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Over the years, the faces have shifted from familiar to unrecognized, the hugs and handshakes given out first to friends and now to strangers. For Todd Walker’s family, greeting the recipients of the – named in honor of the UNH football player who was killed protecting a friend during a robbery attempt in 2011 – every spring has provided a vivid and tangible illustration of the passage of time.

Equally as vivid, though, is the fact that the reaction of the recipients has largely remained unchanged – authentic emotion and true gratitude for being mentioned alongside Todd. The familiarity with those being recognized may have faded over the years, but the impact of the honor has not.

Those first recipients of the annual UNH football award, established to recognize a player who exhibits and were Todd’s teammates and close friends, people the Walkers had shared experiences – and grief – with. Now, when Todd’s parents, Mark and Pam, return each spring for the ceremony to announce the new honoree, they are connecting with athletes who hadn’t started kindergarten when Todd was killed.

That those players still grasp the gravity of the award tells them everything they need to know about their son’s legacy.

“It’s sort of surreal when you stand there because the first couple of years, we knew all the players. Now, we’re looking at guys that were about four years old when Todd died,” Mark Walker says. “But you can tell that the coaches have made the award something different than most valuable player or most improved. To make it the teammate award really sums up what Todd was all about – bringing people together, not being judgmental, being a great teammate – and it’s so great to watch these kids get the award. We get to give them a hug and shake their hand, and a lot of them will get a little emotional, and they never even knew Todd.”

Mark and Pam Walker were on hand again this year for the ceremony during UNH’s annual spring football game, as they have been every year since the award was established (with the exception of one year when COVID prompted the ceremony’s cancelation), as senior tight end Drew Danson was named the 2026 recipient. Also speaking at the ceremony was Andy Vailas, one of Todd's best friends on the team (you can watch the full presentation in the embedded video).

The award was established by then-UNH football coach Sean McDonnell shortly after Todd’s death in 2011. Walker was a sophomore at UNH at the time, and was home in Colorado for spring break when, while walking friend Ellie Roach home from a party, an attempted robbery turned violent and Walker was shot while protecting Roach.

UNH football coach Sean Goldrich holds Todd Walker's jersey during the Todd Walker Teammate Award presentation this spring.

Roach has accompanied Mark and Pam Walker to many of the ceremonies for the award at UNH, and though it can feel bittersweet that the current players didn’t get to know Todd, it’s clear that the honor embodies some of the characteristics she remembers most fondly about him.

“Todd was such a great person, a great friend and teammate, and the fact that the university wanted to do this as an honor in his memory is really incredible,” Roach says. “Todd had this energy about him that was so magnetic. He made you feel like you were the only person that mattered.”

The relationship between Roach and the Walkers has been a special one, one that everyone involved credits for helping them get through the darkest times. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Roach was worried Mark and Pam might blame her for what happened, but they instead welcomed her as essentially an adopted Walker.

“Things can go one way or the other in these situations, but we have a relationship as though she’s a part of our family,” Mark Walker says. “It felt so counterintuitive to us that she thought we would maybe think it was her fault, but we set that straight right from the beginning and picked her up and gave her a big hug.”

“My relationship with Mark and Pam grew because they allowed it to grow,” Roach says. “I think us coming together and them welcoming me in with open arms helped all of us heal.”

The Todd Walker Teammate Award played a role in that healing for his family, as well, along with several other ventures the Walkers undertook to carry Todd’s legacy forward. Mark Walker is quick to credit McDonnell for establishing the honor and instilling its significance within the UNH football program, as well as for ensuring that it carried on after he stepped down as coach, first with his successor Rick Santos and then with current UNH coach, Sean Goldrich.

Beyond the UNH award, the Walker family also raised several hundred thousand dollars for the Make-A-Wish foundation through an annual event held for seven years in Chicago, where Todd spent a postgraduate year at Lake Forest Academy before enrolling at UNH, drawing as many as 500 people to the gala during the peak of its run.

They also established a scholarship in Todd’s honor at his high school, Battle Mountain High School in Colorado, that provides funds for students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to participate in athletics. 

All of those elements in totality have served to cement Todd’s legacy in exactly the ways his parents set out to.

“My wife and I, from the day this happened, we wanted to celebrate Todd’s life with a living memorial, things that celebrated the life he led and things that can impact other people’s lives,” Mark Walker says. “You can go to a dark place when something like that happens, but from Make-A-Wish, from the high school students we’ve been able to help, from the UNH students who receive the teammate award, all of those things sort of help mask how dark it really was. It’s been our therapy.”

“They continued to live the way he would have wanted them to,” Roach says of Todd’s parents. “I think we all did. Some days are really hard, but those hard days are farther away from each other than they used to be.”

Interestingly enough, Roach, who is from Colorado and had no connection to UNH prior to meeting Todd, recently moved to New Hampshire with her husband, Dan Thompson, and is now less than 30 minutes from the university. It’s been an interesting experience to be so close to campus.

“It’s all a little nostalgic,” she admits. “I didn’t realize how physically close I would be to UNH. I meet people every day who went there. It wasn’t planned by any means, but it’s wild to be here completely by accident.”

It may lead to more reunions with the Walkers, who plan to continue returning every spring for the award ceremony for as long as they’re able. Even though the students they are greeting now never had the chance to interact with Todd, the teammate award ensures that they’ll always be able to appreciate who he was.

“We’re four years away from a group of freshmen standing there that weren’t born when this happened. A lot of the current players don’t even know who Todd Walker is until the award makes it important for them,” Mark Walker says. “That’s the kind of stuff we didn’t really dream would happen. So, for as long as we are going to be standing on this Earth, we’ll be going to UNH and watching another kid win the award.”