Nyack Honors Former Coach at Siegriest Memorial Tournament

Margaret Siegriest said she knew how her husband Dave would have felt about the tournament that bears his name.

"He would have loved this," she said. "He would absolutely love it."

The Red and Black Club is hosting the seventh annual Dave Siegriest Memorial Baseball Tournament, which began with two games and a ceremony honoring Siegriest Friday at Nyack High School.

Siegriest, who won 241 games and two section championships in 15 seasons coaching the Nyack varsity before his death from pancreatic cancer, was known as much for the connections he made with people there and as a physical education teacher at Upper Nyack Elementary School as he was for his teams' success.

"It means a lot to us for my father to be emulated still," Sean Siegriest said. "He was viewed as such a good guy in this community and he touched so many lives. To be able to look out and see his name on the scoreboard and to have people get together and have an event like this, it really means a lot.

"He did touch so many lives, not only as a coach, but as a teacher. We couldn't go anywhere without my dad running into somebody he knew."

Now it is often his family that hears from people he knew.

"I can't tell you how many people come up to me and say they still miss him," Sean Siegriest said. "All I can say is, me too. At the same time, it means a lot more to me knowing he still gets carried around not only by myself, my brother and my mother, my family, but by everybody else."

The two-day, four-team tournament is now in its seventh year. The consolation will be played at 4 p.m. today with the championship at 7 p.m. 

The ceremony honoring Siegriest between the two games included remarks by one of his former players, Mike Wanamaker.

"Coach loved teaching phys ed at Upper Nyack Elementary School," Wanamaker said. "He loved coaching baseball and football and he loved Nyack.  He loved his family more than anything else. He helped his wife Margaret raise two sons, Sean and Brendan, into fine men I aam proud to call my friends."

Joe Sigillo, now in his fourth year as Nyack's Athletic Director, knew Siegriest from his days as a coach in the county.

"It means a lot to the whole community, the baseball community and Nyack," Sigillo said of the tournament. "I never heard anything but glowing, positive remarks about Dave, not only as a coach, but as a person. It's always positive things about how he touched lives and taught life lessons. That's really special." 

"It's a wonderful, wonderful remembrance," Margaret Siegriest siad. "My husband said he wanted to be remembered. If you know my husband, nobody who met him would ever forget him. Years later, doing this tournament every year and the community turning out, it means so much because it says to us as a family that he is remembered by the community he loved so much."