Chance to Touch Lives 'Drives' Huron's Sesi
May 25, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
Only a few times, collecting more than 300,000 cans and bottles was as gross as it might sound.
Of course there was some mold, and a few bags had dead mice in them. Once, a bag was filled with ants, and Katie Sesi and her family would find them crawling around their car for the next month.
Another time, a duck bit her.
But those are just some of the funnier memories that were more than worth the opportunity for Sesi to meet and help an untold number of people, beginning when she was 6 years old – truly a life’s work so far for the Ann Arbor Huron junior.
Sesi is a recipient of an MHSAA/Lake Trust Credit Union “Community Service Award” for her work raising $40,000 over the last decade for University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. Playing her violin at the Ann Arbor Art Fair annually beginning in elementary school, and then taking on a can drive that’s seen her canvass neighborhoods all over her city and surrounding area, Sesi has managed to raise $10,000 every two years since 2010.
She’s also met at least 50 of her donors over that decade and received in the neighborhood of 300 letters from people encouraging her work and asking how else they might help.
“Meeting new people is just a good experience. It’s really interesting to learn about other people’s lives,” Sesi said. “My favorite part was the personal interaction. When I started doing the can drives, I didn’t think I’d talk to a bunch of people and learn their life stories. But people leave me notes that say, ‘Hey, you should come talk to me.’ For me, just talking to people is really fun. The unexpected chance to meet more people has been very memorable.”
It’s also an incredible story, considering Sesi’s decision to start lending a hand as barely an elementary schooler.
She’s played the violin since she was 3, and recalled reading a newspaper article about two girls playing their violins at a similar outside event. She thought to herself, I should do the same. Her mother, Yvonne Sesi, challenged her to make it happen.
Katie then realized that being 6, she didn’t really need the money people would give her while passing by. So she began saving toward what would eventually become that first $10,000 donation.
At 9, with her mom at the wheel, Katie started her can drives. The first netted only $9. But she didn’t give up. At times she would work neighborhoods every weekend, leaving a flier at people’s houses explaining her mission and letting them know when she’d be back to collect.
Soon, the car was regularly full with the front seats moved up as far as possible to make room for the overflowing supply of returnables. She estimates she’s collected cans and bottles “several hundred” times.
Sesi’s first donation to C.S. Mott went toward building “The Treehouse” indoor playground, and subsequent donations have gone toward research of childhood cancers and the hospital’s Child and Family Life center, which provides support for patients and their families during treatment.
Yvonne is a doctor, and Katie is interested in becoming a pediatric oncologist (or going into business, or perhaps both). Helping children is especially close to her heart; one of her most memorable can drive interactions came with a family that had lost a son to lymphoma who had been treated at Mott; they invited her in to meet their newborn daughter they’d adopted after his death.
She’s choosing to donate half of her $1,000 award to U-M’s Chad Tough Fund, which directs funds to childhood cancer research in honor of Chad Carr, the grandson of retired Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr who died in November 2015 at age 5 after a fight with pediatric brain cancer. She’ll donate the other half of her award to the Ann Arbor Huron girls tennis team; she’s an all-state No. 1 singles player and team captain.
A regular in some neighborhoods, where people recognize her from past drives, Sesi said she’s learned a lot about perseverance and hard work – but again, is most inspired by the many people she’s met along the way.
“I knew early on that I wanted the money to go to children with cancer because it seemed to me completely unfair that kids should be denied a carefree and fun childhood,” Sesi wrote in her application for the award. “All together, I found that people have tremendous hearts and an unlimited capacity for supporting, helping and giving to others."
The Community Service Awards are sponsored by the Michigan High School Athletic Association and Lake Trust Credit Union to recognize student-athletes' efforts to improve the lives of others in their communities. In addition to the $1,000 award, the Lake Trust Foundation is awarding an additional $500 to each honoree, to be donated to a non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization of the awardee’s choice.
PHOTOS: (Top) Katie Sesi, next to her violin case, has played to raise money every summer since she was 6 at the Ann Arbor Art Fair. (Middle) Sesi has received hundreds of notes like this one thanking her for her efforts. (Photos courtesy of Katie Sesi.)
