Gregg Sternaman History

Gregg Sternaman has been an avid participant, coach and follower of sports his entire life. He began his sporting life in a neighborhood filled with boys who loved baseball, basketball and football. There were games in the driveway shooting hoops. There were long touchdown passes in the biggest yard on the block. And Gregg's backyard had a permanent pathway from first base to home pounded out by kids who knocked fly balls into the neighbors' windows and yards.

Sternaman played catcher on his Little League baseball teams, forward on the basketball teams, quarterback on the football teams and wrestled too. He earned the title of Honorable Mention All State in Ohio for football and was a State Sectional champion wrestler in Ohio, as well.

Tapped for West Point Military Academy, he blew his knee in boot camp. After the football team for Marshall University was killed in a fiery plane crash on a rainy West Virginia night, Sternaman tried out for football for Coach Jack Lengyel, who rebuilt the Marshall Football program. The damage in his knee ended his career on the field, but the passion for sports stayed alive and burning bright in his heart.

Unable able to play sports, he turned his love for playing the games into an investment in teaching young people how to play. He started his coaching life by recruiting kids in his neighborhood to go out for Park District baseball. He moved on to coach baseball, football, and wrestling in area high schools.

He has worked as comptroller for The Book Stall which has allowed him the flexibility to work with young men in the development of their ability to play a game, as well as their understanding of who they are and how they are to use their gifts and abilities on and off the field.

"The Sterny Way " has taught many a young man in the Highland Park and Libertyville areas what it means to be a disciplined, confident, team player and leader in all they do. Coach Sternaman's "Sterny-isms", brief aphorisms that keep kids on top of their game, laughing at themselves and with others, have been passed around the teams who have played for him and memorialized in a 2009 T shirt in his honor.

In November, 2001, Coach Sternaman noticed a bleeding mole on the middle of his back. After a biopsy, it was discovered that Coach had level one melanoma skin cancer. Surgery was performed to remove lymph nodes to guard against the melanoma metastasizing. Coach Sternaman was treated with interferon for a month. With regular follow up visits to the doctor, he remained cancer free for eight years.

In the past two weeks it was discovered that the melanoma has returned. He has late stage metastatic melanoma which has spread to his brain, lung and other body parts. Coach is currently undergoing brain radiation and oral chemotherapy. The typical survival rate for this cancer is 4 months to one year.

THE STERNY WAY Foundation is being established to honor and remember Coach Sternaman's passion for sports and coaching, by providing sporting equipment and opportunity for underprivileged youth. Coach Sternaman has taught his teams to play fair and live fair, keeping everybody a part of the team. THE STERNY Foundation seeks to keep alive Coach Sternaman's love for the game, and love for the kids who play it, by giving away sporting equipment and entrance fees for kids who could otherwise not afford to get in the game.

When Coach was diagnosed, his first thoughts were of family, friends and doing something worthwhile for all the kids who love sports as much as he did throughout his life. His concept was to take the blessings of his life, and "pay it forward" to others.

After all, that's THE STERNY WAY.