{"id":25532,"date":"2020-01-02T17:57:23","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T22:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25532"},"modified":"2020-01-10T17:29:57","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T22:29:57","slug":"aaron-bank-sedores-legacy-will-help-kids-access-sport-and-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aaron-bank-sedores-legacy-will-help-kids-access-sport-and-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Bank-Sedore’s legacy will help kids access sport and play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just a few short weeks ago, there was a\nstir amongst students at Aurora High School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A football landing on a roof is not\nnormally a cause for too much concern, but this was no ordinary football; it\nwas a football that had, in recent months, become synonymous with student Aaron\nBank-Sedore, a budding athlete who lost his life to suicide this past fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following his passing, his friends and\nfellow students were gifted his favourite football by his family and it had\nbeen making the rounds of the school, collecting signatures along the way, in\nhis memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One over-zealous toss, however, sent the\nball skyward, landing in a precarious position just out of sight, and the\nstudents didn\u2019t know what to do \u2013 after all, if someone had to climb up on a\nschool roof every time a ball landed up there, there would hardly be a chance\nto pack away the ladder \u2013 but once word spread that it was Aaron\u2019s ball up\nthere, the school sprang into action to retrieve it for his peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Bank-Sedore\u2019s family knows all too\nwell that the simple pleasure of throwing a football around is sometimes\nfinancially out of reach for a youngster, and now his mom, Karen Bank, is hard\nat work creating a lasting legacy in her son\u2019s name, one which is dedicated to\nhelping kids from financially-challenged families share the passions that her\nson so enjoyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat I would like to be remembered and\nknown about Aaron is that he was the guy\nthat built people up,\u201d says Karen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s just what\nshe is trying to do, working with local fundraisers to provide schools and\nindividual students with sports gear that might otherwise be unavailable to\nthem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSports have always\nbeen in our family,\u201d she says, \u201cand he was a natural at it. He mostly played\nsoccer and then, as he got older, he played hockey as well \u2013 and he was also\ninto archery, which a lot of people don\u2019t know. Then, last year, all of a\nsudden, his passion became football.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joining up with the\nYork Lions football team, his passion only grew. In fact, it grew so much that\nKaren says she had to step up her own game, working to build up her own cursory\nknowledge of football just to keep up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe told me that all\nhe wanted for Christmas was football gear,\u201d she recalls. \u201cWhat that meant, I\ndon\u2019t know for sure, but it was a big thing for him. You could tell. He was\njust in love with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karen is conscious of\nthe fact that Aaron was by no means alone in his passion and there were\nprobably many other kids across the community who were also hoping to find\nfootball and other sporting gear under their Christmas trees this year, but may\nhave had to make do without for family financial and other circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Aaron was just\nstarting out as an athlete, Karen was very much in this situation. Her family,\nshe says, was able to afford what he needed to set out on the soccer pitch, but\nhockey proved a greater challenge. They were recipients of the Canadian Tire\nJumpstart program, a foundation aimed at giving kids access to sport and play,\nalong with a further boost from the Optimist Club of Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, in Aaron\u2019s name,\nshe\u2019s paying it forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have two goals\nwith this project,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to carry on Aaron\u2019s wish for sports to be\ninclusive for everyone. I think that\u2019s pretty incredible for a 15-year-old kid\nto be thinking about other kids who might not have opportunities to play\nfootball and want to include them. It meant a lot to me that he did that. The\nidea of [distributing] sports balls for kids to play with at lunch or after\nschool aligns with what he was thinking. It is not just for the kids who are\ntaking phys-ed, it is not just for the kids that are registered in sports, it\nis for anyone who just wants to grab a ball and try it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe just wanted\neveryone to be included and have fun with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since developing her\nidea and taking it to various individuals in the community, from staff at the\nTown of Aurora to members of local service clubs, the response she has received\nhas been overwhelming. Soccer balls have steadily rolled in, as have a handful\nof footballs, but she and supporters of the cause are looking to do much more\nand welcome community donations to make it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the\nsports balls, Karen is planning for the teens who knew Aaron or were impacted\nby his life, to come together to paint and decorate wooden bins to store the\ndonations at various schools around Aurora, each of which will bear a memorial\nplaque in his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom everything that\nthe students have shared with me, what stands out the most and what I would\nlike to be remembered and known about Aaron is that he was the guy that built\nother people up,\u201d says Karen. \u201cHe wanted everyone to feel good and I had\nstudents that came to me and said, \u2018Aaron was my first friend when I moved to\nCanada,\u2019 or \u2018Aaron was my first friend when I started at Aurora Heights,\u2019 or\n\u2018He was the first person who talked to me in high school when I was nervous.\u2019 I\njust heard countless comments like that, and knowing he wanted everyone to be\nincluded in what he was doing was inspiring. I have a box filled with letters\nfrom students at Aurora High and it was like everyone got together and wrote\nthe same message in their own words: that he was kind and generous, he knew how\nto light up a room, help people stay brighter \u2013 and that\u2019s who he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnything in the\nfuture that has his name on it, that\u2019s what it stands for: making kids feel\ngood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron Bank-Sedore is\nsurvived by parents Karen Bank (Carla Fernandes) and Kelly Sedore (Michelle\nVaughan), and his brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on how to support Karen Bank\u2019s program in memory of Aaron Bank-Sedore, contact Sandy Bundy at <\/em>ssbundy@sympatico.ca<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a few short weeks ago, there was a stir amongst students at Aurora High School. A football landing on a roof is not normally a cause for too much concern, but this was no ordinary football; it was a football that had, in recent months, become synonymous with student Aaron Bank-Sedore, a budding athlete […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2020-01-02-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6DO","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 02:02:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}