Games People Play: Kevin Laffey Leaves Legacy of Crusader Leadership

For 18-year-old Kevin Laffey it’s about being the man his mother wanted him to be. Laffey, who graduated this month from Wildwood Catholic High School, lost his mom, Michele, in his sophomore year. With a mountain of support from administrators, teachers and friends in the Crusader community, Laffey rebounded from the devastation and went on to become the unquestioned leader and role model for his peers and the underclassmen.
“Wildwood Catholic was an absolutely amazing place to attend high school,” said Laffey. “When my mom died my sophomore year the support I received from the school community was absolutely jaw dropping. The people in that school are some of the best I’ve ever met. They were phenomenal. I became a little hard to deal with for a while and they helped me push through my troubles.”
Laffey smacked his 100th career hit and raised his batting average above .300 after a slow start to the 2015 baseball season. He hit near .500 in the season’s final weeks. The Cabrini College-bound Laffey (the school his mother attended) was also an accomplished pitcher for Catholic.
“I love pitching, but hitting doesn’t make your arm sore and you can’t put runs on the board from the mound,” said the North Wildwood resident. “What it takes to get to 100 hits is making every at-bat count. When you only play about 20 games a season, that’s about 80 for your career. You need to be poised and confident to average more than one hit per game. It takes drive, self-motivation, and a lot of passion to stick with the game religiously.”
Veteran Philadelphia-area scholastic and college coach John Coyle took over the Wildwood Catholic program this season and was immediately impressed with Laffey’s skills.
“He has quick hands, strong and quick hands,” said Coyle. “His hand-eye coordination makes him very effective. You don’t get 100 hits without putting the bat on the ball regularly. I remember watching Dick Allen turn his hands over like lightning and Kevin reminds me of Allen.”
As a new coach getting to know the personalities and capabilities of his troops, Coyle relied upon Laffey’s leadership and maturity immensely. “He was a team captain and a true leader,” said the coach. “He’d get everything going in the first half hour of practice. He was in charge. There was no fooling around. He was all business. He took it seriously. He’s a good role model for younger kids. They saw him working hard and how good he was.”
For his part, Laffey respected the vast baseball wisdom of his new coach and helped teammates adjust to a new culture being established for the program.
“Coach Coyle is used to having 20 to 30 guys 100 percent into baseball,” said Laffey. “He comes here and gets 20 guys, seven or eight of whom are 100 percent into baseball and 12 others who are just good athletes that play multiple sports. We adjusted to coach’s mindset of playing baseball like men. We not only absorbed his wisdom, and there is a ton of it, but also his life lessons. There were consequences for things like absences and poor punctuality.”
Kevin, the son of Tim Tanghare, was driven to success as a youngster looking up to and trying to match his older sibling. “My brother, Brendon, is three-and-a-half years my elder and he was a really good hitter in Little League,” said Laffey. “He’d hit line drives with a short swing and I always wanted to one up him. If he hit a liner up the middle, I wanted to hit a liner to the fence. I wanted to hit it harder than he did. He was always supportive of me growing up.”
Laffey played basketball, baseball, street hockey, soccer and football as a child. He even dabbled in golf.
“Growing up and still now, I like winning in everything, even if it is something I’d never tried before,” he said. “I felt I should win. As a kid I always tried to fire up my teammates and push them to win, even in something like a summer basketball league or a pick-up game.”
Laffey’s youth hockey teams won numerous championships and he was invited to try-out for USA Ball Hockey. His dream was derailed by a bout with the flu and a knee injury but he said he still cherished the experience.
His love of winning and competition has driven his success on the baseball diamond. “I started tee ball as soon as I had enough strength to swing a bat and slide into a uniform,” he said. “When my mom saw me hit a baseball off of a tee as far as I did I guess she started pushing me in that direction.”
Laffey, who works summers as “the boardwalk’s best burger grill guy,” knows that accomplished ballplayers must accept failure because a .300 hitter fails seven out of 10 tries.
“Looking failure in the eye on an 0-2 curveball that drops from your chest to your knees and having to poke it foul or take it the other way, that’s like an addiction to me,” said Laffey. “Battling someone on the mound who wants to make you sit down and you battling him because you know that you’re better than whatever he has to offer, that’s a thrill for me. I have to step out of the box sometimes just to calm myself down. Growing up my dad would always take me hitting and my older friends, who had more experience, were my support system. They always pushed me to become the best and helped keep me out of trouble.”
Laffey, who also enjoys music and writing fictional stories, maintains a supportive communication relationship with former Lower Cape May star and Chicago Cub professional player Matt Szczur. Laffey speaks fondly of their conversations and text messages, particularly when a slump occurs. Laffey also cherishes his many friendships with teammates and classmates who have helped him overcome his disappointment that his Crusader teams could not be more successful.
“The most challenging thing is dealing with a bad game or a string of bad pitches or a bad at-bat,” he said. “To me, baseball is 80 percent mental, 10 percent emotional, and 10 percent physical. Getting over that last at-bat or pitch and keeping your emotions in check is vitally important. My goal was to win a championship pennant to hang up in our gym. The winning just never happened because things never seemed to go our way. As an individual, I led the team as best I could.”
A school with smaller enrollment like Wildwood Catholic relies on student leaders to motivate peers and be actively involved in clubs, organizations and teams. Laffey certainly did his share with service to baseball, basketball, soccer, the art club and the prom committee.
“The quality of the kids I met there will never be duplicated,” he said. “So many of my classmates are going to be executives, lawyers and physicists. The thing I will miss most is the atmosphere at that school. It’s an amazing feeling of ‘homeyness,’ so to speak.”