Community Rallies Around Beloved Hamden Coach

HAMDEN, CT — The baseball community and beyond is rallying around West Haven’s Ray Guarino as he battles cancer. Guarino, a West Haven High School graduate, is currently an assistant coach for the Yale baseball team and the head coach of the Hamden Post 88 American Legion baseball team. He has also been an assistant coach at West Haven High School and Foran-Milford.

A GoFundMe campaign was launched on Guarino’s behalf earlier this week and the results have been overwhelming. More than $56,000 has been raised by 506 people in the first two days of the campaign (as of Friday afternoon).

“Ray Guarino has been a baseball coach at Yale University for the last decade,” the organizers wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Over that time, he was more than a coach to the players. He has been a mentor, a friend, and a teacher. Speaking for myself and others, the Yale baseball experience would not be the same without Ray Ray. From his ‘colorful’ stories, we all know Ray Ray is a fighter - he will fight this battle with everything he has.

“We are here to rally his troops around him to help him in this battle. I have been blessed to know Ray, and to be able to still call him a friend and a mentor. Please join me now in this fight with Ray; he would go to battle for any of us and it is only right that we do the same for him.”

Yale baseball coach John Stuper told Jeff Jacobs of Hearst Media that Guarino underwent surgery on Thursday. Stuper said it went all and doctors were still trying to figure out a precise diagnosis, saying it could be multiple myeloma or testicular cancer, according to Jacobs.

As Stuper began sending out word on Guarino’s condition, several players asked him about starting the GoFundMe page and he told Jacobs that it took all he could do to “convince Ray to let them do it.”

The state’s baseball community is helping to spread the word of Guarino’s battle.

“Coach Ray Guarino has been the backbone of our program for years,” Hamden Post 88 wrote in a post on Twitter. “Hamden Baseball has benefitted from his wisdom, love and devotion in ways that can never be replicated.”

Tucker Frawley, associate head baseball coach at Yale and a former standout player at Hopkins School in New Haven, wrote in a Tweet, “One of my best friends and strongest pillars of the Yale Baseball program is now in for the fight of his life. Never one to back down, let’s join Ray in his battle against cancer. We love you, Ray Ray- and we’re ready to fight w/ you every step of the way.”

For more information, or to make a donation, visit the GoFundMe page here.

Read the full article by Jeff Jacobs at the New Haven Register here.

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