Nick Gaspar Community Support Night/ FHS lax

My name is Kathy Davis, I’m the President of Franklin Panthers Lacrosse Boosters.

Nick has been playing franklin lacrosse since he was in first grade. He was diagnosed with cancer couple years ago. You can check out his website for some background www.nickgaspar.com.  Our Freshmen Coach McCarthy & JV Coach Baker made Nick a program captain early this season.  It became clear early in season that Nick wasn’t well again. He had another surgery this spring and is currently going through Chemo. Our Franklin community and FHS athletic community have been tremendous in their support of him. Just this past winter our basketball team held a community support night for him. His two favorite sports are lacrosse & basketball. His Nick Strong logo is similar to the UNC logo & his favorite color Carolina blue.

Coach McCarthy (freshmen/Jv coach) came to our board with community support event idea. He has coached Nick for years in the Franklin Youth Lacrosse program. We reached out to our opposing team and filled them in on our plans and they not only supported it they embraced it! So much so that the Oliver Ames Coach Devlin purchased a Nick Strong shirt from Nick’s website and wore it during the game. It was all Carolina blue that night. We had Nick Strong shirts made up for our entire program, coaching staff and board.

Our plan was to get as much of the community to our event as possible and show Nick how much we support him and all his family. We had a ceremony prior to our varsity game. Mind you it was absolutely pouring during warmups, but as soon as the ceremony began the rain completely stopped. Coach Baker our Jv coach is a police officer and arranged an amazing police procession onto our field ushering Nick. The police procession included many of our surrounding towns. They ushered Nick to center field where he was met by our captains and presented a customized lacrosse stick. Our varsity team and Oliver Ames team lined the field along with players from our Franklin Youth Lacrosse teams. It was an incredible show of support and we were able to raise some money for the family that evening as well.

It was an amazing event. Our lacrosse community was thrilled to take part in this event because it provided tremendous support to Nick and the Gaspar family! Nick’s smile that night said it all. I truly believed it helped our players realize a bigger sense of community and what truly is important. Our players love Nick and would do anything they can to support him so this event made them feel like they were able to help, if even for just one night. It was an evening you realized how important our community truly is and that no one fights alone!