2017 Community Service Awards
Sunday: Colon "Yard Squad" - Read
Monday: Bailey Brown, Brighton - Read
Tuesday: Justice Ottinger, Newaygo - Read
2023 Forsythe Award Celebrates Leinaar's 40 Years Dedicated to School Sports
By Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
March 8, 2023
Few people in Michigan have had a longer-lasting influence on the rules and policies of educational athletics than Frankfort’s Karen Leinaar, who has served in several roles locally, statewide and nationally over more than 40 years contributing to the school sports community.
Thank you, Bill Baker.
The longtime teacher, coach, principal and superintendent during a career that stretched across multiple schools – including Leinaar’s growing up, Delton Kellogg – made an impression on the standout multi-sport athlete before she graduated from high school in 1977. Baker’s philosophy and work led Leinaar to study education at Michigan State University and then brought her back as Delton’s athletic director to begin four decades of making the same impact on children in her hometown and eventually in hometowns all over Michigan and beyond.
Baker died in 2009, but not before continuing to mentor Leinaar through many good times and tough ones.
“The man had two daughters that I grew up with, his wife was a teacher, and he demonstrated to all of us – he never missed an event – that we were important to him. That even though we weren’t his kids, we were his kids and athletics was a way to help kids become better people – and for some kids it was the only thing that they had positive in their life,” Leinaar said. “And he made it known just to that individual kid how important their participation was and their involvement, and how that helped them become the person that they were.
“That to me was such an example of how to help people be good people, that I just took that role on.”
It’s a role in which she continues to serve. Leinaar began her career as an athletic administrator in 1982, and as the interim athletic director currently at Frankfort High School is serving her fifth district in that position. Since June 2019, she also has served as executive director of the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (MIAAA), the professional organization for school sports administrators in the state with a membership of nearly 700.
To recognize that longtime and continuing impact, Leinaar has been named the 2023 honoree for the Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Charles E. Forsythe Award.
The annual award is in its 46th year and named after former MHSAA Executive Director Charles E. Forsythe, the Association's first full-time and longest-serving chief executive. Forsythe Award recipients are selected each year by the MHSAA Representative Council, based on an individual's outstanding contributions to the interscholastic athletics community.
Leinaar also served 22 years on the MHSAA’s Representative Council and a four-year term from 2009-13 on the Board of Directors for the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), and just last week was named to the 2023 class of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) Hall of Fame.
“It is impossible even to estimate the number of students, coaches, administrators and others who have been affected by the work Karen Leinaar has done to make school sports the best they can be – not only in her communities, but across Michigan and throughout the country,” MHSAA Executive Director Mark Uyl said. “There are few who have equaled her dedication and her support and promotion of the ideals of school-based sports. She has always placed an emphasis on being in the room, on the field or at the arena, actively participating in her leadership roles, and our programs are better for it.”
Leinaar first served as athletic director at Delton Kellogg for nearly 17 years, from March 1982 through October 1998. She spent three years at Gaylord, then 8½ at Benzie Central before taking over at Bear Lake in November 2010 and spending the next decade organizing athletic programs for students in grades 5-12 before retiring in January 2021. She came out of retirement to return to the athletic director’s chair this past fall as interim AD at Frankfort. She has completed nearly four years as MIAAA executive director, moving into that position after previously serving nine years as an assistant to the executive.
Leinaar began her service on the Representative Council in Fall 1999 and completed her last term as a statewide at-large representative at the Fall 2021 meeting.
She has been honored several times for her contributions. She received the MHSAA’s Women In Sports Leadership Award in 1998, a Citation from the NFHS in 2000, and she was named MIAAA Athletic Director of the Year in 2001. She received an MHSAA’s Allen W. Bush Award in 2014 – recognition given for work done generally behind the scenes and with little attention.
“This is the top of the mountain, per se. This one does mean so much,” Leinaar said of the Forsythe Award. “The names that are associated with this over the years, I never thought I’d be put in that group.”
Leinaar remains a continuous source of support at a multitude of MHSAA championship events, and during her time on Council was one of the most frequent representatives handing out trophies and medals to champions and runners-up at Finals events. She began while athletic director at Delton Kellogg hosting the MHSAA Volleyball Finals in Class B and Class C and continues to assist with those championships now played at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek.
