Tyler Ugolyn '01: "I Just Love Playing the Game"
11/20/2008 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball
NEW YORK ? This weekend, Levien Gymnasium will host the Tyler Ugolyn Columbia Classic. Both Columbia men's and women's teams will compete in the two-day, eight-game event. Below is a little more about Tyler Ugolyn, a Columbia Basketball alum for whom the tournament is named.
The Tyler Ugolyn Columbia Classic is sponsored by the Tyler Ugolyn Foundation in loving memory and honor of Tyler Ugolyn, '01CC, a former student-athlete at Columbia who, at the age of 23, was a victim of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack at the World Trade Center.
While attending Columbia, Tyler helped found a weekly basketball clinic for Harlem area youngsters. The non-profit Tyler Ugolyn Foundation, formed by the Ugolyn family which includes his father and mother, Victor and Diane, and younger brother, Trevor, is a charitable, tax-exempt organization founded to help support the communities and activities to which Tyler Ugolyn devoted his personal time, effort and love.
In particular, the Foundation is committed to providing support to youth basketball, with an emphasis on court refurbishment and providing financial support to character building educational programs and skills clinics to children in urban settings. All courts nationwide funded by the Foundation are named "Tyler's Court" and noted with a special plaque installed at each court along with the words "I just love playing the game," a quote attributed to Tyler while a high school player. The Foundation provides the court refurbishments, clinics and educational programs in cities at no cost to participants and organizations.
"We wish to continue forever our beloved Tyler's legacy," Victor Ugolyn said. "We gain some comfort from Jackie Robinson's epitaph which states that the value of one's life is not determined by the number of years but by the number of lives you've touched."
The Foundation has already partnered with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the NCAA, the national YMCA of the United States, and the city of Springfield, Massachusetts to renovate inner-city courts and conduct motivational clinics with Columbia men's basketball head coach Joe Jones, Rick Barnes of Texas, Derek Kellogg of UMass and Dave Cooks of Marquette H.S.
Each year at the site of the NCAA Final Four men's championship, a "Tyler's Court" will be dedicated. In 2008, the first such "Tyler's Court" was dedicated in San Antonio and in 2009, a similar dedication will take place in Detroit.
Over the past six years, the Foundation has also sponsored with the support of Columbia University and the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Tyler Ugolyn Champions of Character program, a motivational basketball clinic for inner-city youngsters held at Columbia and conducted by both the Columbia men's and women's basketball coaches and teams. Guest speakers have included Hall of Famers Willis Reed, Gail Goodrich, Nate "Tiny" Archibald, Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, Earl Lloyd, and Marques Haynes.
Tax-deductible contributions to the Tyler Ugolyn Foundation, a 501(C) tax-exempt, non-profit, charitable organization can be sent to:
The Tyler Ugolyn Foundation
c/o Ridgefield Bank
PO Box 2050
Ridgefield, CT 06877-0950
