'Avery Strong College Showcase' goes beyond being just a football prospect camp

The "Avery Strong College Showcase" at the University of Puget Sound this Sunday is set to feature more than 500 football players largely from the Northwest who will perform in front of coaches from approximately 30 colleges, from all levels, in attendance.

But at the forefront will be the camp's sponsor - the Avery Huffman DIPG Foundation.

Avery, the daughter of 247Sports.com national recruiting editor Brandon Huffman, was 6 years old in 2015 when she was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a rare tumor of the brainstem that almost exclusively affects children.

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She died a little more than seven months later (at age 7), but her story and fight haven’t stopped having an impact.

“When she was diagnosed, we were given a pretty grim prognosis for her,” Brandon said. “Treatment options were very minimal at that point, and there wasn’t a lot of long-term therapy that could be done. She was given a pretty short shelf life.”

To this day, there is still no known cure for DIPG - and the survival rate is less than 1 percent.

Brandon and Avery’s mother, Amanda, initially joined the fight against DIPG in 2016 as a chapter under the Michael Mosier Defeat DIPG Foundation.

But in late 2020, they created their own self-contained foundation - the Avery Huffman DIPG Foundation, a public charity based on the West Coast.

In a highly-visible role as one of the nation's top football recruiting analysts, Brandon has used his platform to create awareness about his daughter's rare and cruel disease that affects nearly 300 children in the United States per year - and is most common in the 7-to-9-year-old age group.

“She deserves to have her name mentioned. She lost out on so much, so it’s our job and mission to keep sharing her story,” Brandon said. “The fact that I get to marry my career with my passion project and put the two together and see young people benefit from it is pretty remarkable.”

Since 2016, Brandon said a good amount of money the foundation has raised has come from the football landscape through events, tournaments, camps and donors.

The foundation passed the $1 million mark in funds raised in April.

It announced this week donations of $30,000 each to The Vitanza Lab at Seattle Children’s Hospital and The Monje Lab at Stanford University, both of which have used parts and cells of Avery's tumors and/or brain in DIPG research.

“Both have strong ties to Avery and to our family, so that’s been very encouraging that we have been able to see the support be put into action,” Brandon said. “Seattle Children’s is where one of the prominent DIPG research labs in the world is. It was just started last year and they’ve started to treat a number of patients from all over the country.”

Since 2016, Avery's name has officially been associated with 30-plus events nationally, including a pair of 7-on-7 passing tournaments in California - and the 'brAvery Tour" (7-v-7 passing league), organized by former UW quarterback Taylor Barton.

But this weekend's "Avery Strong Showcase" will be the first formal Avery sponsorship event in the "modern mega-camp model" for football, Brandon said. And the family chose the UPS event because it is in Tacoma where she had most of her DPIG tumor treatment.

“There’s a lot of kids that have no idea who Avery is," Brandon said. "They’re going to get an 'Avery Strong' T-shirt and they’re at this thing called a showcase, but there’s much more than that.

"It’s more people that get to hear her story and, hopefully, get inspired by her."

More information on the Avery Huffman DIPG Foundation can be found on its website.

(Featured photo courtesy of Brandon Huffman)