Methuen High School Girls Volleyball spending the morning helping out a Marine Veteran of Vietnam

The father of a current player of mine grew up only a few houses down from a Marine veteran of the Vietnam war. Throughout the years the veteran’s house has become more and more rundown as he has very little help, very little (if any) family in the area, and just a few short years ago the man’s wife passed away. My player (Julia Rowe) and her family saw the deterioration of the house and decided to help out a veteran in need. As Julia’s mom and I are colleagues (and friends on social media) I saw a post over the summer that she and her husband were looking for donations in order to help out this local veteran. I immediately messaged her and relayed the fact that while we could not donate materials for the project, we could in fact donate time in helping with the clean-up and renovation.

I have always told my players that at the end of their time with me, my hope is that they didn’t just learn about volleyball, but that they also learned life lessons that stay with them. We have always incorporated community service into our program and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give back to a man who gave selflessly for his country, and now needed those around him to help him. Also, my own father is a Vietnam veteran who spent 14 months in country near Cu Chi at the end of the iron triangle during the war.

I relayed the information to the girls, explained the situation, and the girls immediately responded with enthusiasm and a willingness to help. We woke up on Saturday, September 18th (a day when the girls essentially had a rare day off with no practice), and not once did they ever complain or ask “what’s in it for me”. My team is selfless and their only goal was to help a veteran who now needed our help. We met at 7:30 AM drove to the house and got a tour of the yard and what needed to be done. We huddled together and I told them that “what we do and who we are off the court, is more important than what we do on the court” and they immediately went to work.

We had girls clearing roofing material, huge piles of brush, players weed whacking, players mowing, players clearing brush from the yard and around the house, players trimming trees and shrubs, and working as diligently as they could.

Some players even had to leave at the end of our 4-hour session and get to work for the remainder of the day. As a coach, I have never been more proud of a group of my players than I was that day. All of the winning, awards, and championships could not compare to watching that homeowner stare out of his house in sheer disbelief at what he was seeing. To see that meant the world to them, and some even asked if we could go back to plant flowers and create mulch beds for the home to dress it up.

We have 16 players on our varsity team including a foreign exchange student from France who had never participated in anything like this and was equally amazed at what she saw.

I sincerely hope that there is some recognition that these young ladies can receive for what they did because not only do they deserve the recognition, but they would never ask for any and did this out of the kindness of their beautiful hearts.