My conversation with Billy Omeltchenko: I’ve known Billy for over 20 years and I’ve always admired him greatly. Billy is an accomplished athlete – a star multi-sport athlete in high school, a Division One basketball at Princeton in the 1970s and a short stint playing professional basketball. To me, it isn’t Billy’s athletic skills that I admire, it’s his commitment to our children through youth sports.

My children and literally thousands of other children have benefitted from Billy’s selfless service as a coach, coordinator and commissioner of youth sports programs. Billy is level-headed and thoughtful. His approach is to make sure that children of all skill levels, their coaches and their parents have enjoyable and fulfilling youth sports experiences. It is not lost on Billy that it is the adults that often get in the way of those good experiences by being too intense and too vocal. Billy’s down to earth approach has helped put children and the adults in positions to be successful – success being defined as having fun, making friends and learning some useful life lessons along the way.