Volleyball teams to compete in ‘life game’ match for charity

By Mary Ann Wyand

There’s always an enthusiastic crowd for sports competitions between Bishop Chatard High School’s Trojans and Cathedral High School’s Irish.

Bishop Chatard, the Indianapolis North Deanery interparochial high school, and Cathedral, a private Catholic school on the Indianapolis northeast side, are friendly rivals in Indiana High School Athletic Association sports for boys and girls.

On Sept. 9, their girls’ volleyball teams will face each other across the net for freshman, junior varsity and varsity games at Bishop Chatard’s gymnasium with another special goal in mind.

The volleyball teams will compete in a memorial “life game” match for charity.

Larry Leonhardt, Chatard’s varsity volleyball coach, said the event will pay tribute to the deceased relatives of team members and coaches.

“Because of a distressing number of Bishop Chatard students who have lost parents in the last year and a half, three of whom have been my volleyball players, and with the loss of [Cathedral] coach Jean Kesterson’s mother and John [Kesterson’s] wife to Alzheimer’s [disease] just about a year ago,” Leonhardt said, “we plan, with Jean’s willing cooperation and assistance, to turn this match into a ‘life game’ for charity.”

Leonhardt hopes to fill the gymnasium for the special charity games.

“We are indeed expecting a large crowd for the match,” he said. “It typically draws well. … It will be the freshmen, JV and then varsity match in sequence with the freshmen [game] beginning at 5 p.m. Both volleyball programs are doing fairly well so it could be a pretty good match.”

It will also be an emotional one for the teams, Leonhardt said, because of the close connection between the schools.

“Players on both squads went to grade school[s] together and attended the funerals for the parents of the Chatard players who have passed away since the spring of 2007,” he explained. “In addition, the loss of Rita Kesterson a year ago to Alzheimer’s affected her daughter, Jean, who is the head [volleyball] coach at Cathedral, and her husband, John, who still coaches [the] freshmen [players] in his 80s.”

Leonhardt has known the Kesterson family for 20 years and attended Rita Kesterson’s funeral wake with members of Chatard’s varsity volleyball team.

“The close connections between Cathedral and Chatard made this match seem like a good fit,” he said. “The rapid succession of funerals that I attended for players’ and fellow coaches’ parents motivated me to think in terms of a match that we could use as a celebration of life [and] that we could collect charity [donations] to ‘pay it forward’ to causes that are directly related to some of the participants in the match.”

Leonhardt said the teams plan to solicit contributions during the match as well as sell T-shirts for $10.

The commemorative T-shirts feature the Bishop Chatard and Cathedral logos with a drawing of a volleyball on the front. The text of a Scripture passage from the Gospel of John, “I come to give life, and give it more abundantly,” a variation of John 10:10, is printed on the back of the shirts.

(Admission to all three games is $5 for adults and students. The games will be played at Bishop Chatard’s main gymnasium, 5885 N. Crittenden Ave., in Indianapolis.) †