Standing in front of more than 50 past and present Ansonia Soccer Club players, coaches and their families at the Ansonia Nature and Recreation Center soccer field Sunday, Stephen Kish held his arms out wide in celebration.
“We did it,” Kish said, igniting applause from the crowd.
It was a fitting start to the Sept. 7 dedication of the Mary Cavagnuolo Field, named for the mother and former Ansonia school teacher who started the club 34 years ago to give her 6‑year-old son and other city children a recreational sport to play besides football.
The path to the dedication ceremony started in the spring, during the soccer club’s registration.
Kish and other club coaches and officials were remembering Cavagnuolo, who passed away suddenly in 2012 at age 69, and the vital role she played in forming the club.
Kish decided to spearhead a campaign to have the field at the Nature and Recreation Center named in her honor.
“We were saying that this all started because of Mary and there’s nothing to show for it,” he said.
Kish formed a Facebook page to rally support, sought donations to purchase a sign, and made requests for the field dedication to the City’s Recreation Commission and Board of Aldermen.
It was a journey much like the one Cavagnuolo made more than three decades prior.
Cavagnuolo’s brother Eugene Zebrowski recalled how she went before the Recreation Commission more than 34 years ago and asked what the city had to offer her son, Christopher, for sports.
Since Christopher was too young for football, members of the commission told her there wasn’t anything for him, Zebrowski said.
When Cavagnuolo inquired about soccer, the commissioners told her a soccer league would never happen in Ansonia, but she could try to form one.
“Mary is the George Washington of Ansonia Soccer,” said the club’s first coach and Ansonia Alderman Patrick Henri. “She loved kids and wanted to do something for her son. That was her main thing reason for starting the club. She had a feeling that a lot of people would like to take advantage of a soccer league in Ansonia and she was 100 percent right.”
Henri recalled how Cavagnuolo looked him up in the Emmett O’Brien Vocational Technical School yearbook and called him on the phone to ask the former high school soccer player if he would be a coach the club’s first team. Henri, who was 20 at the time, immediately accepted and helped pull together a group of 7- and 8‑year-old boys for a season that was mainly practices — they didn’t have enough players for a team and didn’t have uniforms.
The club grew steadily over the years and today brings together boys and girls ages 6 – 14 for four recreation soccer divisions as well as travel soccer teams. The success of the club is also seen in past players bringing their children to play, Henri said, pointing out that he coached Kish who, in turn, now coaches his own children.
“It is really remarkable what the community came and did for my mother today,” Cavagnuolo’s daughter Judy Barron said to the crowd at the dedication. “It will be two years ago this week that my mother passed, but obviously not in vain. She left so many great memories and I know that each and every one of you here today could tell me so a wonderful story that would have a smile with it because my mother really had a lot of spunk.”
Ansonia Soccer President Chris Sheehy presented Barron and Christopher Cavagnuolo with honorary Ansonia Soccer Club jerseys at the dedication. Barron, in turn, presented Sheehy with a $500 check to start a scholarship in her mother’s name for players who need financial assistance in paying the club registration dues.
After the check presentation, Kish, Barron and Christopher Cavagnuolo unveiled the field’s new sign.
Kish raised roughly $2,200 for the sign, which cost $1,649. He said Ansonia Public Works Department installed the sign, saving the campaign the additional cost. The extra funds will be put into the scholarship.
He said the scholarship was another fitting tribute to Cavagnuolo.
“Her name will live on not only in this sign, but also in helping kids who can’t afford to play,” Kish said. “Now she’s giving back every year.”
