Two hundred people to bounce basketballs from the Boys & Girls Club to the new center

WEST SPRINGFIELD—Led by a Basketball Hall of Famer, 200 people dribbling basketballs will march from the Boys & Girls Club of West Springfield to Union Street on Saturday, Oct. 14 as the West Springfield High School band plays Florence Bank’s “Always” song.

In an event aptly dubbed the Florence Bank Dribble Parade, bank and city leaders and area residents will celebrate the opening of the bank’s new Hampden County Banking Center at 1010 Union St.—the bank’s first branch in Hampden County. At the same time, it will also honor its partnerships with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Boys & Girls Club. A rain date is set for Oct. 15.

The parade and grand opening event will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the Boys & Girls Club, where Florence Bank President and CEO John Heaps Jr. will speak and present club leaders with a gift of $50 per participating dribbler, up to $10,000. The parade, led by a surprise Hall of Famer, will then step off into Main Street from the club at 12:30 p.m. and proceed down New Bridge Street to the banking center.

Up to 200 people will each dribble an Under Armour basketball, purchased locally at psi 91 in Springfield for the event, without stopping on the .6-mile parade route. Children interested in dribbling in the parade are invited to register to take part in the event at www.florencebank.com/dribble; registrations will be capped at 200, and each child will receive a free basketball.

Dribblers must be at least 5 years old and must be accompanied by an adult. All dribblers should arrive at the West Springfield Boys and Girls Club, at 615 Main St., West Springfield, at 11:30 a.m. to check-in and receive their basketballs.

Mayor Will Reichelt and other West Springfield leaders are expected to march in the parade and take part in the festivities at the banking center, which will include face painting, games, basketball competitions, and demonstrations by the Court Jesters, a comedic basketball troupe. Two food trucks, the Bistro Bus and Log Rolling, will provide meals.

“This festive celebration will honor our new branch and its employees, as well as the important relationships we have created and nurtured in Hampden County,” Heaps said.

Florence Bank opened its new, full-service Hampden County Banking Center on Aug. 24, prompted to expand into Hampden County by the mergers and buyouts that have defined the banking landscape in past years, leaving Springfield without a community bank headquartered there.

The Dribble Parade and celebration comes one month after a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held at the branch on Sept. 14 with Heaps, bank staff and community leaders in attendance to officially commemorate the opening of the bank’s 10^th branch.

In 2007, Florence Bank opened a loan production office in West Springfield, the success of which is responsible for transforming the bank’s total commercial loan portfolio to more than 36 percent from Hampden County-based businesses. That success also made clear the need for the full-service branch.

In the next three to five years, Florence Bank plans to open additional branches in the Greater Springfield area.

All of Florence Bank’s products and services will be offered through the center, located at the corner of Memorial Avenue and Union Street in one third of a 9,000-square-foot plaza that will also hold other commercial tenants.

The Hampden County Banking Center has eight employees including: Branch Manager Maureen Buxton; Assistant Branch Manager Stephanie Moore; Commercial Lenders James Montemayor and Henry Downey; Mortgage Loan Originator Susan Seaver; and John Ernst of Florence Bank’s Financial Group, who will be available by appointment.

Florence Bank has branches in Amherst, Belchertown, Easthampton, Granby, Hadley, Northampton and Williamsburg and is headquartered in Florence.

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CHICOPEE—Daimian Ocasio was 3 when he got hooked on basketball. He found a ball on the floor of his house and taught himself to dribble.

Now, at 14, he plays forward center as a starter for the Hampden Charter School of Science’s high school team. An eighth grader, and the youngest member of the team, Ocasio knows basketball is doing more than improving his reputation.

“Basketball helps me to be a better person. I’m always in the gym, playing basketball, so it keeps me out of trouble,” he said. “It helps me.”

Ocasio is one of roughly 500 young people who will take part in the 13th Annual George Webb Memorial Basketball Tournament to benefit the Boys & Girls Club, beginning March 10.

The event is the largest of its kind in Western Massachusetts and Northern Connecticut, drawing hundreds of spectators and players, and this year it promises to grow again with the addition of two new high school divisions—one for ninth and tenth graders, and one for eleventh and twelfth.

This year marks Ocasio’s fourth tournament, and he’s excited to play at an event that raises money for the Boys & Girls Club because it has nurtured him as a player—and as a young man. Last year, Ocasio took the bus there every day after school to play basketball.

“The coaches were so nice. They pushed me to get better at basketball. They were always there for me, no matter what,” he said. “If I was down, they would always bring me back up. They’d say, ‘Come on Daimian, you got this!’ and that would help me get better.”

The tournament is sponsored by The Vann Group of Springfield, a professional services outsourcing company headed by Kevin B. Vann. The three-week event was created by Vann in 2005 to honor his best friend, the late George Webb, who died of cancer at age 52.

“I am proud and humbled to say that we are nearing the $150,000 mark in funds raised from our tournament supporters from Chicopee and across the region to support the Boys & Girls Club,” Vann said. “I love this tournament as much as I did the day I founded it.”

