When former Northwestern defensive lineman Aidan Hubbard traveled to Indianapolis for the 2026 NFL Combine, he — like a growing constituent of his peers — opted not to participate in many of the on-field drills. Hubbard’s quiet day appeared to be part of a growing trend, as no event saw more than 60% participation from the defensive end class.
So when NFL Network’s broadcast of the defensive lineman and linebacker drills from that Thursday evening came and went without the name “Aidan Hubbard” appearing once on the on-screen graphics, one could be forgiven for thinking the Wildcats’ sole defensive representative wouldn’t compete in the events at all.
Checking the NFL’s website the following afternoon would yield a different conclusion, though.
With the cameras turned off bright and early on Friday morning, Hubbard took center stage for the first and only time at Lucas Oil Stadium. Tucked away in a corner of the near-empty facility’s field, NU’s sack leaders from this past season pumped some iron, churning out 21 reps of 225 lbs at the bench press.
For Hubbard, the decision to participate in the bench press, specifically, meant more than just putting his strength on display for teams to see. Rather than being influenced by the uncertainty of the future — on how his final count may impact his draft stock and standing with his potential employers — Hubbard took inspiration from his past and from his time in Evanston.
Partnering with Uplifting Athletes, a nonprofit focused on increasing awareness of rare diseases through its platform in college athletics, Hubbard joined the Reps for Rare Diseases campaign for 2026. Donors could pledge to the nonprofit’s cause for each rep he tallied during his turn on the bench in Indianapolis.
“Ever since I’ve been at Northwestern, we’ve been partnered up with Uplifting Athletes,” Hubbard told The Daily during his media availability at the combine. “We’ve done Reps for Rare Diseases — the 225 (lb) bench test. My teammate, (former NU defensive back) Garner Wallace, reached out to me with the opportunity to do it again for the combine and Pro Day. I couldn’t turn that down, it’s just an awesome cause.”
The cause has been close to the heart of the ’Cats community for a decade and a half, starting when NU partnered with Uplifting Athletes in 2011. But from its inception, the organization has been fundamentally intertwined with Big Ten football.
The cause
While founder Scott Shirley was playing wide receiver at Penn State in 2002, his father was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Shirley found support from his teammates, and together they worked to build a platform that could provide help for others.
Since then, Uplifting Athletes has worked within collegiate and professional athletics to use sports as a way to build community and both support and spread awareness for the one in 10 Americans who will be diagnosed with a rare disease — any of the more than 10,000 that affect less than 200,000 people within the U.S. at any given time.
Hubbard had previous exposure at NU to Uplifting Athletes through the two organizations’ annual Lift For Life partnership, the nonprofit’s signature awareness and fundraising event held by student-athlete leaders across its 31 active university chapters.
His teammate and catalyst for his participation in the Reps for Rare Diseases campaign at the combine, Garner Wallace, was a chapter leader for the past four years, serving as a primary point person for all of NU’s events with the organization.
“They’ve really gone above and beyond, as chapter leaders and leading their team to be able to accomplish what they have over the past few years,” Chapter Success Manager Andrea Baker said of the ’Cats’ student leadership with the organization.
Baker liaises with chapter leaders — like Wallace and his co-chapter leader, former NU defensive lineman Najee Story — at schools across the country to help them organize events within their communities.
Some of those, such as the Lift For Life and Reps for Rare Diseases campaigns, are large fundraising efforts. Others, in the form of Uplifting Experiences, intend to make a more direct and intimate impact on the community by giving families an opportunity to connect with student-athlete representatives in a more casual setting and enjoy their time together.
“This is a place where they can feel safe, and feel seen, and feel cared for and feel like they don’t have to explain themselves,” said James Hook, the Development Coordinator at Uplifting Athletes at the time. “We want this to be a place where they can just be themselves, and they can go to a soccer game, or they can go to a football practice or they can go to a bowling alley, and they don’t have to worry about things that nobody else is thinking about.”
Hook grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, and attended some of the first Lift For Life events held at Penn State as a kid during the summer. Like Story and Wallace, he played college ball, and he also interned with Uplifting Athletes as a student-athlete at the University of Buffalo.
He eventually transitioned into a full-time position with the organization, coordinating Uplifting Experiences and later moving into a development role where he interacted with NU’s chapter leaders through its latest Reps for Rare Disease campaign.
“That’s just been a pleasure,” Hook told The Daily on working with the ’Cats’ chapter leaders. “They’re amazing guys. They’re super responsive, and they really care. And you can tell they care a lot through what they do and like all the initiatives that they do.”
With some help from Hook and Baker, Story and Wallace hosted many additional Uplifting Experiences during their time in Evanston and engaged with the community beyond coordinating fundraising efforts, like a bowling outing in 2024 that connected some of their teammates and families within the rare disease community.
