photo by: Kahner Sampson/Special to the Journal-World

Kansas linebacker Trey Lathan hits a pad during the first day of KU Football's fall camp on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026, in Lawrence.

Kansas middle linebacker Trey Lathan has been known to make offensive players pay when he meets them in the hole.

From now on, he will be the one paying.

Lathan announced last Friday, shortly before KU kicked off its season against Long Island, that he will donate both $50 to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and $50 to WVU Medicine Golisano Children’s Hospital for each tackle he makes during the 2026 season.

“This season, I’m proud to give back to something bigger than football,” he wrote in a post on X.

Lathan is a native of Goulds, Florida, an unincorporated community at the southern edge of the Miami metropolitan area, and before coming to KU in 2025 he played his first three collegiate seasons at West Virginia.

After briefly considering the transfer portal in the winter, he returned to Lawrence for his fifth and final year of eligibility. He had been the Jayhawks’ leading tackler last season with 86 stops, which would have amounted to $4,300 to each hospital. This year, he has three tackles so far after playing limited snaps in KU’s blowout win over LIU to start the year.

Lathan’s announcement earned plaudits on social media, particularly from WVU fans who expressed admiration for their former linebacker despite his departure.

“It was positive,” Lathan said on Monday. “A lot of great feedback. A lot of people willing to match my donation and stuff like that. So it was definitely a good feeling.”

The redshirt senior has been involved with charitable efforts before. He runs a back-to-school drive for kids back home, he said, but this particular per-tackle donation is the first of his kind that he has undertaken.

The West Virginia football team is significantly involved with the school’s children’s hospital. As they enter the stadium, the Mountaineers have a pregame tradition of waving to the hospital’s patients. Players have been known to visit the medical facility, something Lathan also mentioned in the course of discussing his new initiative on Monday. (KU, by the way, will travel to Morgantown, West Virginia, on Nov. 14, to take on the Mountaineers in a rematch of last year’s dominant win for the Jayhawks in which Lathan had a sack and an interception.)

Lathan, who has five siblings, noted that he has two young nephews who deal with sickle cell crises. Sickle cell disease is a hereditary blood disorder that alters the shape of red blood cells, which can cause episodes of acute pain and significant health issues.

“So they’re constantly always at the hospital, but when they’re at the hospital, the hospital really (takes) care of them,” he said. “So I just wanted to do something nice and just help the kids out — also help the hospital.”

photo by: Kansas Athletics

Trey Lathan