MORGANTOWN – Hit the stopwatch feature on your phone – right now – and keep a keen eye, as the seconds and minutes mount.
Every increment marked, is a life forever lost.
And a family forever changed.
Could be.
That’s because every five minutes in America – that’s every five minutes of every hour of every day – someone dies of a drug overdose.
A son.
A daughter.
A girlfriend or boyfriend.
Somebody’s dad, or that old roommate from college who just always seemed to have it together, no matter what.
“We’re working hard,” Joe Boczek said Wednesday, “because this problem isn’t going away.”
That’s why Boczek, a Morgantown businessman and former West Virginia University sports information director founded GameChanger in 2018.
GameChanger is the drug abuse prevention and awareness program geared to Mountain State youth, and his chief motivator was the state’s overwhelming fentanyl crisis.
For him, it was personal. He watched someone he loves, a close family member, almost die from the throes of addiction.
Over the years, GameChanger has gone onto the field big-time, enlisting the aid of Mountain State luminaries from Nick Saban to Kathy Mattea to help advance the mission.
Boczek, the organization’s executive director, is pleased to report that the program has been able to reach more than 225,000 students, in more than 200 schools across West Virginia and the region.
GameChanger has recently partnered with WVU and Marshall for a “GameChanger University” initiative.
And now, the umbrella is even bigger, Boczek said.
The organization born of the hills and hollows of Ground Zero has just received the Maj. Gen. Arthur T. Dean Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America.
CADCA is global nonprofit based in Fairfax, Va., that has an origin story just like the GameChanger origin story.
It was founded in the 1980s when cocaine was the scourge of addiction in the U.S. and today has chapters – coalitions – in all 50 states and more than 7,000 countries abroad.
Barrye L. Price, the retired military general who now serves as the coalition’s president and CEO, said the West Virginia program was an easy choice – for its highest recognition of outreach and service.
“Look at the work GameChanger is doing to mobilize young people,” Price said.
“GameChanger is demonstrating that prevention works,” the coalition administrator continued. “And we are proud to stand alongside them in this mission.”
Past humanitarian honorees include the whole of the National Football League for its collective efforts to be there for its players who may be vulnerable in the moment.
“CADCA is the preeminent program in the U.S. and the world,” Boczek said.
“It’s immensely gratifying for GameChanger to be recognized,” he continued. “This is about a lot of good people – doing a lot of good work.”
