10 HOPE Golf Tournaments — The Story Started in a Boise State Classroom
This coming weekend, we'll celebrate the 10th HOPE Golf Tournament and 15 years of The Speedy Foundation. But 10 tournaments doesn't mean 10 straight years.
Like so much of The Speedy Foundation's story, this event has taken a winding path. It's disappeared and come back, changed courses, survived a pandemic, welcomed new partners, sold out—and somehow became a tradition along the way.
And its story actually started in a Boise State classroom.
Before there was a golf tournament...
In 2011, shortly after we lost Speedy, a Boise State communications class led by professor Sam Harmer and teaching assistant Erin Mollerup, a friend of Speedy’s and future Foundation board member, took on The Speedy Foundation as a class project. One of their ideas became the HOPE Golf Tournament with central theme that Heroes Open Peoples Eyes, everyday people can notice, care, and act.
The connection feels especially meaningful today. Sam, a beloved member of the Boise State community who understood the weight of depression firsthand, lost his battle with depression in 2017. What began as a classroom idea has become a tradition still carrying hope—and Speedy’s legacy—15 years later.
The first tournament: 2012
We had some amazing in-kind design work from Laura Lothrop who created a golf logo for the inaugural HOPE Golf Tournament which was held at Banbury Golf Course on July 28, 2012, just one year after we lost Speedy. It was as much a Celebration of Life as it was a fundraiser.
People came together to golf, tell Speedy stories, laugh, remember him, and raise money for suicide prevention. A portion of the proceeds supported Idaho's Suicide Prevention Hotline, which had just launched to serve Idahoans with crisis needs. This was one of the very first fundraisers that helped this very young Speedy Foundation begin its work in suicide awareness and prevention. And then?
We didn't hold another tournament for six years.
Golf came back in 2018.
The second HOPE Golf Tournament was held at Warm Springs Golf Course in April 2018, because Speedy’s good pal Jake Tucker stepped up and made it happen. He took us to Warm Springs where Golf Pro Johnny Russell enters the story. Johnny has helped The Speedy Crew navigate golfing ever since.
This ongoing event began bringing people together around suicide prevention, mental health education, and conversations that reduce stigma year after year. Then the world changed.
2020 & 2021: Our "Tournament Mulligan Due to COVID"
COVID gave the in-person tournament a pause—but those years still count in our history. We went virtual, with Shannon Decker leading our COVID-era activities in 2020 and 2021. Eventually golf came back.
In 2022, Christian Armbruster led the 6th HOPE Golf Tournament. Then Cooper Dill took over in 2023, when something happened for the first time in tournament history: We SOLD OUT.
In 2024, Will Sowers led the tournament as we moved to Quail Hollow while Warm Springs was under construction—and we sold out again. In 2025, Kat Hedstrom took the lead as we returned to Warm Springs for tournament number nine. And this year, for number ten, Shannon Decker is back in the tournament-director seat for a more scaled back event.
there's one award where silver really is special.
Most golf tournaments focus on the champions. We do too—but at HOPE Golf, second place has always meant something different. Speedy won the silver medal in men's aerials at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. So we keep a perpetual second-place plaque, adding the names of our silver-medal foursome each year. It's a small tradition, but one that feels particularly Speedy. Every year, another group gets its name added to the silver plaque and becomes part of the history of this event.
And now we're at TEN.
This coming Saturday, we'll gather at Warm Springs again for the 10th HOPE Golf Tournament, presented with ATO at Boise State.
Think about that for a minute. 10 tournaments over 15 years. Not a straight line.
A Boise State class project.
Banbury.
A six-year break.
Warm Springs.
Johnny Russell.
COVID.
Virtual events.
Another restart.
ATO.
Quail Hollow.
Back-to-back sellouts.
Tournament directors passing the torch.
Warm Springs’ New Clubhouse & redsigned course.
Hundreds of golfers.
Students and volunteers.
Sponsors and donors.
Ridiculous team names.
Golf socks.
Mulligans.
