Soccer Club Finds Its Footing in Community

Dickson County HS valedictorian, fund recipient is into math, sports, podcasts

Greyson “Grey” Beaubien is the inaugural recipient of the Wendy Williams Beasley Education Excellence Fund. Established in 2021 at The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, the Fund goes to Dickson County High School’s Valedictorian, of which Beaubien was honored upon graduation in May 2022. He is now at student at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

The Fund is in memory of Wendy Ann Williams Beasley, a former Dickson County Board of Education and Board of Developmental Services member, who passed away Aug. 18, 2021, in Burns, Tennessee, at age 72.

Grey, age 18, has lived in Dickson his entire life with parents Brad and Andrea Beaubien and younger sister, Mia. While excited to attend Rice, “My hometown definitely has a sweet spot in my heart,” he says.

His favorite subject is mathematics: “I enjoy the problem-solving side of it, and I think the graphing equations are both fascinating and beautiful.”

Grey ran cross country in high school — placing third in the region championship and leading the Cougars to their first TSSAA State Championship appearance since 1985 — and also started as goalkeeper for the soccer team.

“Sports have been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember,” he says. “In high school, they were a great opportunity to stay in shape, relieve stress, and be in a competitive environment.”

As to becoming valedictorian, “When I was a freshman, I didn’t set out with the goal of being the valedictorian. I thought that that was too much pressure to put on myself,” he recalls. “Instead, I just decided that I would do my best on every assignment, and if I won, awesome, and if not, I would have no regrets.”

To relax, “I love to listen to podcasts and read news articles,” Grey says. “My favorites are The Atlantic, Vox’s ‘Today Explained,’ ‘This American Life,’ and NPR. I am also a big sports fan, and I follow college football and Formula 1 [car racing] closely. When I have time to relax, you can find me in my hammock with my earbuds in catching up on ‘This American Life,’ or on the couch watching Lewis Hamilton dominate F1.”

The Community Foundation for Dickson County continues emphasizing education

Established in 1999 and beginning its grantmaking in 2002, The Community Foundation for Dickson County is one of CFMT’s oldest and most active affiliates. Education has always been a priority for the CFDC grantmaking. In 20 years of making grants to nonprofits and schools across Dickson County, more than 50 percent of the 235 grants, totaling $657,425, have been focused on education, literacy and music education. The first year of grantmaking totaled $12,500. In 2021, grants had more than quadrupled to $54,500. It’s fair to say the organization has helped set the tone for emphasizing education in the entire county. Among other CFMT funding highlights, beyond the Wendy Williams Beasley Education Excellence Fund: • The Dickson County Retired Teachers Association established a fund in 2004 to award scholarships to students from Dickson County. • Since 2017, students of Creekwood High School in

White Bluff and now Dickson County High School in Dickson as well have been able to earn college credit through dual enrollment at Austin Peay State

University Foundation in Clarksville. Scholarships for students from Creekwood High School are funded through a grant to Austin Peay from the Bibb-White

Bluff Legacy Fund. • The first two award funds recognizing student achievement in Dickson County — the Dickson

County High School Fine Arts Department Legacy

Award Fund and the Dickson County High School

Wendell Hudson Memorial Award Fund — were established by retired teacher Patricia Hudson in 2018 and 2019 to recognize education excellence in art and history.

Nashville Soccer Club Finds Its Footing in Community Impact

The internationally popular sport of soccer — known as football, or futbal, in the rest of the world — is all about bringing people together, on the soccer pitch as well as in the community.

Since its inception in late 2017 and its debut as a Major League Soccer (MLS) expansion team in 2020, the Nashville Soccer Club, better known as Nashville SC, has strived to collaborate with local organizations in order to strengthen community impact.

“One great example of this is our partnership with the Delek Fund for Hope,” says Brandon Hill, Head of Community Engagement for Nashville SC. “We teamed up to provide grant funding to local nonprofit organizations.”

Established in 2018 at The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, the Nashville SC Community Fund supports charitable nonprofit organizations, often bringing in corporate partners such as Delek for support.

Established in 2008 at CFMT, the Delek Fund supports charities in communities in which Delek employees and customers live and work.

The partnership between Delek and Nashville SC includes their gleaming new stadium, Geodis Park, in South Nashville.

The past few years, as the soccer team constructed its 30,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium near the long-standing State Fairgrounds, Delek helped provide funds for environmental efforts at the site.

The Nashville SC Community Fund prioritizes programs and initiatives in alignment with three impact areas: youth engagement, health and well-being, and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Says Nashville SC’s Hill, “We designed the fund with input from our community partners and believe our focus areas reflect the values and goals of the city.”

The soccer team’s community efforts go beyond the day to day to include support in times of disaster. Just two days after the team’s inaugural MLS home match in 2020, devastating tornadoes struck the Middle Tennessee community in early March. Two weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic would turn everyone’s world upside down.

“As a new club, it really spurred our staff and players, many of whom had just arrived in Nashville, to get involved and find ways they could make a difference,” Hill says of the concurrent disasters. “It shaped our approach of being deeply engaged with our community partners and laser-focused on how we could best leverage our resources to support the community’s collaborative goals.”

Later in March 2020 the team launched the NGUOY (Never Give Up On You) fundraising campaign, named after the club’s anthem, created in collaboration with Nashville-based alternative rock band Judah & the Lion. (The band also has a fund with CFMT, The High Five Squad Fund to encourage the expression of kindness and goodness to everyone.) The NGUOY campaign would eventually raise more than $37,000 to support local tornado relief and recovery efforts via CFMT’s Middle Tennessee Emergency Response Fund and the American Red Cross. Raising awareness of environmental issues is another priority for Nashville SC.

“One of the easiest and most impactful things you can do to help the environment is to plant a tree,” Hill says. “That’s why we’ve partnered with Root Nashville, a public-private campaign led by Metro Nashville and the Cumberland River Compact, to support their campaign to plant half a million trees across Middle Tennessee by the year 2050.”

Each year, Nashville SC has kicked off its season by hosting “The Road to Opening Match Day of Service,” a tree-planting event that has engaged thousands of fans and supporters.

They are not alone in this effort. Along with Major League Soccer’s annual Greener Goals campaign, Nashville SC and the remaining 27 MLS clubs have committed to volunteer their time to conduct environmentally friendly projects in partnership with local charitable and nonprofit organizations.

“We believe this will inspire others,” Hill says, “to join the campaign to plant as many trees as possible across Nashville.”