Track meet honors coaches' late friend
BY DENNIS JORDAN Correspondent

The Monsignor Everitt Memorial Invitational Track and Field Meet hosted by Holy Family Elementary School of Lakewood was held April 20 at the Lakewood High School track. The event served as a fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and featured spirited competition among parochial school pupils from Monmouth and Ocean counties.

LAKEWOOD - Tom Valente never wanted people to know how sick he really was. The signs were all there that he was ill. Last year he took a week off from work with no real explanation. He came and went from hospitals.

"He kept it all to himself," his mother, Susan Valente, said.

"I noticed he was going to the hospital more often," his close friend, Tom Tafuri, added.

In October, Valente, 24, succumbed to the cystic fibrosis that plagued him all his life.

"He fought all the way to the end," Susan Valente said. "But he's not suffering anymore."

At Sunday's second annual Monsignor Everitt Memorial Invitational track meet hosted by the Holy Family Parish track team, Valente's spirit was present everywhere at the track surrounding the Lakewood High School football field as the event was held in his memory. Valente's friends and hismother organized theApril 20 event.

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"He would be amazed that we were doing this in his memory," Susan Valente said.

"We wanted to do something in his name, in his honor," said Gregory Skawinski, the assistant track coach at the Holy Family Elementary School in Lakewood.

Skawinski and Sean Dowd, who is Holy Family's head track coach, were both close friends of Valente.

Skawinski, Dowd, Tafuri and Valente all met in 2000 while they were working in the games department at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson.

This year's invitational track meet featured a raffle with prizes donated by local businesses and a coaches 4x100- meter relay. Proceeds from the invitational will be donated to the New Jersey Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, according to the organizers. The raffle prizes included gift baskets that were filled with gift certificates to businesses such as Dick's Sporting Goods, Dunkin' Donuts, Office Depot, Outback Steakhouse and L.A. Fitness.

In addition to the gift baskets, single prizes were raffled off. They included a Nintendo Wii video game system, a 10- person luxury box accommodation for a Lakewood BlueClaws game on June 29, an HP portable photo printer, two adult tickets for deep sea fishing, and four adult tickets to Six Flags Great Adventure.

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation representative Toni Bauman was in attendance to receive a check from Skawinski and Dowd in the amount of $2,840. Skawinski had set a goal of $5,000, but was still encouraged by the money that was raised and said he is hoping to hold a similar event next year for the same cause.

Overall, Skawinski was pleased with the way things turned out.

"I'm glad to see this many teams show up," he said.

Parochial schools from Monmouth and Ocean counties converged on Lakewood for the track meet. St. Mary, St. Peter, St. Benedict, St. Veronica, St. Rose of Lima, St. Catharine, St. Aloysius and St. James schools participated in the events with Holy Family.

The schedule of events included a 4x100- meter relay, 50-meter dash, 100-meter dash, 800-meter run, 1,200-meter run, 1,600- meter run, a 4x400-meter relay, as well as a long jump, high jump and shot put competition. Boys and girls junior varsity and varsity teams ran each event.

The stars on the field were the Holy Family track team, which won a majority of the events.

Among the boys, seventh-grader Brandon Alexander won the 100, 200 and 400, while eighth-grader Ryan Cabrita won the 800 and 1,600 and was also on the winning 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams. Cabrita will be attending Christian Brothers Academy in Middletown next year.

The day was capped off by the coaches of the schools participating in a 4x100- meter relay race, which was won by the coaching staff of St. Mary's of New Monmouth, Middletown.