In one of the most emotionally significant episodes of Be Valiant, Todd Merkow sits down with Mark Hilinski — co-founder, with his wife Kim, of Hilinski's Hope, a foundation dedicated to mental health education, awareness, and suicide prevention for student athletes. Mark and Kim lost their son Tyler in January 2018. Tyler Hilinski was a 21-year-old quarterback at Washington State University, beloved by teammates, coaches, and everyone who knew him. He died by suicide. Months later, the family learned that Tyler had been diagnosed with CTE — chronic traumatic encephalopathy — at Stage 1. He was 21 years old.

Todd opens the episode by acknowledging what he says plainly: he wishes he had never had a reason to meet Mark Hilinski. The two connected through a TrueSport webinar and spoke within 48 hours. The conversation that followed was, in Todd's words, energizing in the most complicated possible way. This episode is the result.

Mark begins where every conversation about Tyler begins — with the beginning. He and Kim raised three boys in Southern California: Kelly, Tyler, and Ryan. All three were tall, athletic, and multi-sport. Mark was six-five; Kim was five-ten. They had the kind of household where sports were a constant, joyful presence — Little League fields within walking distance, soft toss in the evenings, Pop Warner and Junior All-American football boards, snack bar hours, team photos. Mark describes those early years with genuine warmth. They were involved, enthusiastic, and, like most sports families of that era, completely unaware of where the outer limit was. There wasn't one. You just kept going.

Tyler was the middle child — a B-type personality in a world that rewards A-types. He had a goofy, irreducible grin. He was the kid who would throw rocks at a tree with you just because you asked. He loved practicing more than playing. He was the first one at the door, shoes on, ready to go. His teammates called him Mr. Happy. He was everybody's best friend, and everybody meant it. He kept track of things — a teammate's aunt's surgery, a friend's bad week — and followed up weeks later. He was so good at talking about other people that nobody ever had to talk about him. That, Mark says quietly, is part of what made it so hard to see what was coming.

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Tyler was so good at talking about you. He never had to talk about himself. Nobody sort of knew him. He was always helping them. And they were all surprised — not only that he was struggling, but that he was gone.

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Tyler's recruiting journey was not a straight line. He was turned down more than he was offered. He took it in stride, never wavered, never said much about it. When Washington State offered him, he had a 45-minute conversation with Coach Mike Leach that Mark describes as a riot. Later, Tyler came to Mark and said he was thinking about de-committing and going to Cal. They talked for 20 minutes. Tyler talked himself out of it. He said: I just had to do that process with you, Dad. I want to stay at WSU. That was Tyler — deliberate, internal, needing to work things through before he could say them out loud.

Two weeks before Tyler died, he texted his girlfriend Sophie and told her he had been having some really dark thoughts. She encouraged him to talk to his parents, to get help. He told her he was already talking to his parents — he was in Cabo with the family at the time — and that he had an appointment with Jerry when he got back to campus. Jerry turned out to be the person who scheduled the team buses. He had nothing to do with mental health. He had met Tyler once, at check-in. Mark has Tyler's phone, his laptop, his iPad. They went through everything. There is nothing. No counselor, no medication, no record of any treatment. No note. Just a kid who was, by every external measure, the happiest person in the room — and who, two weeks before he died, told one person he was struggling, and then told her he was already handling it.

The CTE diagnosis came from the Mayo Clinic, months after Tyler's death. The family was on a road trip visiting college campuses with Ryan, who had 50 scholarship offers and was in the middle of his own recruiting process. They got the call in the car, in the rain, with Ryan in the backseat. Stage 1 CTE. Mark and Kim had to sit with Ryan and tell him what that meant. Kim, an attorney, wanted a clear answer: that's what happened, that's why he died. Mark is more careful. We don't know that, he says. What they do know is that 100 days before Tyler died, he told his brother it was the hardest hit he had ever taken — in a game against Arizona. The linebacker who made the hit eventually reached out to the family to apologize. Mark told him: you were playing football. Please don't carry this. There is research suggesting that Stage 1 CTE in males under 25 manifests suicidal ideation at its peak 100 days from the causative event. Mark does not overstate the science. He just says: that's our answer to what happened to Tyler. Some version of all that soup.

