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In many places, youth sports are all about profit. Not in Lapel. ‘Never took a dime.’

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In many places, youth sports are all about profit. Not in Lapel. ‘Never took a dime.’

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LAPEL — On a sweltering late summer morning, Tony and Karen Mullet pulled up a pair of folding chairs in the shade outside the Lapel Optimist Club. Opening day of the little league football season is a 49-year tradition here in Lapel, where many of the kids who grew up playing in the league are now coaches with their own kids playing.

“To me,” Tony Mullet said, “that’s the best part.”

Tony is explaining this as a 5-year-old kindergartner approaches. The young boy, wearing an Ohio State jersey, tells the Mullets how he scored a touchdown. Karen asks Tony, “You know who that is don’t you?” Tony replies, “Of course, I do. That’s E.J. Cripe’s son. The next great running back.”

Tony tells Kingston: “I remember when your dad was your size.” E.J. was a standout running back and sprinter at Lapel nearly 20 years ago. This is the fun part, or at least, one of the most fun parts for the Mullets: Making connections from family to family, making new friends. Including everybody.

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“People just don’t do what they do anymore,” said Lapel football coach Tim Miller, who spends his Saturdays at the youth fields watching games and helping when needed. “Especially in the world of youth sports, where it’s all about profit. There’s not many of them around anymore. I don’t’ even know the word to describe it. … they will give you the shirt off their back. It’s just a rare quality these days.”

This family business is a business in name only. Running the Optimist Club youth sports (not just football but also basketball, volleyball, wrestling and cheerleading) can be a full-time job. Tony and Karen Mullet don’t take a dime. Tony’s parents, Enos and Dorcas, ages 99 and 96, respectively, were involved on the Optimist Club board when it was chartered at Lapel in 1974 and started sponsoring youth football a couple of years later, right around the time Lapel was starting football at the high school level.

Tony was 22 years old at the time, working for his father’s Mullet Construction company after a 19-month stint in Thailand with the U.S. Air Force.

“Lapel was starting high school football and when they started that they said, ‘You need to start a feeder system from the little league,” Tony said. “We didn’t have a field. But the Optimist Club bought the equipment and in ’76 started playing games.”

The league started with four teams — the Cowboys, Vikings, Bengals and Redskins — of fourth, fifth and sixth graders. For years, they played some on Saturdays, some Sundays, sometimes on weeknights due to conflicts with the high school teams. One day in the 1990s, Tony walked out of the old Optimist Club building with close friend Donnie Shupe, who worked as an excavator, and said, “It’d be nice if we had our own field.” He was talking to the right guy.

“Donnie looked at me and said, ‘Let’s build one,’” Tony said.

It took three years. The American Legion donated some of the land necessary to build the field. Some of the first generation of players to come through the Optimist little league program in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s donated their time and equipment to help build the field.

“Every guy in Lapel with a dump truck, grain truck, whatever,” Tony said. “They all helped.”

When the new field was completed in 1997, Tony immediately knew what he wanted to do next: Dedicate the field to Monte Turner.

***

It takes Tony all of about half a second, if that, to say the date: Oct. 15, 1983.

The night before, Lapel defeated Shenandoah 14-12 to improve to 8-2 for coach Woody Fields, who promised earlier in the season to get a Mr. T-style mohawk haircut if the program won five games for the first time in its history — and followed through on his promise.

Turner was Lapel’s scrappy defensive captain. As a fifth grader in 1976, he played for the Cowboys in the first year of the Optimist little league program. Those players grew up to make up the core of that first winning team, which just two years earlier had the state’s longest losing streak at 28 games. Turner was front and center to the turnaround as the Bulldogs’ middle linebacker; Fields even allowed him to make his own defensive calls.

About 12 hours after that senior night win over Shenandoah, the 17-year-old Turner was working his part-time job. Turner was sitting in the back of the pickup truck on State Road 13 just south of Lapel when a refrigerator shifted and knocked Turner to the ground. He was later pronounced dead at an Anderson hospital.

“Pretty rough,” Tony said.

Tony was working on the ambulance that day in 1983, making it even more personal. On a building outside the Optimist Club, visitors passing through the parking lot are greeted with a black and yellow sign that reads “Welcome to Monte Turner Memorial Field” with Turner’s No. 22 helmet and a photo of Turner in uniform inside the building.

“When we all got to talking about building our own field people asked, ‘What are you going to name it?’ Tony said. “I said, ‘What do you think of Monte Turner Field?’”

Difficult as it is to believe, it was 41 years ago this month when Monte died. He would be 58 now, possibly with grandkids of his own playing on the Optimist Club fields. But he still is here in many ways. One of his quotes — “I’d rather be a team player than a hero” — sits above the scoreboard with his name.

“It touches our heart,” said Turner’s mother, Linda. “Tony never forgot.”

That’s Tony. And Karen. They might occasionally forget a name of a player from years gone, faces changed by age and beards. “I’ll say, ‘Sorry, I don’t know who you are,’” Tony said. “And they’ll tell me their names and say, ‘You were my coach,’ and I’ll remember.”

