Will You Leave a Youth Sports Legacy Behind?

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.  
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I’ve often thought about my own legacy. A couple of weekends ago I was serving meatballs to a hungry group of high school football players. Someday — maybe while serving something to someone — they’ll remember the annoying guy with the dumb Italian accent asking, “Do you want-ah two ah-meat-ah-ball-ahs, or three ah-meat-ah-ball-ahs?”

While I don’t think most of us — we sporting parent types — serve up our free time with the thoughts of legacies dripping from our ladles, it’s can be an offshoot of our dedication.

Greg Warren volunteered to build concession stands, dugouts, press boxes, and anything else that a hammer and nails could pull together. The new Farmington High School field house was constructed and named in his memory.

When the late Ed Beardsley wanted a place in Bristol for his son and four other disabled children to play baseball, the idea for a Little League Challenger Division was born. It now serves 300,000 physically and mentally challenged boys and girls worldwide.

As the patriarch of youth baseball in West Hartford, Ken Hungerford has a tournament and concession stand bearing his name. More than 50 years of dedication can do that to a guy.

The late Tom Sheridan was involved for many years with Glastonbury Youth Football and the Glastonbury High School Friends of Football. He is a past recipient of the Contribution to Football Award from the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame for his lifelong commitment to youth football.

Local legends don’t usually have an entire baseball complex named after them … well not while they’re still living. Bill Petit of the Berlin Little League earned it as league president, umpire, and visionary.

As a youth lacrosse pioneer in Southington, the late Ken Vilar helped start the town’s youth lacrosse association and get the high school team on its feet.

“If you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? — Carpe — hear it? — Carpe, Carpe Diem, seize the day, boys, make your lives extraordinary.” 
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

For every name in bold, there are countless others you’ll never read about. But they are all around us. They come with hammers and shovels, words and ideas — with money or time or both. They leave everything. They often shun attention.

Our local youth sports programs cannot — will not — breathe without the men and women past and present who didn’t need to consider if they’d be remembered in bold someday.

I read the following quote last year at a youth sports banquet. It exemplifies the rewards of self-sacrifice. In the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, Mr. Holland has been forced into retirement by budget cuts to the music program after 35 years as a teacher. Before leaving the school for the last time, his wife and son lead him into the auditorium. It’s jammed with many of his students from the past. They await one last guest. A former student — once awkward and shy — enters and makes her way to the podium. Now the governor of the state, she addresses her mentor and the audience.

“Mr. Holland had a profound influence on my life and on a lot of lives I know. But I have a feeling that he considers a great part of his own life misspent. Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his. And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn't rich and he isn't famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. But he would be wrong, because I think that he's achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony, Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus. We are the music of your life.”

Your legacy, as it pertains to youth sports, can be made right outside your door — down the street, at the field, in the gym. It’s asking for you to come out and play. Can you hear it?

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
— Albert Pike