Hilinski's Hope started a few months after Tyler died, with a GoFundMe and the intention to give the money to Washington State so they could hire the mental health staff that should have been there. That plan fell apart quickly. What Mark and Kim discovered in the process was that this wasn't a WSU problem. It was a college problem. A youth suicide problem. A student athlete mental health crisis so deep and so widespread that once they stuck their nose in it, they couldn't pull it back out.

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Let's not let the crisis or that moment be the first time we talk about it. You can start at any age you're comfortable. But remind them — by action, by word, by deed — that any topic is an okay topic to talk to us about.

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The foundation built the Tyler Talk — a presentation Mark and Kim give on college campuses, now delivered more than 400 times at more than 350 schools. They built Game Plan First, a 100-page facilitator guide for coaches and administrators. They built six-part mental health modules developed with clinical partners at UNC Greensboro. And in 2019, Mark wrote a letter to SEC athletic directors proposing Student Athlete Mental Health Week — a seven-day window bookended around International Mental Health Day on October 10. They started with 17 schools. Last year they had more than 300 schools in all 50 states, 170 articles, 550 million impressions, and $6.5 million in advertising equivalency. The University of Alaska Anchorage filled out the 50th state.

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If your gut tells you something's off — don't let that rest until you can rule out that your child is not suffering from a mental health crisis. Don't explain it away.

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The parent education section is the most practically useful part of the episode. Mark is careful to preface everything he says with a reminder that he lost Tyler on his watch — that any advice should be scrutinized before being taken. But what he offers is grounded and specific. Don't wait for the crisis to be the first time you talk about mental health. Start early, at whatever age feels right. Make it clear by word and deed that any topic is an okay topic. Create the regular moments — not the sit-down-in-the-chair intervention, but the organic ones. He tells the story of a father at a Williams-Brice Stadium game who used Student Athlete Mental Health Week's moment of silence to explain to his 10-year-old daughter who Tyler was, what happened, and why it mattered. That dad manufactured a moment. Mark says: we can all do that.

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One thing college athletes tell me they wish their parents understood better: I'm different than I was when I was 10.

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His most direct advice is about following your gut — and not letting it rest. He describes the signals he noticed in retrospect with Tyler: fewer words in texts, shorter phone calls, conversations that were all about the weather. He and Kim noticed something was off. They explained it away. He says: don't explain it away. If your gut tells you something is wrong, keep having the conversation. If it turns out to be nothing, you've had a good conversation. If it turns out to be something, you may have saved your child's life.

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Being valiant, to me, is being transparent when it can help others. This will not be easy. But expect it to be wonderful.

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The rapid-fire closing is among the most moving in the series. Best part of being a sports dad: seeing my kids smile. What made each boy unique as an athlete — Kelly: smart. Tyler: SportsCenter. Ryan: arm velocity. Best Hilinski household sports moment: Tyler, down 21 with six minutes left against Boise State, kicked in by Coach Leach with the instruction don't throw it to the other team — and winning in triple overtime. One question he wishes every parent asked their kid more often: tell me what makes you happy. One thing college athletes tell him they wish their parents understood better: I'm different than I was when I was 10. A small habit parents can start this week: talk to them about something other than the sport they're playing. What gives him hope when he looks into the eyes of student athletes on campuses across the country: they look like Tyler. They look like little kids trying to figure it out. They just happen to be playing a sport for our entertainment.

His definition of being Valiant: being transparent when it can help others. He describes the word itself as physical — standing in a headwind, whatever may come. Being valiant in this context, he says, means knowing it won't be easy, but knowing it will be wonderful. If you can establish that talking about mental health is an everyday thing — totally okay, totally normal — you are doing something magical for your kids.

His final words: suicide is preventable. I see the change. We've come some ways. We've got a long way to go. But I remain hopeful.

*If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. To learn more about Hilinski's Hope, visit hilinskishope.org.*