The daughter of one of the most historic figures in American sports paid a visit to West Noble Middle School on Friday, bringing a message of hope and encouragement to about 200 eighth-graders and their teachers.

 

The speaker was Sharon Robinson, daughter of the late Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

His daughter came to Ligonier as an ambassador of MLB to present an award to Kristen Alcala, an eighth-grader who was one of four national first-place winners in the "Breaking Barriers" writing contest sponsored by MLB and Scholastic magazine.

Robinson is now an author and speaker and travels throughout the country, talking about her father and the impact he had not just on sports but on society in general.

The award to Alcala came from an essay the girl wrote on the subject of breaking barriers in her own life. Her essay, about a personal family crisis and how she dealt with it, was judged one of the best in the country out of more than 9,000 entries received this year in the contest, now in its 14th year. She won first place in the sixth- to eighth-grade category.

Saturday, Alcala and her family met again with Robinson at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, where she was honored before the White Sox game.

"I am so proud of Kristen and her writing," Robinson told the assembly at the middle school Friday. "Your story moved us."

She presented 13 students who entered the essay with autographed copies of her book, "Promises To Keep". Every student in the honors Engish program earlier this week received a newly released T-shirt, produced by MLB, in honor of Jackie Robinson. The shirt currently is on sale only at New York City ballparks, she told the students.

Earlier this month, Alcala and her teacher, Connie Pipher, were given laptop computers as additional prizes from the essay contest.

Robinson told the students "you will have a lot of decisions to make as you move into high school. And those decisions are going to get harder as you grow older. You have to think about the long-term consequences of those decisions."

She recalled her high school years as "being full of pain."

Robinson, who turns 60 this year, said she was too young to remember her father's playing days but recalled many good times with him after he retired.

Jackie Robinson "had to prove himself against some very tough odds," she said. Robinson reminded the students that her father still owns a MLB record for stealing home more than any other player, and how stealing home "was a big risk for any player to take."

"Everyone," she added, "takes risks in their lives. Some risks are rewarding and some are not. You have to choose the risks you take very carefully."

Jackie Robinson, who won baseball's first Rookie of the Year award in 1947, died in 1972. The award is now named after him. Robinson accomplished many feats in the years following his retirement, in both the business world and in sports broadcasting. He was one of the first African-Americans to be hired as a baseball analyst by a national network.

Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. His uniform number, 42, was retired by MLB and to this day, that number is permanently retired by all MLB teams.

The pride Sharon Robinson still holds for her father, and the memories of the times they spent together, was evident in her talks with the West Noble students.