By James FitzPatrick
Ashley Reich was just 15 when she died from cancer on March 19 of 2011. She lived life to its fullest before and after her diagnosis with synovial sarcoma, a rare form of soft tissue disease.
She was a traveler, having visited Costa Rica, the Caribbean, the Hawaiian Islands, and getting to Puerto Rico several times where her mom, Nydia, was from.
She was also a dedicated soccer player for the Egg Harbor Township Soccer Club (EHTSC) Thunder Girls, good enough to be recruited to play for the Spirit travel soccer team.
She worked hard at her game with her dad, Jeff Reich, who enjoyed practicing basketball with older sister Amanda, and with Ashley and putting her through her soccer paces.
He remembers the moment when all of that hard work paid off. They were having dinner when the phone rang.
“Ray Davis called and asked if Ashley would like to join, or try out for the travel soccer team, which was pretty cool,” he recalled. “They only pick a certain kind of player. That was a really exciting moment for us.”
After Saturday, May 3, Ashley’s love of soccer will be memorialized forever, or at least as long as they are playing soccer at Tony Canale Park.
The EHTSC will host a ceremony at 11 a.m. Saturday to retire Ashley’s jersey number. No.16 will be off limits in perpetuity to any new player, an action that will forever honor Ashley, and her family, according to Mike Bongiomo, president of the EHTSC. “Moving forward, anytime a young player like Ashley passes (away) in an unfortunate tragedy, I will make sure that they are honored in the same way. I am currently writing this into our bylaws.”
As a player, Ashley spent most of her competitive life on youth soccer fields. That came to an end when she moved on to high school, when she and her teammates made the difficult choice to switch to Egg Harbor Township High School freshman soccer, rather than sticking with the travel team.
It was during recovery from a soccer injury that she found out she had a serious health problem. She bruised a rib during a tumble on the field, but the pain wouldn’t go away, her dad said. After a week they took her to urgent care where they found nothing wrong. But soon they noticed her rib was protruding, so they took her to a pediatrician, who discovered she had a mass under her ribs; he said she needed to go to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia right away.
Ultimately treatments were unsuccessful. Ashley, and her family, had to make a choice about her path forward, whether she would suffer through more difficult treatments knowing the chance of recovery was slim, or choose to make the most of her time left.
Reich said Ashley, and her family, made a decision to enjoy life.
He said his daughter showed amazing courage and was “a trooper” throughout, hardly shedding a tear in the face of the unthinkable.
He said the decision gave her time, in her few remaining months, to enjoy some priceless experiences.
“My memory is all the vacations, the good times we had and how close Ashley and I were,” he said. “And then Make a Wish sent us to Hawaii, which was beautiful and awesome. It was just a beautiful trip. That was special because she wasn’t sick.”
He said she took pictures of herself, made photo memories – importantly, with her hair intact.
They went on another cruise with the whole family. Ashley was even able to do some ziplining, even as her lungs were losing their capacity.
He said his memories with Ashley are all positive, fondly recalling that he had time with Ashley, and her older sister Amanda, when he was a young casino waiter, to do things with them.
“We went skiing all the time, we went to beaches, on cruises,” he said.
When she passed away, he had no regrets because of all of the time they got to spend together.
The tribute
At Canale Park there is no ceiling with rafters, no ring of honor, so the tribute will take the form of a mural, painted on a storage shed – a silhouette of a female soccer player outlined in white from behind, right foot on the ball, as if waiting to get onto the pitch. The only writing that can be seen is the name “Reich” across the shoulders and the No. 16.
The eye-catching creation is the work of Brad Green, husband of EHTSC board member Christie Green.
He was originally asked to paint Ashley’s name and number on the shed. But when he started to create the concept, he thought it would be more moving and meaningful to do a silhouette.
“If it were my daughter, it would mean more to be able to stand next to a silhouette instead of just a number,” said Green, who has children who play soccer in the program. “The concept with the silhouette was to show her ‘reflecting’ on something. The idea is that she will be watching generations play on the same fields she played.”
The ceremony will take place from 11 a.m. to noon Saturday, May 3 at Tony Canale Park. Program will include remarks from the Egg Harbor Township Soccer Club, Reich’s family and most likely Mayor Laura Pfrommer. The ceremony is for the unveiling. There will also be games going on.
Reich said he had no idea the tribute was coming until he got a text out of the blue. He was shocked and surprised that it would occur, even after all these years.
Nonetheless, he called it beautiful and “really great.”
Brad Green’s work can be seen at www.bradgreenart.com or @bradgreen on Instagram.
Copy editor and Contributing Writer James FitzPatrick has been a community journalist in Atlantic and Cape May counties for more than 30 years, including 20 years as editor of The Current Newspapers. He lives in Hammonton.
