To honor fallen veterans, the girls softball team joined the Heroes on Helmets program, a nationwide initiative that commemorates veterans who perished in action by displaying memorial stickers on players helmets. West is one of eight schools from across the nation participating in the program.

“My assistant coach, Don Rothermich, was at a coaches convention and there was a presentation done by a gentleman from Utah, who coached a little league football team and I think was a veteran himself. He wanted to pay homage to veterans who had been killed in duty,” head softball coach and history teacher Jeff Chazen said. “So he had stickers made of American flags and then put the name and information about each of those veterans on the flag. He then gave each of his players a veteran to dedicate their season to. He gave this presentation and all of a sudden this local organization started to get requests from all over the United States.”

“When we are in our pregame huddle we take a moment  and think about our person who was killed in action and hopefully the girls are saying their names and thinking, ‘thank you for the sacrifice. I get to do great things everyday because of what you have done for me.

After hearing about the program, Chazen decided to have his team participate.

“We are the first ones in Missouri to do this, in St. Louis and Missouri. We have little stickers on our helmets and each girl has a different veteran,” Chazen said. ”What is cool about this is the veterans they gave us are all from Missouri, and two of them are from St. Louis.”

The Heroes on Helmets program has players adopt heroes who have recently perished overseas in either Iraq or Afghanistan, as well provides basic information on them such as their rank and military unit.

“We have had the girls look up their people and if they want to they can request a family contact, if the family has given permission to be contacted,” Chazen said. “I know some of them have looked up their person, just to look up facts about them, like what they liked to do and what they were like as a person. And so they have definitely put some meaning behind the names and faces.”

Once the softball team adopted the program, the girls volleyball team, lead by head coach Susan Dean, decided to join as well..

“We contacted the people at Heroes on Helmets and explained that we don’t wear helmets so couldn’t put the flag on our helmets but could we put them on our athletic lockers,” Dean said. “Each player has a persons name, so the last thing they see when they shut their locker everyday before they go up to practice is that person’s name. Just to remind them about the sacrifice that others make for us.”

Across both of the teams, athletes have adopted 50 fallen veterans.

“It’s kind of inspiring because not only am I playing for myself but I am also playing for someone who made the greater sacrifice so that I can play,” softball player and sophomore Taylor Caten said.

The Heroes on Helmets, which began back in 2013, continues to develop as a program.

“We make an announcement at each home game about what we are doing, but nothing has happened. It’s still early in the process, I think if we do it for a couple years that will help it out,” Chazen said. “We are hoping through publicity and through other media hopefully the Post Dispatch will pick up on this and then we will try to rally the cause here in St. Louis and then have it spread.”

“It’s kind of inspiring because not only am I playing for myself but I am also playing for someone who made the greater sacrifice so that I can play.

Besides raising awareness for fallen veterans, student athletes can now further appreciate the opportunities they have in America.

“It kind of puts the game into perspective that it really is just a game and how lucky we are that we get to play it,” Dean said. “When we are in our pregame huddle we take a moment  and think about our person who was killed in action and hopefully the girls are saying their names and thinking, ‘thank you for the sacrifice. I get to do great things everyday because of what you have done for me.’”