Rehabbed Lowellville courts will be dedicated to father

By EMMALEE C. TORISK

etorisk@vindy.com

LOWELLVILLE

Though Dom DeFrank will graduate from Lowellville High School on Sunday and go on to study business at Youngstown State University, his presence will be felt for years to come in the place he has long loved best: the village’s basketball courts.

As the grand-prize winner of Powerade’s “Rise With Rose” national contest, the results of which were announced in the fall, Dom DeFrank earned a $25,000 donation to the village that will soon be used to repave and seal the two cracked, puddle-accumulating courts — one big, one small — as well as to install new basketball hoops and benches there.

But perhaps the best part is that the rehabbed courts will be dedicated to his father, John A. DeFrank Jr., who died in 2007 at age 58.

“It would make me feel so good to have his name on something,” said Dom, a basketball player since the fifth grade. He moved to Lowellville from Coitsville during his sixth-grade year.

Project specifications were recently made available for contractors to bid on, said Lowellville Mayor James Iudiciani Sr., who added that bids likely will be in by next week. Work will begin over the summer and should be completed within two months.

“We’re very appreciative of his efforts,” Iudiciani said.

DeFrank’s winning of the contest, sponsored by Coca-Cola North America, was thanks to a photo snapped by his mother, Theresa DeFrank, in the backyard of their Lowellville home and edited by him, last June.

A fan of Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls, Dom DeFrank had heard about the contest — which asked fans to depict how they raise their game — via Twitter and figured he’d “give it a shot.” Not long afterward, he staged a photo of himself with a basketball in one hand and a bottle of Powerade in the other, then changed the background to grayscale, leaving only his head and the Powerade bottle in color.

A panel of judges, including Rose, looked at entries from across the country, and judged them on their creativity and originality, quality, adherence to the contest theme and enthusiasm for sponsor brands. They thought DeFrank’s was the best.

“[I’m] a kid from Lowellville, a small town,” DeFrank said, explaining that he initially thought the letter that congratulated him on his victory was junk mail, and was shocked when he realized it wasn’t. “Who would think?”

There never was any question in his mind about where the $25,000 donation would end up.

As a frequent visitor of the village’s aging basketball courts, he knew firsthand their problems.

Those issues didn’t stop him from going there almost daily though.

“I wanted to fix it up,” he said. “I’d love to see more and more kids playing.”

He added that he’s requested that any leftover money be used for other recreational activities in the village. It’s a lot of money, he said, and he wants it to go to a good cause.

Theresa DeFrank agreed, saying that Lowellville is, in many ways, an old-fashioned community, where children play outside every day.

And with the upcoming renovations to the basketball courts, that trend will only continue.

“I think the kids will be down here a lot more,” she said. “It’s a good, safe place for them to come.”