Harding to honor fallen player on Senior Night

There has been an empty chair between the Harding bench and the scorer’s table at each home game this basketball season. Although his assistants know the deeper story, coach LaMar Kennedy said he will talk to his players about it before the season’s home finale on Friday.

The chair is for Angel Santiago.

It is a chair that remains empty.

“Angel would have been a senior this year,” Kennedy said. “We were very high on him after his freshman year. We thought he was our point guard of the future.

“He would have been part of my first senior class here. I wanted to honor his memory this season. I hadn’t even told the team why we are doing it.”

Friday against Bridgeport Central is Senior

Night. It is the perfect time to tell his guys about the empty chair.

“The thought process,” Kenney said, “was to keep

Angel’s memory alive and give him the best seat in the house. We miss Angel. We wish he was still with us.”

There always is danger in our cities, of course, and Santiago found it late one June night in 2020 in an unusual place in East Bridgeport. He was playing around with a friend on a train car. According to officials, it was among a line of 10 cargo train cars carrying crushed stone used as ballast to anchor rails to the ground. The train, by Crescent Ave., was stationary.

According to officials, Santiago was standing atop the train car when he came into contact with a live catenary/transmission line that powers Metro-North trains and has 13,000 volts of electricity.

Burned head to foot, he battled to stay alive for eight days. Angel Santiago

was 16.

There was an outdoor basketball tournament held in his honor upon the second anniversary of his death last June. COVID-19 had placed restrictions on gatherings, and this was a chance to celebrate his life. A park bench was dedicated in his honor.

His family continued to push for caution signs and larger safety measures in the area.

Kennedy said he was telling people that he lived in Bridgeport 45 years, back when that area was more densely populated, and it was the first time he had heard something like that happening.

“I remember as a child riding on the school bus past that area and those train tracks were also open,” Kennedy said. “When kids don’t have anything to do they find something to do and unfortunately ….”

It was a tragedy in every sense.

Harding plays an independent schedule within the CIAC. While conference tournaments are held this week and next, the Presidents complete their regular season schedule. After Friday’s game, they play again Tuesday at fellow independent Amistad. Once part of the FCIAC, Harding and Bassick left for the Constitution State Conference in 2015 and

struck out on their own when the CTC folded in 2017.

Harding, 8-10, has qualified for the state playoffs for the first time since the 2016-17 season. It is an accomplishment to be celebrated.

With players leaving city schools to play at Catholic schools and prep schools, public city schools face continued challenges. A Division IV team that struggled mightily in recent years, Harding also has a storied history of 12 state championships and legends like John Bagley, Wes Matthews, Chris Smith and Charles Smith.

As the Presidents work to rebuild, potential opponents are sometimes wary of scheduling them.

“It has been challenging to get games the past few years,” said Kennedy, who played sports at Bristol Central and coached football at Wilby-Waterbury before replacing Bagley as Harding basketball coach in the fall of 2019.

That’s when he came across a young point guard. You come across talent at Harding, you nurture them.

“Angel was very fast, good handle,” Kennedy said. “He had a decent jump shot. I know he played AAU on a couple of travel teams. He was making a name for himself.

“I know he would have been our starting point guard the past two years. Even the COVID year he probably would have started as a sophomore or gotten significant minutes. That’s how good I thought he was, my staff thought he was.”

As the 2019-2020 season ended, they knew they had Angel Santiago for three more years and could build around him.

“He was small of stature, but very mature on the court at a young age,” Kennedy said. “He knew basketball. He wanted it. Yeah, more than anything else he wanted it. Even as a freshman he practiced up.

“He really surprised me one day. He got mad and was about to walk out of the gym. We talked about it afterward all the time that year.”

This is the way Kennedy remembered the moment.

“Angel, we want you to stay. But if you go, never come back through that door again.”

Santiago took a couple of steps toward the door, thought about his coach’s words and got back in line to finish practice.

“He made the right choice that day,” Kennedy said.

Sadly, teenagers don’t always make the right choice. A young man, full of life, full of promise, was electrocuted.

And now there is an empty seat and a young man to be remembered on his Senior Night.