Those connections, strengthened by years and generations, keep Gerald and Linda Turner coming back to the little league fields every Saturday. There is part of Monte here, too, that goes beyond his name on the sign. He was a popular kid, full of life, a participant in the school’s show choir and a three-sport athlete. Monte loved being part of a team, a community.

“It absolutely warms our heart,” Linda said. “There’s so much life there. The family and fun and seeing everything laughing and happy … it makes us happy.”

Gerald and Linda have a great-grandson, 8-year-old Rylan McDole, playing in his first year of flag football in the Optimist league. He played some quarterback last week and his team won. Better yet, Rylan left with a smile on his face. Which is the whole point.

“They do it out of the goodness of their heart,” Linda said of the Mullets. “They are willing to share their time. It’s easier to share money than time. I don’t know a family that has worked harder than they have for nothing in return.”

Nothing visible, maybe. But when another tragedy struck in 2011, Tony and Karen found out how much people cared.

***

Dec. 18, 2011. On that Sunday afternoon, the Optimist Club building went up in flames due to a couple of careless smokers. The building was destroyed, along with $30,000 worth of football equipment. The building, which was used as a storage facility with a meeting room and concession stand, was torn down the next week.

Just that fall, more than 300 kids played in the football league. If the fire would have happened in July or August, it would have certainly canceled the season. But with enough time, the Lapel community jumped in with both feet. Colts owner Jim Irsay tweeted out a link to this then-86,000 followers with the message to “help the kids” and pledged to match the next $5,000 raised.

“After the fire, the support was unbelievable,” Tony said.

The community raised between $85,000 and $90,000 according to Karen, which was used for a new building and starting over with new equipment and jerseys and a new scoreboard. By July of 2012, the building was already on its way to completion. The league, back and better than ever, did not skip a beat.

“I think it extends farther than the football program,” said Tyler Dollar, a 2023 Lapel graduate who was a standout running back. “(Tony and Karen) are involved in basketball and volleyball and help with so many other things around town as well. They have no obligation to do it. They aren’t making any money, just doing it for the kids. That’s the reason the rules are what they are — so everybody has fun and learns the fundamentals of football. There is a rule that every kid has to play, which shows you what kind of people they are. They want everybody to succeed.”

Dollar, who played every year in the football league growing up, comes back from college at Ball State every Saturday to referee. How much does he make? “We all get food,” he said. “I’m in college, so I appreciate it. But we all come back. There’s a reason for that.”

Miller puts up a sign-up sheet every week for the high school players to volunteer for various responsibilities (chain gang, cooking, running the clock, etc.) on Saturdays. There are time slots throughout the day, though Miller rarely worries about having enough bodies to fill the spots.

“I always thought it was cool that the high school players were actually coming to watch us play,” said Lapel junior quarterback Devin Craig. “We look up to them on Fridays and then they would come out to watch us play on Saturdays.”

Craig’s teammate, senior receiver Rylie Hudson, calls it a “full circle thing.” Many of the coaches who have kids on the teams were once players in the league themselves. Their son, Jeremiah Mullet, is the director of the youth football program.

“I feel like they do everything for us,” Hudson said. “They give every little kid a chance to play football out here and eventually become one of us and play for the high school. They are basically family to us and to everybody on the high school team.”

It is not like this everywhere.

***

When Tony applied for a grant years several years ago, the interviewer asked his annual salary.

“I said, ‘Excuse me?’ and she said, ‘What do they pay you?’ Tony said. “I said, ‘I’m volunteering. I’ve done this 30-something years and never took a dime and don’t intend to. She couldn’t believe it. But we get our rewards.”

Tony and Karen are a team, though Tony admits he is a little a slow on computers. “I can barely use a phone,” he said. “I don’t need that stuff. But Karen is well organized.”

But the beauty of the Optimist Club is that no one gets turned away. They raised money through a 5K run the second Saturday of every July and have an annual golf outing to raise funds. But if there is ever a family that can’t afford to pay an entry fee, they find a way to get it done. There is one man in Lapel who sends a $50 check every three months to help cover the entry fees for those who can’t afford the $85 fee.

“There are a few people in town who will say, ‘I’ll sponsor two tackle (football) kids and pay their fees,” Karen said.

Tony is concerned youth sports is becoming a big business. But as long as he is involved, the Optimist Club will never be about anything but the kids. It was that way here for 49 years. Miller attributes Class 2A Lapel’s 80-player roster (likely to break 90 next year) largely to the Optimist Club.

“If we went and walked around right now, you’d probably see 20 high school players here,” Miller said. “It’ll be like that on and off all day. The kids love being out here, love being a part of it. You’ll see Tony talking to them about last night, about today. The kids still argue about who’s youth teams were better. It’s literally a community event.”

Why do it? Just watch Tony interact with 5-year-old Kingston Cripe for a few minutes to understand why.

“The kids,” Karen said. “We went to the high school game (Friday night) and Tony stands there by the gate when the boys come out and go on the field. All of them are coming over and hugging him. We get a lot back.”

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

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