In keeping with Webb’s spirit, the basketball tournament is for teams of boys and girls aged 8 to 18 who are not top players and wouldn’t otherwise get to play in a tournament.

“Since the tournament’s start in 2005, thousands of young people have had the chance to play a sport and learn life lessons in the process,” Vann said.

The Boys & Girls Club website, on its tournament page, highlights that Webb played basketball at the club on Tuesday evenings, and “He will be remembered for being a tireless competitor on both ends of the court. He loved playing defense and rebounding as much as he loved his outside shots. He very seldom lost a match-up or game, but, when he did, he showed true sportsmanship to whoever he was playing against.”

For more information about the tournament, visit www.bgcchicopee.org. For information on sponsorship opportunities, contact Ruth Griggs at (413) 727-3354 or email her at Ruth@rccomms.com.

To learn about the Boys & Girls Club of Chicopee, visit its website at www.bgcchicopee.org.

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Michael O’Brien, president of the nonprofit and a member of the NHS class of 2007, said the goal is to raise the funds over the next several years through donations as well as a variety of events, including the already existing annual basketball tournament, called the League Legends Midsummer Classic.

This year’s tournament will be held July 23 at Robert K. Finn Ryan Road Elementary School from 1 to 8 p.m., with an outdoor screening of “Space Jam” to follow at 8:30 p.m. Other fundraising events this year include a golf tournament on Oct. 1 at the Northampton Country Club and a trivia night and silent auction slated for Nov. 26 at The World War II Club.

O’Brien said League Legends aims to create a space where children and teens can enjoy playing basketball day and night, and he intends for the courts to be lighted to facilitate nighttime play. League Legends is currently working with the Northampton Recreation Department to locate a site for the courts.

The proposed courts will also be used for both summer adult basketball leagues as well as youth basketball clinics, at an affordable cost, O’Brien said. Long-term, the courts may also host such events as out-of-season invitational tournaments or other community events.

“The venue could even be used as an outdoor skating rink in the winters,” O’Brien said, adding, “We’re not going to build it and simply hope people come. We’re going to be organizing a lot of its use.”

As of this week, the organization had roughly $8,000 set aside for the courts, which will be developed in stages, O’Brien said.

Sam Caruso, a 2007 NHS graduate and a member of the League Legends Board of Directors with O’Brien, said building basketball courts in Northampton would allow the friends and family of Holman and Adams to have something physical to memorialize them.

“The courts would also be a source of enjoyment for hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who love basketball as much as David and Miles once did,” he said.

League Legends has its roots in a pick-up basketball league, then called The League, that Holman started by passing around a roster in an audio-visual class in 2006. Adams was also a member of that original league.

“David was the original commissioner who passed around the sign-up sheet and got the league going,” O’Brien said. “From there, we started having at least several weeknight pick-up basketball games at Ryan Road elementary. We would even do trades and suspensions within the teams, and hold meetings in AV class.”

The League returned and attracted even more attention, both from players and spectators, in 2007. That summer, Holman was killed in a car accident. Just a few months later, in December, Adams was also involved in a traffic fatality.

“Anyone dying at that age is such a tragedy,” O’Brien said. “For a lot of us, the organizers and kids around the high school, that was our first experience with death, and it was really a shock.”

As a way of honoring their classmates, Caruso and fellow league participant Tim Kane organized the nonprofit in 2008, named it League Legends and the organization held its first midsummer classic at Ryan Road.

The tournament began with six teams and raised $200 in its first year. It has expanded to attract 16 teams, and it now traditionally raises roughly $10,000 per year. It also attracts professional players, such as NHS alum Ellis Cooper of England’s Manchester Magic, who played in 2015.

“Miles and David’s families both started scholarship funds soon after they passed, and it was actually my mom who suggested doing a basketball tournament at Ryan Road Elementary to raise money for their scholarship funds and to remember our friends,” Caruso said, noting that the tournament helps fund the scholarship.

Going forward, the tournament will also help fund the goal to build the basketball courts.

Caruso remembers Holman and Adams first and foremost for their incredible sense of humor.

“They were both so funny, although in different ways,” he said. “Miles was always goofing around. It was as if he lived to make his friends smile. And David was a real people person. He would always be bringing people together. Sometimes it seemed like he was friends with almost everyone.”

This year’s July 23 Movie Night will be held in partnership with Northampton Community Television and the League Legends board, members of which are: O’Brien, Caruso, Kane, Elias NeJame and Nicole Sawula.

To register for the tournament, contact O’Brien at 413-210-8823 or leaguelegendsinc@gmail.com. Cost of the film screening is $10 per car.

League Legends has applied for 501C3 status so that donations to it can be tax deductible; it currently holds tax-exempt status in Massachusetts. The organization has a multi-tiered donation plan. For details, or to donate, visit the League Legends website at www.areyoualegend.org, or mail contributions to 70 Acrebrook Drive in Florence.

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