In today’s episode of This Hits Different, Shelby Cassesse tells the story of Tim Toy and We Serve First, a local volleyball based charity that helps makes the game more accessible for families while honoring the memory of Toy’s late wife, Ellen.
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For 30 years, Tim Toy watched his wife Ellen change lives through volleyball.
“She was a very even-keeled person, and she loved her kids,” Toy says.
After an impressive career of her own at Kiski Area and Pitt - she dedicated her life to giving back to the sport. She made it her mission to show up for young girls - even on her toughest days. Even when she received a gastric cancer diagnosis on the way to a game.
Through Ellen's surgeries and treatment, others, including opponents, began showing up for her. Including longtime Freeport coach Tom Phillips.
“I saw the passion that Ellen had, even at the middle school level,” Phillips says. “Her and I have had some really battles on the court with our middle school kids.”
Tim began coordinating Jam the Gym events to raise money for Ellen's treatment, and for another coach undergoing treatment for cancer at the time.
But Ellen still wanted to make her mark on others. She and Tim eventually started We Serve First, an organization that helps families pay for camps or club volleyball.
When Ellen passed away in 2016, Tim wasn't sure how he could continue the organization on his own.
“Like most events and organizations, sometimes the story tapers off, and you need to do more and more,” he says. “I didn’t know what would happen when that happened. I didn’t know if I’d want to continue, or just let it fade out.”
Not only has it continued, it is growing. Most recently capping the season with an all-star game, the idea of a volleyball parent and friend of the Toy family, Jim Joyce, who was inspired by the annual basketball tournament, the Cager Classic.
“So I called him up and I said, ‘hey, hear me out, I have this idea,’” Joyce says. “I sort of joke, but I think I probably got four or five words out and he was like, ‘absolutely, let’s do this.’”
Over 30 seniors representing 15 schools played, including Armstrong's Cassidy Adams
“With this experience, I made more friends, people that I wouldn’t have thought that I’d be able to talk to,” Adams says. “It was great.”
The event raised $5000, which will add a few more names to the list of the 125 kids the program has already sponsored, many of them went on to play in college.
Between the impact of her program, and many of her players coaching today, Ellen Toy's legacy remains engrained in Western Pennsylvania volleyball.
“I think that a little bit of Ellen lives on in all of the people that coach from her coaching,” Toy says. “And I think that’s a really cool thing.
“We’re a pebble in the pond organization, and we hope the ripples go out there and inspire other people to do the same.”