Jack McFarland calls Dylan Curran the heart and soul of Staples High baseball.
Chad Knight calls him the heart and soul of all Staples High.
“Dylan may be the kindest human being you’ll ever meet,” his mom, Stacie, said. “I’ve had adults tell me, ‘We wish we could bottle up some of his kindness and put it into a few people we know.’ He doesn’t see bad. He doesn’t see evil.
“Where you may want to steer Dylan away from a homeless person on the street, he’ll just walk up and go, ‘Hey, dude, how are you doing?’ A nursing home, a hospital, it’s, ‘How are you feeling today?’”
Dylan asks teachers how their vacation was before they can ask the class. Over four years he was part of the Wreckers’ football, basketball and baseball teams and, just as importantly, they were part of him.
“He is the light of Staples High School,” said McFarland, who coached the Wreckers to state Class LL baseball championships in 2017 and ’19. “Dylan starts his day at 7:15 in the cafeteria, big smile on his face, hugging everybody before school starts at 7:30.”
Dylan Curran, 19, has an intellectual disability. He also is graduating from Staples this spring and will attend the RISE program (Reaching Independence through Supported Education) for students 18-21 at Sacred Heart University.
It was back in preschool that A Child’s Place in Westport called Jim and Stacie Curran to point out Dylan wasn’t meeting milestones. Dylan is their first and there was so much to understand. The school connected them with the district and Dylan has been getting services since.
“You talk about perspective,” Stacie said. “You have these big dreams when you are a first-time parent and then you find out quickly what’s important. No, you’re not going to have the super athlete of the world. No, you’re not going to have the smartest kid going to Harvard.
“I’ll tell you what Dylan is. He is happiest. He is the gift of happiness.”
There is something transposed in calling Dylan Curran a special needs student. For we are the ones who need special students like him. Mark Twain wrote these 14 words and they seem especially poignant: “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
No matter the time, no matter the town, middle and high school can be difficult, even cruel. Dylan is the one who speaks kindness and happiness and everyone in Westport understands.
Knight, A.J. Konstanty, Jake Thaw, Harry Azadian, outstanding athletes in Dylan’s age group, have been especially supportive. Knight, who played for Duke as a freshman this year before COVID-19 shut down our world, said he went for a run a few days ago with a couple of friends. They saw Dylan near Elvira’s near the beach.
“I was trying to have a conversation with Dylan and we kept getting interrupted,” Knight said. “Every single person in town just kept saying hi. Everyone loves him.”
“Really loves him,” McFarland said.
Pressed on why he thinks that is, Dylan said, “I’m not sure.”
Chad Knight knows.
“He always puts a smile on your face,” he said. “In a game when you’re down, feeling like you’re going to lose, he’s the one kid who finds the light and makes it seem like everything will be OK. He’s someone you can lean on. He’s so positive.”
Dylan has a 17-year-old sister, Shea, also a senior at Staples, and she is headed to Lehigh. Carly is 15. Charlie is 12 and loves baseball. Stacie said, with a laugh, that even Dylan’s siblings wonder, “Does Dylan ever have a bad day? It’s not fair. He’s never gets angry.”
Now, that is happy.
It was in middle school that Knight saw the wonderful character emerging. They met at a Westport Little League Challenger Division game. Knight and Chris Drbal had volunteered as buddies. Knight had led Westport to the U.S. championship game at the Little League World Series the year before. Everyone knew who he was.
“I was paired with Dylan and he was full of energy, so fun to be around,” Knight said. “He lit up the entire park that day.
“I’d walk to school and he’d scream my name and go, ‘We ready to play ball?’ You see him. You smile. You just want to hug him. He’s wonderful.”
McFarland met Dylan when he was in elementary school at one of his Little League winter clinics. At the end, McFarland always gives two jerseys to the kids who hustle most and work the hardest. Dylan got one.
“He lit up,” McFarland said. “I couldn’t forget him from that day on.”
When he was a sophomore, Dylan was with the baseball junior varsity. The Staples varsity lost in the first round of the FCIAC playoffs.
“I said we need to change something up,” McFarland said. “We brought him up and went on a run, won five straight and won the state championship. He’s the loudest kid in there. All positive. He’s a calming influence, especially on me.”
McFarland recalled the 2017 state quarterfinals against Westhill.
“We were up like 11-4, 12-4 and they’re chipping away, chipping away,” McFarland said. “It was a heavyweight fight, a big-time game. I’m losing it a little. We’re losing our cool.”
All of a sudden McFarland felt an arm around him in the dugout.
“It was Dylan,” McFarland said. “He goes, ‘Don’t worry, Coach. We got this.’”
It got to two-on, two-out in the last inning, but final score: Staples 12, Westhill 11.
“I’m telling you this straight out,” McFarland said. “We would not have two state championships and a conference championship without Dylan around. No way.”
Such is the power of positivity and kindness.
“He’s the man,” Dylan said of Jack McFarland.
There were the moments.
The moment Dylan threw out the first pitch last year at Little League Day when Staples played Ridgefield.
“A bullet, strike, place went crazy,” McFarland said.
Originally an assistant manager as a freshman, in November 2016 there was a special play designed for him. He scored a touchdown against Greenwich. He was lifted up by his teammates. They chanted his name. Staples lost the game. Everyone won.
“They counted it in the books and everything,” Stacie said. “To allow this individual to shine is the gift that the community gave to him. Isn’t that what makes a great community?”
For four years, he was there game after game, practice after practice, bus rides, everything. Out there on the sidelines, for hours in the cold, or in the heat, encouraging, cheering on his teammates. If you look up the sports on the CIAC website, he was a roster player. Stacie said he’d be given various uniform jerseys, he’d wear at home, on the weekends.
At the end of the basketball season this year, his senior year, against Fairfield Warde, Dylan got his chance to score in a game.
In December, he won the football team’s Dan DeVito Citizenship Award for commitment, character, leadership.
A vital part of all this, McFarland said, is that Dylan has a great family. He said Jim, who has a Volkswagen dealership, and Stacie trust the coaches. Rides home are lined up by players when needed. They got his back. He has got theirs.
“He’s such a great kid,” Knight said.
“Baseball is his favorite,” Stacie said. “When Chad graduated last year, he gave Dylan one of his bats and wrote a magnificent letter to Dylan. Chad’s an amazing young man.
“Without a season, the baseball team has had Zoom calls. Dylan misses the contact and when he’s on one of them, he’s so overtaken by emotion, tears are streaming down his face. He loves those kids.”
This is how much they loved him back at Staples: They held a signing day for him when he chose Sacred Heart.
Still, even for the happiest kid, no school, no big graduation night — where Dylan undoubtedly would have gotten an amazing ovation — and no baseball is a tough thing.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Dylan said. “My coaches and the players, I haven’t seen them.”
And then he says, “I’m fine.”
The day in March before coronavirus locked down everything, the family and McFarland went over to Sacred Heart in Fairfield to visit. Dylan got a chance to meet athletic director Bobby Valentine.
“We said, ‘He loves sports. He wants to be involved in some way,’” McFarland said. “I’m like, ‘He’s really good at what he does.’”
Dylan Curran does positivity. Dylan does kindness. He does happiness better than anyone.
jeff.jacobs@hearstmediact.com; @jeffjacobs123
