Hunter Redden

Hi, my name is Hunter Redden and this is my third year participating in the October Saves Goalie Challenge. I will be making saves for a new team this season, the Minuteman Flames (2014 White) EHF Gold division team, and have set the bar higher this year for my own personal development as well as for my fundraising efforts. Last year I was able to raise over $6,500 for this incredible initiative, and I don’t want to stop there. This season I set my personal goal at $7,500 for this incredibly important fundraising opportunity, that has even more meaning for me this year. With overwhelming support I was able to achieve my initial goal of $7,500 only halfway through the fundraising campaign, so I set the bar even higher to $10,000.

I initially chose to become part of the October Saves family in 2024 to raise important cancer research funding to help make a difference in honor of my close friend and hockey teammate Seppe Struppa, who lost his 13-month battle with a DMG brain tumor in October 2024. I saw his family navigate treatments and clinical trials to extend his life for as long as possible before he gained his wings. I continue to participate in his honor.

Since then, my mother Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring of 2024 and my stepmother Lindsay was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in the fall of 2024, and this amplified my desire to participate even more. October Saves gives me the opportunity to make every save count. Each and every save I made last season helped raise important funding to continue ever important research for new treatments for these terrible diseases.

My mom is currently stable and thankfully doing well after months of intensive chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery last year, but she still needs close monitoring to make sure her cancer doesn’t return. My stepmom’s diagnosis has been hard for me to process because pancreatic cancer has an incredibly low survival rate. Over the past year and a half I have seen her go through aggressive chemotherapy and radiation treatments, but unfortunately her tumor didn’t respond to treatments like we hoped it would. Her tumor is intertwined around multiple blood vessels that make it impossible to be surgically removed. My stepmom has recently started a clinical trial medication with hopes that it will extend her survival while giving her a better quality of life, but unfortunately she has had a lot of complications recently and has spent almost the entire month of August in the hospital.

The funding that is raised through the October Saves is so important for people like my mom and stepmom in order to develop early detection methods, to make advancements to cancer treatments, and to extend life beyond diagnosis for as long as possible. Both my mom and stepmom have undergone treatments through Dana-Farber and October Saves is a big financial supporter of Dana-Farber through the goalie challenge initiative.

As a 12-year-old boy who loves both my mom and stepmom fiercely, I want both of them in my life for as long as possible. Thank you for taking the time to read my story and have a better understanding as to why the October Saves initiative is so important to me. If you can find it in your heart or within your means to donate to my page, it would mean a lot to me.  No matter how big or how small your donation, every dollar for cancer research counts!