Winter Park YMCA launches Stewart L. Colling Endowment Fund

For nearly 50 years, members of the Colling family have called the Winter Park YMCA their second home.

Lee Jay Colling was on the founding board of the Winter Park Y in the 1960s, getting his family involved in the process — from little league to board leadership.

“We’ve just always been YMCA people. … In our family it’s always been a family affair,” Lee said.

His son Stewart would start in the Y’s youth basketball league, and work his way up, 40 years later, to president of the YMCA board. Stewart learned to dribble on the Y’s court as a kid going to Lakemont Elementary, and perfected his shots late at night prying the gym’s doors open after dark when he was a high schooler at Winter Park High. He and his friends would play until the cops saw the florescent lights through the windows and kicked them out.

His skills refined, after high school Stewart moved his practices to a gym down the road at Rollins College as a member of the school’s basketball team in the late ’70s, and then across the pond after graduation playing on a touring team in Europe in 1981. After that it was back to the Winter Park YMCA, where he played in a 3-on-3 Thursday night league, and brought his ever-growing family to learn and grow just like his father had with his siblings and him.

“We started bringing our kids here in baby carriages, and then they were in soccer cleats, volleyball knee pads, and soon, full-out flag football gear,” Stewart’s wife, Nancy Kazyk Colling says of the pair’s children, Clay, 22, Casey, 18, and Jackson, 15.

In April 2009, when Stewart, a successful local trial lawyer, passed away suddenly of a heart attack at age 49, it only made sense, Nancy said, to recommend Stewart’s friends and family to send donations to the Winter Park YMCA in his honor, in lieu of flowers.

She was shocked and honored when, within weeks, $30,000 had been donated in his name. She says as the mourning period passed, the Collings looked to move forward while also honoring Stewart, always coming back to their ties with the Y.

On Thursday, Nov. 1, the Y along, with the Collings and more than 100 members of the community, came together in Stewart’s name to officially launch the Stewart L. Colling Endowment Fund, which will sponsor kids in need with scholarships to participate in youth sports programs at the Winter Park YMCA. With $200,000 in the fund, starting next year, Winter Park YMCA Executive Director Bud Oliver says it should be able to provide 150 kids with scholarships to play sports at the Y.

To learn more about the Stewart L. Colling Endowment Fund and how to contribute, you can contact Bud Oliver at the Winter Park YMCA at [email protected]. For information about the YMCA and the youth sports program the fund will support, go to ymcacentralflorida.com/y-locations/winter-park or visit the Y at 1201 N. Lakemont Ave. in Winter Park.

“Our goal is to establish a fund that’s going long-term to take the pressure off our own internal scholarship funding,” Oliver said. In 2011, he said, the Winter Park YMCA gave out $350,000 in assistance funding — $130,000 of that coming from fundraisers, and the rest from the Y’s general funding budget. Stewart’s endowment, he said, will be able to help fund a large chunk of that deficit in youth sports scholarships.

Nancy said she hopes the fund will grow every year, so that as time goes on more and more children will get the opportunity to enjoy the Y’s programming as her husband and kids have, while also keeping Stewart’s name, memory and love for the Y alive.

“The more years that go on, the less people around here will remember Stewart … but it’s going to be cool that years from now when my kids are involved and running this fund that their dad’s name will still be out there,” she said.” It’s a way to do something really great while doing something he’d want us to.”

In months to come, a plaque in honor of Stewart will be placed in the Winter Park Y’s gymnasium – now renovated from the days when he’d break in for extra practice. But, Nancy says, the gym still serves the same purpose: teaching kids life lessons through sports in a safe, friendly environment.

“My hope is that one day years down the road, some 10-year-old kid will be in there shooting hoops and look up and see the plaque and ask, ‘Who’s that guy?’ and that someone will tell them his story,” Nancy said. “He deserves to be remembered, and I can’t think of any better way than that.”