Raffle tickets.
Long drives.
Very short putts that somehow still didn't go in.
Burgers.
A perpetual silver plaque.
And a whole lot of people who continued showing up because they believe suicide is preventable.
This year feels especially meaningful.
The night before golf, we'll gather at Payette Brewing for Legacy of Hope, celebrating 15 years of The Speedy Foundation and the people who have made this work possible. Professional Skier and Suicide Prevention Advocate, Drew Petersen, will join us as our keynote speaker, and Smooth Old Fashioned High will reunite for the occasion. It feels like the right weekend to look backward before we look forward. Because when we think about that Boise State classroom in 2011, no one could have predicted what The Speedy Foundation—or that class project—would become.
We should recognize why we were doing it.
We wanted to remember the legacy of our friend Speedy.
We wanted people to talk directly about suicide and how to prevent it.
We wanted to create connection.
And we wanted to do something that might help the next person stay.
Fifteen years later, that's still why we're here.
To the students in that first Boise State class, to each tournament director, and every ATO member who has helped carry this event forward; to every golfer who has played a round; every sponsor and donor; every volunteer who arrived early or stayed late; and every friend and family member who has continued showing up: Thank you!
You helped turn a classroom idea into a golf tournament.
A golf tournament into a tradition.
And that tradition into one more way of carrying Speedy's legacy forward.
Here's to 10 tournaments, 15 years, and all of the people who have helped us keep choosing hope.
With so much gratitude,
The Speedy Crew
Silver Linings & Long Drives:
Lisa Brown: Women's Longest Drive three years running—2023, 2024 and 2025—plus a bronze team finish in 2025.
Ben Newton & Andy Riden: back-to-back champions in 2022 and 2023; Ben had already taken silver in 2018.
Tyler Neill: silver in the inaugural 2012 tournament → bronze with Trippin' Balls in 2024 → champion in 2025.
Trippin' Balls: Tyler Neill, Tony Hunt, Kevin Conner and Kevin Jay went from 3rd in 2024 to 1st in 2025, shooting 59. Kevin Conner also won Men's Closest to the Pin in 2025.
Justin & Gavin Lee: silver in 2023, then returned with Todd and Jake Kuala as Lee/Kuala and took silver again in 2024. Justin also won Men's Longest Drive that year.
Holt Haga & Colter Kamo: bronze at the inaugural tournament in 2012 → champions together in 2019. Holt also won the inaugural Men's Longest Drive.
Putt Pirates: Thomas Jeffrey, Leslie Topliff, Larry Cornelius and Victor Hernandez won the 2024 tournament at Quail Hollow during the second consecutive sellout.
Before HOPE Was a Tournament, It Was a Call to Action: Be the Hero
The original Boise State PR Campaign class built HOPE around a simple idea: heroes aren’t extraordinary people—they’re the everyday people who notice, care, and act.
The campaign moved through examples of everyday heroes—a mom who never stops believing, a teacher who encourages, a friend who stands by you, a neighbor who remembers trash day, even a barista who remembers your order—before connecting that idea to Speedy. The students described Speedy as a hero whose death helped “open our eyes” to the reality of suicide in Idaho.
They then turned HOPE into an action-oriented acronym:
H — Heroes
O — Open
P — People’s
E — Eyes
The message wasn’t that someone needed to be an expert to prevent suicide. It was that each of us can be someone’s hero by noticing when another person is struggling, reaching out, and making the call that connects them to help. The campaign closed with the call to action:
Reach out to someone. Make the call. Be the Hero.
That gives the original HOPE Golf Tournament a deeper meaning than simply using “hope” as an uplifting event name. The Boise State students were pitching an event—and really a movement—built around the belief that heroes are all around us, and ordinary people can help another person find hope when they can’t see it for themselves.
For the 10th tournament retrospective, I especially like bringing back “Heroes Open People’s Eyes” because it shows that the mission embedded in the very first concept is remarkably close to what The Speedy Foundation is still doing 15 years later.