In the weeks leading up to the 2018 edition of Smashfest, Dominic Moore had the opportunity to speak with NBC Sports about the origins of Smashfest, why ping-pong plays such a big role, and explore the causes being funded.
Not everyone knows this, ping-pong is a big pre-game ritual for many NHL players. Its fun and competitive nature lends itself well to showcasing player personalities in a charity tournament. Moore always wanted Smashfest to be different than a charity gold tournament. He wanted Smashfest to be fun, quirky, and unique. Moore says: “…you put a table in the middle of the locker room and it’s something fun and competitive that the guys can do. It can help them warm up. It just seems like it fits. I had the idea. This is the perfect thing for a charity event.”
In the years since Smashfest began, over $665,000 have been raised for concussion and rare cancer research. A portion of these funds go the the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Moore identified the Broad as an opportunity to fund a project that would cut across specific rare cancers and have an impact.
“Especially with cancer research, it seems like it’s easy for money to become a drop in the bucket because it takes so much money to do the research,” he said. “And obviously in the cancer space there’s a lot of money that’s put into this research. But for rare cancers, because of the fact that there isn’t a lot of funds behind it, I felt like it was so important to spend our money wisely.”
This open source project is collecting tissue direct form patients to enable researches and all data is available to further spur research developments.
Source: NBC Sports