,” Will said in the video after pulling out his wallet and pledging to donate all that was in it. He jokingly bantered about ALS stealing the show on social media.
See Will's video and get inspired to make one of your own!
Visit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's tribute to donate to fight diabetes in Will's name. And check out his mom's twitter feed to see videos that are taking #eggcrackchallenge viral!
But a month after the athletic lacrosse player’s sudden death from Type I diabetes in February, Will’s joke is now a charity movement of its own.
Diabetes was a very real problem for Will, who had dealt with it since he was a child. But that challenge didn’t faze him as he grew up, with Will making easy friends with his cheerful personality.
“He's the happiest, sweetest guy you would meet,” friend Paige Kennedy said. “He definitely touched a lot of hearts in our community.”
Kennedy, who first met Will at the McDonough School in Maryland, has pooled efforts with mutual friends to turn the Egg Crack Challenge into a reality under the name “LIVEabetes” – Will's take on the word.
Kennedy reminisced about Will’s youthful spontaneity when they dated in high school. One warm summer afternoon, walking dogs through the woods and toward a river, Will had an idea. “Trust me, you'll enjoy this,” was all he told her before suddenly jumping into the river with the dogs. It wasn't long before she followed suit.
More egg-crackers are already diving into Will’s new challenge. As of Tuesday, Will's memorial fundraiser under the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) had received more than $35,000.
“I know he's laughing at everyone cracking eggs on them – that's just the kind of thing he would do,” said Will's mother Lyndall Hauver. One week before his passing, Will gifted his mother a picture of him and his brother and sister that he had made into a jigsaw puzzle for her birthday.
“He made everybody feel at ease,” Lyndall said. “He just had a very gentle kindness about him, he could say something funny that could break the ice. He was funny, smart. He used his charm … just to make people feel at home.”
Will’s Egg Crack Challenge video is only a window into his witty, creative character. His quirkiness left its mark not just in his friends’ and family's memories, but literally on their furniture and walls. Everywhere he went he would leave a doodle behind – from brazen cartoons drawn in sharpie on coasters to simple doodles in his notebook. He once drew a caricature of his friend and lacrosse co-captain Connor Ronan onto the kitchen counter; decoratively hammered bottle caps into a unique design on a pool table; and asked the neighbors for the stump of their tree that was going to be cut down, and made it into a stool.
It wasn't unusual for his roommates to walk into the house and hear him singing a Bob Dylan song at the top of his lungs, or jokingly yelling at them to get off the couch after a strenuous, demanding morning of lacrosse practice.
Will's lacrosse teammate Billy Pray said he misses his friend's eccentric and caring nature.
“It was just the times when I was with him that I kind of let out as a complete child,” Pray said. “You could say whatever you want…and it didn't matter, because he had so much character. He was different in a way, and he had this weird, funny streak to him. I could act like myself and like child in a way, not really having any worries in the world.”
David Adler, Will's friend from McDonough, remembered when Will would prance into his room, put on Adler's clothes and impersonate him by talking and acting like him. Adler said Will's energetic disposition even made his friends forget he had diabetes in the first place.
“I never had to say I wasn't in a good mood; he would pinpoint that mood and try to make me feel better,” Adler said.
Will’s mom hopes the Egg Crack Challenge will continue to spread that cheer and help raise funds for the research foundation.
“Get cracking,” Lyndall said. “Let's get this thing viral and raise a lot of money for the JDRF to, as they say, turn 'type 1' into 'type none.'”