Kai He

For most of his life, Kai measured time in periods, not semesters. A rising senior at Greenhills School, he had spent years as an elite hockey player — early mornings, late practices, and the kind of complete focus that only comes from loving something deeply. Then came the state playoff. One bad hit ended his season in an instant with a broken collarbone, followed by three months of rehab that were slower and more painful than anyone watching from the stands could guess. He did everything right, and he came back — and then the same collarbone broke again.

The second injury cost him another 3 months. Six months of watching from the sidelines while teammates kept developing and kept playing the game he loved, losing not just time on the ice but a window in his growth he could never fully get back. Somewhere in that long recovery, a question started to bother him: how much of this was avoidable? The more he searched, the more he found — a whole body of sports science on how young athletes get hurt and how those injuries can be prevented. The knowledge existed; it simply never reached the players who needed it most.

So he decided to change that. He founded PlaySafe to put science-based injury prevention into the hands of youth athletes before they ever end up where he did — teaching them what to watch for, how to protect their bodies, and how to build habits that keep them in the game for years, not months. His goal is simple, and it's personal: help young players pay attention, play safe, and grow strong, so that fewer of them ever have to learn the hard way.