Wallace explained that events like these, and other opportunities to outreach and connect with the community at large, are crucial for the work that the organization attempts to do.
“Some people only have 10 people with the same disease they have — it isolates the families a lot of times,” Wallace said. “Uplifting Athletes does a great job making those families feel not alone and bringing them alongside other families.”
He told The Daily that before Hubbard made the trip down to Indianapolis, he texted his teammate to remind him of the impact working with Uplifting Athletes had made in a previous Lift for Life. Wallace invited Hubbard to use his platform at the NFL Combine for the Reps for Rare Disease campaign, and he was on board immediately.
One more ride
While Story and Wallace were unable to join Hubbard in Indianapolis, NU’s Pro Day provided an opportunity a few weeks later for them to represent both the ’Cats and the Uplifting Athletes cause together once more on their paths toward the NFL Draft.
In their final opportunity to show out in front of a crowded room of NFL scouts and front office personnel in Evanston, both dedicated their respective turns on the bench to fundraise for rare diseases.
The two put their all into their efforts, with Wallace tallying 19 reps to surpass his goal of 18 set before the event and Story laboring to reach his 24th and final rep.
Combined with Hubbard’s turn in February, the trio received 32 donations in their names, and the $1,350 raised via Story’s Pro Day effort was the second most by any athlete during this year’s Reps for Rare Disease campaign.
For his community service with Uplifting Athletes and three other organizations, Story was named a Big Ten Jackie Robinson Community & Impact Award winner earlier in April, alongside senior first baseman Kansas Robinson from NU’s softball team.
What comes next?
Although Wallace and Story are leaving NU this year in search of professional football opportunities, this doesn’t necessarily signal the end of their involvement with Uplifting Athletes, nor does it mean ending the organization’s relationship with the University.
“We hope that Garner and Najee go on and are a part of (an NFL) team, and then they’re able to host Uplifting Experiences wherever they land,” Baker said.
Following his performance at NU’s Pro Day, Wallace reemphasized his care for the cause and the people in the building. He told The Daily that with Uplifting Athletes’ connection to pro teams, he hopes to continue his engagements with the organization, crediting a trio of his former teammates for helping him initially connect with it.
When Wallace first arrived in Evanston in 2021 alongside Hubbard and Story, the three walked into a locker room with leaders already deeply connected to the cause, among them then sophomore offensive lineman P.J. Spencer, senior long snapper Peter Snodgrass and graduate student defensive lineman Joe Spivak.
Spivak was a member of the Uplifting Athletes Rare Disease Champion Team — meant to recognize student-athletes who had made a “positive and lasting impact on people affected by rare diseases” — the year prior. A few months after Hubbard, Story and Wallace’s arrival, Snodgrass was named to the 2021 team.
Spencer, Snodgrass and Spivak all served as chapter leaders during their time at NU, and their presence helped Wallace later assume the position.
“If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have wanted to join such an amazing organization that’s doing such a great thing,” Wallace said at an Uplifting Athletes event in 2024.
Baker explained that Story and Wallace are currently working on doing the same and transitioning leadership to the next generation of ’Cats.
NU received donations on behalf of 53 of its student-athletes during its 2025 Lift For Life campaign, 33 of whom will return for the ’Cats’ upcoming season.
The impact doesn’t just come from NU’s current athletes, though, as its network of alumni and support staff is also intertwined with the cause.
Spivak, better known by Tank Ledger to some as half of the WWE’s Hank and Tank tag team, uses his platform in pro wrestling to continue working with the cause.
A week before NU’s Pro Day, Spivak hosted an Uplifting Experience for two families connected to HopeKids Inc., bringing them into the ring with him for the afternoon. He also hosted the 2024 and 2025 Young Investigator Drafts, which provide yearly grants to researchers studying rare diseases and the impact they have on communities across the country.
Hook has attended drafts both as a member of the organization and a student-athlete, and explained the importance of both the drafts and Uplifting Athletes’ Researcher Connection Program — which helps cover travel expenses for researchers — at not only raising awareness and funding, but truly bringing the community together.
“We really want to make sure that the forefront is these researchers understanding what this community goes through and what they’re affected by, and what their day-to-day lives are like,” Hook told The Daily, elaborating that knowledge in a vacuum can only go so far.
“We want to make sure that it’s not just something that they get in a lab, but they get it in the real world, and they’re interacting with these patients and these families are getting to see the real impact of their work.”
So far, Uplifting Athletes has awarded more than $1.4 million to researchers through its Young Investigator Drafts, which has led to these researchers receiving over $200 million in supplemental funding from other organizations.
With Spivak as the night’s emcee, Wallace announced the “draft pick” of Dan Kennedy and his research in 2024.
