Joe Walsh's legacy lives on: Family donates $10,000 to support Brockton sports program

BROCKTON - Courtney Walsh didn’t truly realize how popular her brother Joe was until after he died.

Joe Walsh worked at Brack's Grille & Tap in Brockton for a long time. Although he wasn’t a Brockton native, he loved the city and its residents.

After Walsh died this February, Bracks hosted a fundraiser event to help his family pay for funeral expenses.

“Everyone that went into that restaurant knew him,” said Courtney Walsh. “He was a pretty well-liked guy there, so a ton of people showed up.”

Bracks hosts fundraising raffles every Wednesday, but Courtney said Joe’s event grossed the most amount of money the restaurant had ever brought in by that point.

“I had no idea that him bartending at Bracks, he had such a following,” she said. “All the people that were regulars of his that live in the area and just loved to kind of go in and talk sports.”

All the money raised from the event went directly to the Walsh family, but the family wanted to use the money to give back to the Brockton community. They decided to create an athletic scholarship for students in the city.

“We wanted to make sure the money went back to a community that it was raised from,” Walsh said.

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Community Schools sports scholarship

Joe Walsh was a massive sports fan. Over the summer, the Walsh family donated $10,000 to the Brockton Community Schools Get Ready summer sports program, allowing local students to participate in various sports during summer break, ranging from soccer and basketball to boxing and Kung Fu.

Soraya de Barros, director of the Community Schools, said Get Ready is one of their flagship programs and has been a staple in the community for years.

“This will be instrumental in supporting our students and enhancing our programs, and of course sports was an area that was close to Joe’s heart,” said de Barros.

Courtney Walsh and her parents will all donate an additional $1,000 each year for the next two years for a total of at least $3,000 to keep the scholarship fund active, and Walsh said the family plans to host more fundraising events in the future.

Students who are selected for the athletic scholarship will be able to participate in their sport of choice at no cost to their families. De Barros said the sessions normally cost between $150 and $200 for Brockton residents.

“It has been expensive for some kids to have access to it,” she said.

De Barros said the scholarships will be limited to Brockton students, and each school will recommend two or three students who are succeeding inside and outside of school.

“Joe was very passionate for sports so this is a way for him to live on through the opportunities that this donation will provide to Brockton students," said de Barros.

This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Joe Walsh's legacy lives on: Family donates $10,000 to support Brockton sports program