Spaghetti For Our Youth

Too many years ago to count (late ‘70s), I remember selling hot dogs in front of what was then known as the Ellicottville Inn (now Ellicottville Inn Condos) during Fall Festival. It was one of those years when the snow fell early and we stood ankle deep in the cold stuff doing what we had to do to make money for our Little League football players. I was just a Little League mom, but we all did our share to raise funds for our kids to play.

Today, The Ellicottville Little Eagles players and cheerleaders number about 100. The Little Eagles Board is responsible for recruiting players and cheerleaders, outfitting them (except for shoes), equipping them (pads, helmets, etc.), providing concessions, insuring them, and paying necessary organizational fees. In other words, it may take a village to fill a team of young players, but it takes a conscientious board with a good amount of money to safely put those youngsters on the field, properly equipped

Thanks to the generosity of Nick Pitillo at Villaggio Restaurant, a pasta dinner fundraiser will be held on Wednesday, January 8th from 5:30-8:00pm. Dinner includes pasta, salad, roll, soda or water for adults $15, kids $10 and little ones under two are free. Take-outs will be available and there is a cash bar. You can try your luck at the 50/50 raffle and the DeWalt Drill door prize and bid on silent auction items. Bring lots of cash! Popular entertainer, Travis Happoldt will be onboard to entertain with live music. Board members and some LL parents have tickets for presale, or you may go to the Ellicottville Little Eagles Facebook page, or just walk in the night of the event. Everyone is welcome.

Kaysie Griffith, Board secretary tells us this: “Nick has been gracious enough to donate the use of the building, all the fundraiser food, and staff to help maximize profits. Nick has always been so very supportive of the Ellicottville Little Eagles and we can’t thank him enough.”

It is the hope that this event will increase awareness of the Little League and what it does for our local kids. If a parent is interested in having their children be involved, they are invited to come to the event and find out more about the league. According to Griffith, it costs less for our kids to come onboard than it does for most other leagues. Check them out and involve your young ones in a lifetime sport. There are three age groups: Flag (ages 6-8), Pee Wee (ages 8-10), and Midget (ages 10-12).

Here's the Paul Harvey moment, with The Rest of the Story… Nick Pitillo grew up playing little league football back in the late 70s when I was selling hot dogs in the snow. His parents, Mike and Joanny turned out to be a vital part of the backbone of the new, emerging Ellicottville, and his siblings, Michael, Frankie, and Kim all shared in that evolution. From an ellicottvilleNOW story some Octobers ago, Spencer Timkey told this story about Nick talking about his brother Frankie: “My brother was an entrepreneur and ran a clam stand outside of the Nail (The Rusty Nail, a former bar in town). He went out on his motorcycle and unfortunately never came home. So, Frank had a couple grand in his bank account, and my old man asked what we should do with the money.”

“At that point, very few schools had lights for their football fields,” Pitillo said. “Frank, a star on the football team, was doubling up his junior and senior years at Ellicottville Central to graduate early and go train with the United States Ski Team - as the #1 ranked junior skier in the country.” The Pitillo family mobilized the local community to raise the rest of the money to light up the football field. “We had this huge spaghetti dinner,” Nick said. “A ton of heavies from that time came to help us raise money. Danny Gare and Terry Martin, legendary members of the Buffalo Sabres, and Paul Seymour from the Buffalo Bills, amongst others. After we had raised enough money, my dad and other members of the community installed them at no expense. They held me up in my little league football jersey and I turned them on for the first time.”

As our kids are apt to do, Nick went off to chase his dreams, married and returned, first to Buffalo to establish his restaurant Osteria and then, in 2015, he packed up his wife, Kendra, and daughter, Olivia, and came home to Ellicottville. Sitting in the bleachers watching a game of his daughter’s at that same ECS field, he realized that the lights really needed replacing. Being Nick, being a Pitillo, he sprang into action, organized a fundraiser, involved the entire community and indeed, within a year, had generated the funds needed to replace those lights in September of 2023. Ellicottville is like that. Its people, its brain-stormers are undaunted, fearless, and determined. Nick, and others like him, shows us time and again that, where there is a will, there is a way.

On January 8th, you have your chance to help a cause that gives kids a chance at life, an equal playing field, and a solid foundation for their future selves. We all know how involvement in sports changes lives. So, when you consider why to come to the event, know that you will, of course, have an amazing dinner, you will have an opportunity to meet and mingle with friends, old and new, you might go home with a few prizes… but the biggest prize will be supporting our youth. It doesn’t sound any sweeter than that. “Buon appetito!”

Spaghetti For Our Youth

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