She also hosted Competitive Cheer Finals at Delton Kellogg in 1996 and 1997, Ski Finals while at Gaylord, and many more championship events across the Lower Peninsula. She continues to assist at the MHSAA’s Lower Peninsula Cross Country and Track & Field Finals.
After attending Delton Kellogg High School, Leinaar earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education, health and recreation, with a minor in driver education, from MSU in 1982. She completed a master’s in athletic administration from Western Michigan University in 1994.
Leinaar has been a member for 40 years of both the MIAAA and NIAAA, and has served as chairperson of the MIAAA Annual Conference and awards chairperson for both the state and national bodies. She’s also served as chairperson of the MIAAA’s Exemplary Athletic Program.
Past recipients of the Charles E. Forsythe Award
1978 - Brick Fowler, Port Huron; Paul Smarks, Warren
1979 - Earl Messner, Reed City; Howard Beatty, Saginaw
1980 - Max Carey, Freesoil
1981 - Steven Sluka, Grand Haven; Samuel Madden, Detroit
1982 - Ernest Buckholz, Mt. Clemens; T. Arthur Treloar, Petoskey
1983 - Leroy Dues, Detroit; Richard Maher, Sturgis
1984 - William Hart, Marquette; Donald Stamats, Caro
1985 - John Cotton, Farmington; Robert James, Warren
1986 - William Robinson, Detroit; Irving Soderland, Norway
1987 - Jack Streidl, Plainwell; Wayne Hellenga, Decatur
1988 - Jack Johnson, Dearborn; Alan Williams, North Adams
1989 - Walter Bazylewicz, Berkley; Dennis Kiley, Jackson
1990 - Webster Morrison, Pickford; Herbert Quade, Benton Harbor
1991 - Clifford Buckmaster, Petoskey; Donald Domke, Northville
1992 - William Maskill, Kalamazoo; Thomas G. McShannock, Muskegon
1993 - Roy A. Allen Jr., Detroit; John Duncan, Cedarville
1994 - Kermit Ambrose, Royal Oak
1995 - Bob Perry, Lowell
1996 - Charles H. Jones, Royal Oak
1997 - Michael A. Foster, Richland; Robert G. Grimes, Battle Creek
1998 - Lofton C. Greene, River Rouge; Joseph J. Todey, Essexville
1999 - Bernie Larson, Battle Creek
2000 - Blake Hagman, Kalamazoo; Jerry Cvengros, Escanaba
2001 - Norm Johnson, Bangor; George Lovich, Canton
2002 - John Fundukian, Novi
2003 - Ken Semelsberger, Port Huron
2004 - Marco Marcet, Frankenmuth
2005 - Jim Feldkamp, Troy
2006 - Dan McShannock, Midland; Dail Prucka, Monroe
2007 - Keith Eldred, Williamston; Tom Hickman, Spring Lake
2008 - Jamie Gent, Haslett; William Newkirk, Sanford Meridian
2009 - Paul Ellinger, Cheboygan
2010 - Rudy Godefroidt, Hemlock; Mike Boyd, Waterford
2011 - Eric C. Federico, Trenton
2012 - Bill Mick, Midland
2013 - Jim Gilmore, Tecumseh; Dave Hutton, Grandville
2014 - Dan Flynn, Escanaba
2015 - Hugh Matson, Saginaw
2016 - Gary Hice, Petoskey; Gina Mazzolini, Lansing
2017 - Chuck Nurek, Rochester Hills
2018 - Gary Ellis, Allegan
2019 - Jim Derocher, Negaunee; Fredrick J. Smith, Stevensville
2020 - Michael Garvey, Lawton
2021 - Leroy Hackley Jr., Byron Center; Patti Tibaldi, Traverse City
2022 - Bruce Horsch, Houghton
PHOTOS (Top) Karen Leinaar, left, awards the 2022 Division 4 volleyball finalist trophy to Indian River Inland Lakes coach Nicole Moore. (Middle) Leinaar accepts the MHSAA's Women In Sports Leadership Award in 1998.