MAZON – If Jason “Champ” Clearwater wasn’t playing sports or watching sports, he was making friends throughout Grundy County and his hometown of Mazon.

His mom, Linda Clearwater, said he never had a bad day.

“He was a happy person,” she said. “He created friends from all the surrounding towns. It amazed me.”

Clearwater started his love for sports by playing T-ball in Ransom, to middle and high school teams in Mazon and Seneca, to intramural sports as an adult.

But Clearwater was taken suddenly in August 2013 from his family and friends after suffering a fall that resulted in an irreversible brain injury. He was 35, and lived in Minooka for roughly his last 15 years.

The Clearwater family – along with brother-in-law, Nate Olson, and friends Todd Cade and Jeramy Sherwood – immediately thought of ways to honor him.

The Jason Clearwater Memorial Fund, with a mission of benefiting local youth sports, was launched.

To raise money, family and friends decided on a golf outing, but knew it was too late in the year to hold, so they planned the Inaugural Champ Classic Golf Tournament for August 2014.

To date, proceeds from the outing have benefited several entities. The largest donation and most recently completed project, Olson said, was adding fences and dugouts for the Mazon T-ball field.

Tom Morris, president of the Mazon-Verona-Kinsman Youth Athletic Association, said Olson contacted him about adding dugouts to the field with donation money last year. Morris said they went the extra mile, covering costs of the dugouts and fencing.

“On behalf of the MVKYAA, village and schools, I thank the Clearwater family for improving our community,” Morris said. “We didn’t have the funding to do any of this ourselves.”

Morris said games held through the MVKYAA include about 200 kids a year in various sports. The fund has paid team expenses for Seneca Pride football, Minooka Rivercats travel baseball, and Illinois Irish girls travel softball.

“I’m very proud the funds raised are giving back to the communities where Jason grew up,” Linda Clearwater said. “He’d be so incredibly proud.”

Olson and the Clearwater family are working on their last project donation from the first golf outing’s funds, in the form of a baseball field scoreboard refurbishment and installation for Mazon-Verona-Kinsman Middle School.

The center field fence of Doctor Breisch Field in Mazon further keeps the memory alive, as it sports a tag with the name of Jason Clearwater and the No. 2, his number when he played.

The Second Annual Champ Classic is set for 8 a.m. Aug. 16 at Nettle Creek Country Club, and the family is proud to say spots comprising 40 four-person teams sold out in minutes. They attribute it to Clearwater’s ability to make friends. It will feature food, raffles, prizes and more.

Though the golf outing is the larger fundraiser, the first event the fund held was an eight-team, two-day coed softball tournament on Labor Day weekend. The third annual softball event is set for this Labor Day weekend.

Morris and Olson are discussing tentative plans to add a third event in memory of Clearwater – a baseball game between Grundy County youth baseball teams in mid-to-late July that would focus on sportsmanship and love of the game. It’s tentatively planned to not be a fundraising event.

Clearwater lives on in more than one profound way. He became an organ donor and has already saved several lives because of it, his sister Michelle Olson said.

The family also would like to acknowledge John Clearwater, Jason’s father, who lives in Naperville, and Jason’s girlfriend of 15 years, Tyleen Harper of Morris.

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For local youth sports-related needs, contact jasonclearwaterfund@aol.com or search "The Jason Clearwater Memorial Fund" on Facebook to see if the fund may be able to help you.