As Wallace took the stage, Spivak noted that NU’s 2023 Lift For Life raised more than $40,000 for rare disease research, the most by any chapter that year. Whether via the high-intensity dap that Spivak gave his former teammate or the words of those working at Uplifting Athletes, he and NU’s contributions have not gone unrecognized or unappreciated.
“When Northwestern is able to talk about what they’ve done, everybody else in the room is impressed by the numbers that they’re able to reach and what they’re able to do, and the impact that they have. They’re definitely a group that people look up to,” Baker said.
Moments like these, however, are not the totality of either NU’s or Uplifting Athletes’ impact on the rare disease community. Raising funds is necessary, but as Wallace, Baker and Hook all emphasized, raising awareness is the single most important thing they can do within the community.
Sometimes, that comes within formal moments, like when Wallace spoke to other chapter leaders on a panel at the organization’s Leadership Development Conference earlier this year about how to make an impact in the community. Other times, it comes in the unstructured ones.
Hook told The Daily about an encounter he and Baker had at a coffee shop while in Philadelphia for the Leadership Development Conference and Young Investigator Draft.
Noticing the branded Uplifting Athletes gear the two were wearing, someone behind the counter asked what the organization was, and when Hook and Baker told them, they said they had a family member who had been impacted by a rare disease. The pair gave them some more information about the nonprofit and encouraged them to reach out. Hook told The Daily that smaller moments of visibility and community engagement, such as that one, are a constant and defining aspect of his work with the organization.
Baker expressed a similar sentiment, explaining that being out and actively engaged in the community is the first and most important step.
“I think sometimes it might seem like it’s so small, but even the small things can be so incredibly impactful. It’s what we choose to do with our time and how you spend it,” she said. “Our goal is to be able to build this community so that people don’t feel so alone. So the more that we have people sharing and talking about what we’re doing, who we’re serving — that’s what’s going to make a difference.”
As the ’Cats’ three NFL hopefuls and two former Uplifting Athletes leaders start a new chapter, they are leaving a campus that is even further connected to the community than when the trio first arrived in 2021.
The future at NU
NU assistant head coach Aristotle Thompson is no stranger to the rare disease community or Uplifting Athletes, dating back to his time coaching at the University of California, Berkeley and California Polytechnic State University.
In 2015, one of his sons, Bryson Thompson, had more than 100 grand mal seizures in a 12-hour period, later being diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy. Bryson’s doctor recommended that he wear a protective helmet, and when he and his brother Brock learned that the cost wasn’t covered by insurance, the two wanted to make sure others would not have to bear that burden alone.
Their initial efforts were boosted by another NU alum, former offensive lineman and current Denver Broncos offensive run game coordinator Zach Strief. A friend of the family, Strief gave the boys a helmet from former New Orleans Saints teammate Drew Brees to auction off and raise money to help other young kids buy helmets of their own.
From there, at six and eight years old, respectively, Bryson and Brock co-founded Helmets4Helmets, a nonprofit organization aiming to spread awareness about epilepsy through sports and support others to cover the costs of protective headgear.
Coach Thompson was honored as a member of the Uplifting Athletes Rare Disease Champions Team in 2022, and he and his family have continued their efforts to help their community while in Evanston.
Standing beside coach David Braun and former NU running back Cam Porter, Bryson spoke in front of the entire ’Cats team following a November practice to tell them about Helmets4Helmets and Epilepsy Awareness Month, handing out wristbands afterwards.
With the team’s Spring Ball session wrapping up a few days ago, the ’Cats focus turns towards their pro prospects, including Hubbard, who signed a contract with the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent Saturday. If the legacy they leave behind is any indication, the team will reconvene this May for its annual Lift For Life campaign, which was held May 30 last year at Ryan Fieldhouse.
“We definitely want the Northwestern community to be paying attention to that and being able to help support them and what they’re trying to do there again … They’ve done some incredible things the last couple years, and have far outraised the goals that we had set for them. So we’re excited to see what they do this year,” Baker said on NU’s upcoming involvement.
She continued that she was grateful for the support she and Uplifting Athletes had received from the staff at NU, and was particularly excited by a new partnership that had recently formed another athletic program.
This past November, NU Volleyball hosted an Uplifting Experience, which Wallace attended alongside his fiancee and ’Cats junior outside hitter Lily Wagner. Baker told The Daily that the volleyball team will also be hosting its own Lift For Life later this summer.
Connections like these continuing to sprout, and later flourish, on campus is representative of both the togetherness fostered by Uplifting Athletes and the broader NU community. Upon reflection, Wallace said that aspect — which he witnessed across different organizations in Evanston — was what he would miss most.
“It’s really the people that set Northwestern apart,” he said.
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