Special Contributions Made to the Tiverton Football Program
Over the past 5 years there have been many projects completed. The scoreboard project has to be one of the best volunteer efforts our program has seen in many years.
The process started in late 1996 with the death of Assistant Coach Bill Byrne. Just prior to his death he told me that he was going to leave the Tiverton Football program $500.00. Later that night I spoke with Bill's dad Jim and told him that I would use the money to install a scoreboard in his memory.
In the early spring of that following year Mr. Chrabaszcz asked the Tiverton Wheelmen if they could help. They donated $3,000.00 to the project. Mr. Chrabaszcz also contributed by running a raffle just prior to leaving the school that brought in another $400.00.
The football coaching staff then began the Bill Byrne Memorial Golf Tournament. It ran on Columbus Day of 1997 and still continues to run each Columbus Day in Bill's memory. That effort brought in another $2,000.00 to the ever growing donations.
The football team did a fall fundraiser and completed the necessary fund with a huge profit of $3,000.00.
In all $8,900.00 was raised to purchase the scoreboard and another $1,000.00 was used to finish the project.
Construction of the project began the day after Thanksgiving with Chuck Silvia, Jim Carberry, Ken DeCosta, Steve Chouinard, Bill Sanford, Rick Neville, and Alan Snell using heavy machinery and digging a huge hole in which to lay the foundation for the board.
Shortly after the cement had cured the hole was filled back in and left for the summer of 1998 to install the board. Sakonnet Steel made major donations of steel to support the structure as well as machinery to hoist the board into place. Humphrey Lumber made donations to allow the the box to be built underneath the board.
Once the board was installed Coaches Phillips, McKinnon, McGuire and Murray built the flower box below the scoreboard with donations from Humphrey's Lumber and they planted the shrubs and flowers to go along with the beautiful stone, that was donated by Bill Sanford, in memory of Coach Byrne.
We believe that it is one of only three boards of its kind in New England area and it represents the commitment that Bill Byrne gave to this school in life as well as in death.
On behalf of the football program I would like to thank each of these men publicly here for all of their efforts. They have helped to improve the level of play at both the high school and the Schooner level and provided the fans with something that keeps them in the game with us.
On the link below you can see numerous pictures of the board being installed. Again a heart felt thanks to all the men and businesses that contributed their time and effort as well as those who contributed financially for this endeavor to become a reality.
Thank you for all your support.
Sincerly,
Bob Murray