For Colby: How Notre Dame DE Bryce Young dedicated the 2025 season to his late brother

When Bryce Young got up after his first sack of the 2025 season, he made sure to make the moment count.

Young ran upfield, screamed and swung his hands downward like a lumberjack chopping wood. The sack happened in the third quarter of a blowout, with the Irish leading Purdue 49-23, but that didn’t matter. Enthusiasm is a big part of what makes Young, a sophomore defensive end at Notre Dame, tick on the football field. 

That’s something he learned from his older brother, Colby.

“He taught me how to have fun,” Young told Blue & Gold Illustrated. “Just having that enthusiasm, no matter how good, how bad it gets.”

Young also got his competitive side from Colby. They would get into the standard brotherly spats at home — over video games, food, who showered first — but outside the house, they were inseparable. Young said he took on his older brother’s passion for football, too.

That passion was one of many things stripped away from Bryce and the Young family on Oct. 11, 2016.

On that day, Colby Young, the eldest son of former Notre Dame defensive lineman Bryant Young and former Notre Dame track star Kristin Young, passed away from brain cancer at the age of 15. Bryce was 10 years old at the time. It’s something he’s still processing, nearly a decade since suffering an unimaginable loss.

“He’s on my mind every day,” Young said. “There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about him.”

This year, though, Young began to share his brother’s story publicly. He did so both on his own social media platforms and through the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, a leading funder of pediatric brain cancer research, advocacy and family support. His mom is a PBTF board member, while dad is an ambassador. But in 2025, Young decided now was the time to get involved.

In his words, Bryce Young played for Colby this season. And the impact that came with honoring his brother’s legacy stretched well beyond Notre Dame Stadium.

“I get the amazing opportunity to be able to connect with people who have gone through the same thing,” Young said. “I think that helps me process it, to be able to share my story.”

Awareness and hope

In the fall of 2014, Colby Young was diagnosed with a brain tumor about the size of a golf ball. For eight-year-old Bryce, it was a surreal feeling.

“It’s hard to put into words,” Young said. “But like anything, we stuck together. I love my family, and I think it made it stronger.”

Colby battled cancer for two years, and during that time — according to a 2017 ESPN story — he raised more than $50,000 for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. All the while, Bryce Young remembers, he was still the Colby he always knew.

“Just the way he approached things with enthusiasm, no matter how he was feeling,” Young said. “He was committed, you know, just that enthusiastic, fun-spirited kid. You couldn’t change that about him with whatever you threw his way. And that was something super inspiring.”

Young has always wanted to help tell Colby’s story, and this season, he believed he had enough of a platform (as an established contributor for Notre Dame) to do that effectively. He partnered with PBTF to launch “Go Gold,” an initiative designed to raise awareness for pediatric brain tumors. 

That alone, PBTF believes, can make a huge difference. According to PBTF chief development officer Alyson Levine, pediatric brain tumors are the deadliest form of childhood cancer but receive the least funding.

“While yes, it is absolutely letting people know they’re not alone and making sure they know we are here for them as a resource, but it’s also just elevating that awareness across the board now in terms of what needs to happen,” Levine told BGI. 

On his Instagram page, Young posted two photos of himself with Colby and one video interview he did with PBTF campaign manager Madison Kaufman. The first, which he posted shortly before the season began, read:

“I carry my brother with me on every field I step on. He’s the reason I fight, the reason I train, the reason I’m proud to support the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. I lost my brother to a brain tumor — but I still haven’t lost the drive to make a difference for kids still fighting. This season, I’m playing for Colby.”

In addition to spreading awareness, Young’s campaign is intended to reach other families with children who were suffering or had passed away from pediatric brain tumors.

Kaufman told BGI about a mom at a PBTF bereavement group whose son watched a Notre Dame game and heard the broadcast talk about Young and redshirt freshman quarterback CJ Carr, who lost his little brother Chad to a rare brain tumor called DIPG in 2015. The boy, who had also lost his younger brother, turned to his mom and said, “That could be me one day.”

“I think it provides hope, and it provides people a sense of togetherness that they’re not alone in the journey that they have walked,” Kaufman said. “And that’s something that Bryce has shared too.

“That is something that has provided this sense of, ‘Oh my goodness, this is making a difference.’”

Speaking Colby’s name

As Notre Dame boarded its buses outside Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Mass., a young Boston College fan ventured behind enemy lines to meet Young.

This fan, whose family did not wish to provide his name, is currently in treatment for a brain tumor but is in stable condition. His family reached out to PBTF to see if he could meet Young after the game — a 25-10 Irish victory — and Young said, “Absolutely.”

“Not only that, but after the game, he checked in with me and said, ‘Hey, was he able to make it through the whole thing?’” Kaufman said.

The interaction was short, but Young made it worth it.

“Bryce was incredibly patient,” Kaufman said. “He just really welcomed their family and actually thanked them for coming to support him, which just exemplifies exactly what his whole heart behind it is.”

Young has done similar things in South Bend, visiting sick children in hospitals and through Ronald McDonald House. Kaufman said Young has a “big heart” for meeting kids and their families, particularly given that he was in their shoes nearly a decade ago.

“I think it just gives me the tools, I guess,” Young said. “I don’t know if that’s the right word to use, but I know how it feels for the parents, for the kids, just to have somebody that you love going through something so hard. So I think just that compassion aspect of it, I’m grateful for that.”

Each interaction is bittersweet for Young, who has to relive what happened to Colby and his family every time he talks to a patient, posts on Instagram or films a video with Kaufman for PBTF’s website.

It was particularly painful for Colby, Bryce Young recalled, that one of the first things he was told after being diagnosed was he couldn’t play football again (doctors believed the treatments would weaken him too much). When Young meets a kid in the same situation, that’s what gets him the most.

“I know kids out there who, sport is their greatest thing that they have, and to be told you can’t play football again, that’s tough,” Young said.

To constantly put himself in situations that remind him of what Colby went through, Levine explained, is an example of Young’s strength and kindness.

“It just will always be there for him,” Levine said. “And that’s a lot, on top of the workload, on top of going onto the field. To choose to do that intentionally, just shows the type of person he is.”

But for Young, keeping Colby’s memory alive is also the point. It’s something he and his family have tried to do since he passed, most notably at Bryant Young’s NFL Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Bryant Young said when he spent the final months of his life in hospice care, Colby asked his parents if he would be remembered. They told him he would, and they kept that promise.

“Colby,” a choked-up Young said at his Hall-of-Fame speech. “You live on in our hearts. We will always speak your name.”

When Bryce Young talks about Colby, he does so with a smile on his face. Through the pain of losing his brother, Young knows he’s honoring what Colby stood for by making an impact.

“That’s something that’s super important to me,” Young said. “I think beyond anything, how you work in your community and how God works through you is most important, no matter what I do on the field.”

Photo of Bryce and Colby at the 49ers game courtesy of the Young family; photo of Bryce with the patient and his father courtesy of PBTF.