Community Rallies Around Soccer Coach With ALS
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Gavin Pugh moved from Wales to Minnesota in 2003. He immediately immersed himself as a soccer coach in the north metro, working with high school teams and at the club level.
He also met his wife here. Last year he got a diagnosis that changed his life -- and he found out how many lives he's touched along the way.
Five-year-old Catalina Pugh and her 2-year-old brother, Caden, are playing. That's what they love to do, especially with their dad.
"Play tag and hide-and-seek," Catalina said.
That hasn't happened much in the past year, not since her father Gavin, at age 35, was diagnosed with ALS.
Gavin came from Wales and started coaching soccer. In the process, he made an impact, and made countless friends.
That's what they talk about these days: the comet-like figure that stopped and stayed in Minnesota, finding a wife and two children, and befriending the masses in the soccer community.
His skill and passion for soccer helped build high school teams and youth clubs in the north metro, and that passion for teaching the game he loved was infectious.
So the community is now rallying around him, and holding benefits. He's trying some medical procedures that are experimental, and are not covered by insurance.
But it's more a testimony to what he has done to touch their lives, the many lives of those that grew to love him.
"He made an impression in his years that he was here, which, you know, isn't that many of his life," said Bret DeGayner, coach of the Century College soccer team. "He connected with more people and he left an impression on more people than most people do in a lifetime."
His wife is keeping the family together, and his bigger family -- the soccer community -- is stepping up like they know he would. Because to Gavin, it's been about people. And right now for these people, it's all about Gavin.
Click here to visit the "Team4Gavin" Facebook page.