American Boy Fall Brawl Makes First Long Island Stop

Luke Walser will return to Bay Shore (N.Y.) High School on Sunday for the newest Fall Brawl American Boy tournament.

Walser is a junior midfielder on the Marist team that will play Fairfield and St. John’s in round robin scrimmages. All three teams have Bay Shore alumni playing.

“It’s going to be really cool,” Walser said. “It’s basically the field that I learned how to play on. I’ve been playing there since I can remember.”

But the tournament is about more than lacrosse for Walser and his family. American Boy was founded in response to the death of Matt Megale from a drug overdose in March 2017 to help raise awareness of the opioid epidemic and secure more successful treatment outcomes.

They share that hope with the Walser family, which lost Joe Walser to a drug-related death when he was only 20 in September 2021.

“Obviously, it’s put a huge hole in our family,” said Luke Walser, who has an older brother, Jack, and an older sister, Kerry, who played at Hofstra. “It’s brought us together closer with our immediate family and friends through such a tragedy because they’ve been there for us. It’s been tough.”

Megale was one of more than 70,000 drug overdose victims in 2017, and the numbers continued to climb even with efforts to combat the issue. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were more than 106,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States in 2021 when Joe Walser died. There were almost 110,000 deaths in 2022.

“When Matt passed, there was very little talk about it,” said Matt’s father, Larry Megale. “People would hide it. Matt hid it. And if it’s not out in the open and it’s not talked about, then people who are in trouble, they’re going to hide it. And if they’re in that situation, they’re less likely to get help. Things start falling down for them. It is important to keep it going, just get the word out.”

American Boy addresses three impediments to recovery. The organization offers scholarships to those in recovery so that their professional treatment can extend beyond the 28 days most commonly covered by insurance because addicts often need more than a month of treatment for it to work.

American Boy also provides career training that extends beyond treatment. It connects those battling addiction with vetted specialists with proven track records so they receive the best treatment available.

And the organization works on fighting the stigma of addiction. All ticket sales at americanboy.org will go toward the scholarships.

“If we save one person, then all this is worthwhile,” Larry Megale said.

The first Fall Brawl tournament came in 2019 in Centreville, Va. Many of his former teammates from Virginia continue to support Megale’s American Boy project, and American Boy will host a weekend back in Centreville again with women’s teams from Virginia, Towson, Richmond and South Florida playing Oct. 25 and men’s teams from Virginia, Georgetown and Air Force playing Oct. 26.

Since the beginning, though, American Boy has pushed into new locations each year. This is the first time on Long Island.

“It’s been pretty easy to expand because when I talk to coaches and players about doing this, people want to get on board really, really quickly,” Megale said. “Coaches want their players to hear our message. Players want to, and they want to do something about it. It’s important that we expand, get the word out because one of the biggest things we want to do, and what’s really happening during these events, is basically raising the conversation, getting awareness out there.”

As with all American Boy tournaments, Sunday features more than strong college competition. Each participating team will also host a clinic for youth between games.

At 2:10 p.m., American Boy will host a ceremony and talk about its mission and introduce guest speaker Timmy Brooks, who will share his story of overcoming drug addiction and subsequent jail time to helping Cabrini to an NCAA championship and starting the drug treatment program Synergy.

He is hoping that people in the audience who are struggling or know someone struggling will not feel so alone and will be strengthened to seek help.

“The power of storytelling is very real,” Brooks said. “And there’s a place and a world where how I express my own experience and my feelings in accordance with that experience can and has brought a lot of value to the people I’ve tried to help. And then there’s a whole host of scenarios where the education and the psychology and the tools that are available to help people independent of sharing an experience are equally or more meaningful.”

Brooks was guest speaker at the first American Boy tournament held. The organization is one that he has worked with at Synergy, and he’s happy to return to speak again.

“My job on Sunday’s just to show up and tell the truth and speak from the heart, and then within that, I would expect to talk about what my life has been and how it changed and where it is today and hopefully have that drive some themes and purpose in relationship to the values and mission of American Boy,” he said.

American Boy also will present the first scholarship in the name of Joe Walser during the ceremony. He is remembered as a standout lacrosse player for Bay Shore who had a big heart on and off the field.

“The biggest thing is just how, especially as a lacrosse player, how scrappy he was on the field,” Luke Walser said. “He just didn’t care if it was the biggest guy. He wasn’t the biggest guy, but he would put his head down and put his head right into his chest. He just played fearless.”

The Walsers have their own JKW Live Well Foundation that supports the Bay Shore community by raising funds with an annual 5k that the entire Marist team competed in last month and events like coat drives. After Joe Walser’s passing, a GoFundMe page raised almost $60,000, more than double what was asked for by a Walser family friend.

“It gets easier to live through his name and try to make the most of his memory,” Luke Walser said. “Doing things like the foundation really helps and just having days that are dedicated to him and trying to help other people in similar situations to have things like that prevented.”

American Boy is doing its part to help prevent more tragedies. Brooks says it’s harder than ever for the young adult men and women to get connected and align with who they want to be.

“There’s a tremendous amount of disruptors, things that are disrupting the opportunity to make that easier,” Brooks said. “Substance use is an example of that. Technology is another. COVID is one. I think that the Megale family and American Boy, we need more organizations like that. We need the ones that are around to be bigger for more people to get touched.”

American Boy is trying to emphasize, too, that the opioid crisis can affect anyone. Its founders know first-hand the pain it can cause.

They will share their message and mission at Bay Shore in a special homecoming for Walser with a cause.

“It shows me how many people I have in my corner,” Luke Walser said. “And that I just have a lot of people that support and care about me and my family. It’s going to mean a lot.”