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Hinsdale Central spends Sunday on charity By Gary Larsen
On Sunday, a day normally spent away from school and away from whatever high school sport you play, players in the Red Devils’ soccer program spent the day on campus. They could have been enjoying the 70-plus degree day somewhere else, hanging out and relaxing. Instead, dozens and dozens of Red Devils participated in a soccer-tennis event that raised a few thousand dollars for a charity called Kick In for Katrina Kids (KIKK). The Red Devils were there by choice, and they were there in numbers. “The players showed up. They could easily be at home watching football,” Red Devils senior Jack O’Donnell said. “We didn’t give them a ton of notice, so I’m really happy with the turnout.” O’Donnell and senior teammate Eric Loebig are a goalkeeper and a midfielder by trade for Red Devils head coach Mike Wiggins. They are also co-chairmen of this year’s KIKK event, an annual 2-on-2 competition that takes place among soccer players, on the Hinsdale Central tennis courts. If you’ve never seen soccer players kicking a ball back and forth over a tennis net at each other, they make it look easier than it is. “I just tried to think of something that was fun and soccer-oriented,” said the father of the event, Dick Flesher. The Red Devils showed up for people they don’t know and probably won’t ever meet. And even though they may be negotiating the typically self-involved teen years, they showed up in part because they have a guy like Flesher around. Flesher coached the Red Devils’ varsity team for 15 years, stepping down after the 1995-96 season. In January of this year, the National Soccer Coaches Association of America recognized Flesher’s service inside and outside the sport, presenting him with Letters of Commendation and Certificates of Appreciation. Heck, Wiggins even hands out a Richard Flesher Coaches Award each year, to a student-athlete that best exemplifies respect and commitment to the sport. But this story isn’t about Flesher, even though the man clearly deserves to have a story written about him. Besides, he’d rather talk about the families that feed Hinsdale Central. “When we took relief supplies to New Orleans at the start in 2005, the community gave us whatever we needed,” Flesher said. “What’s remarkable is that they’re still doing it four years later, when (Katrina) is falling out of America’s memory.” “I can tell you that right now there are schools down there that are worse off than they were right after the disaster, and some of those areas won’t ever be rebuilt," Flesher said. A five-phase federal plan to rebuild schools is largely unfunded. The roughly two thousand dollars the Red Devils raised on Sunday is sorely needed, and it will go a long way. “For five bucks we can get a kid binders, folders, pencils, pens, and loose-leaf paper for the whole year,” Flesher said. Flesher has visited New Orleans 19 times since Katrina hit, looking hard at 43 area schools to see what their specific needs are. When he approached Central’s soccer team a few years back with the idea of helping out, “we jumped on it,” Loebig said. “People don’t realize how much they’re still in need down there.” O’Donnell and Loebig were naturals to chair this year’s event. Former co-chairs and 2008 grads Alex Scott and Jeff Graham passed the torch to Loebig and O’Donnell, who will pass it on to a pair of juniors at the end of this season. O’Donnell volunteers at the PADS homeless shelter and the Chicago Food Depository, and when he was 12 years old his mother took him to Tijuana to build a home for a family in need. “More than anything, it’s just seeing the people that you’ve affected,” O’Donnell said. “We built that house on a hill above their old house and surprised them with it. Seeing the way they reacted to it was just so rewarding.” “You can see how many kids are out here on a Sunday, when they could be home watching a Bears game or a Fire game,” Flesher said. “Nobody badgered these kids to come here today.” “Just this event will take care of a couple elementary schools, which is amazing.” Wiggins sent out an email notifying the local press prior to Sunday’s event. Included was this line: I hope you’ll consider some type of coverage for this very worthy event that benefits the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The next time you hear someone complaining that there’s no hope for today’s youth, remember that Wiggins, Flesher, the Loebigs, the O’Donnells, the Scotts, and a host of other soccer families at Hinsdale Central would tell you that you’re crazy. Self-absorbed youth? Not so fast.
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The next time you hear someone complain about how self-absorbed today’s youth are, remember this story about Hinsdale Central.
