‘Kenny Kup’ Soccer Tourney Celebrates Late Chatham Native

CHATHAM – A soccer tournament held Saturday in the memory of a Chatham native who died in Hawaii 16 years ago raised thousands of dollars for a scholarship for a local student-athlete.

 A Chatham High School and Westfield State College graduate, Ken Owens was 27 when he died in 2009 in a skydiving accident in Wahaiwa, Hawaii. He was a Navy diver second class at the time of his death. For a decade and a half, the Ken Owens Memorial Soccer Jamboree has been held in Chatham to remember him and raise money for a fund that awards a scholarship to a local athlete who best personifies Owens’ athletic, academic and leadership qualities.

 “He was a Navy diver. He was a best friend. He was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, funny-as-all-get-out, zest for life, young, 27 year old and funny. So funny,” said Alahnna Sanchez, who was Owens’ fiancee. “He was academic, very smart, poetic. He could write so well, and he loved his family.”

 At the 2025 jamboree, about a half dozen co-ed teams faced off in eight-versus-eight soccer for hours on two pitches set up on the grass of Veterans Field. Ages ranged from little kids to older adults. They vied for the “Kenny Kup” trophy. Etched on the base of the trophy is a list of previous winners. 

 “It’s just all about having fun and remembering him,” Owens’ niece Leah Bates said.

 In the end, a team that included the son of Owens and Sanchez — Brycen Widhalm — and Owens’ nephew — Vance Bates — won the tournament. On the back of two goals scored by Widhalm in the final match, team Kickin’ it for Kenny captured the Kenny Kup. 

“The common thread here is everyone has some connection to this community, the community Ken grew up in, his family,” Sanchez said. “His family still lives here on the Cape. So, really just a remembrance but also a celebration of the things he accomplished.”

The soccer jamboree has been held for about 15 years, a level of longevity for a memorial charity event that speaks to how special Owens was, his friend Brett Tolley said. There’s also been a Kenny Kup float at Chatham’s annual Fourth of July parade.

“There's a family from France, and they summer here once a week every summer, but they've been coming for the past six years,” Tolley said. “They look forward to it. There's other families who do that same thing… They look forward to it all year. They'll come.”

As the event has continued and lasted, a new generation of soccer players has come to participate. Owens’ friends and family have gotten older, perhaps making the full slate of soccer a little harder, but Tolley’s 7-year-old son and other younger kids played in the tournament Saturday. It’s all a “product of Ken's passions and how he lived,” Sanchez said.

“I think it's a testament to how Ken lived, right, with this tournament,” she said. “It's gone on for so long because of who he was when he was alive.”

Partly in an effort to make the event more inclusive and get more participants while continuing the same mission, there have been thoughts of transitioning the Ken Owens Memorial Soccer Jamboree towards something that’s less centered on a full-day soccer cup, like a cornhole tournament, according to Tolley. 

The teams played soccer for hours — from morning to mid-afternoon — under a cloudless sky, as blue perhaps as the water Owens once dove in. Though an exact figure wasn’t yet known at tournament’s end, the event has typically raised around $10,000, according to Owens’ sister Adrian Bates.

“We know he's played a big part in our lives, past and future,” Owens’ mother Missy Owens said. “He's always around me.”

While the jamboree is at its core a memorial and charity fundraiser, the competitiveness increased as teams advanced closer to the coveted Kenny Kup. Ken loved sports, and his family was happy that other players were there doing what they loved, Missy Owens said.

“It's a competitive world out there, but it's also nice just to play,” she said.

The possible transition to a cornhole tournament will allow the family to run around a little less, to be able to sit down all together and talk about Ken, according to Missy Owens. They love to hear stories about him, she said. 

Participants on Saturday wore T-shirts emblazoned with a logo of soccer balls and a diving helmet. On the front and back, the shirts read “Never Forget” with the number 14, the number Owens wore when he played soccer throughout his life. Upon the tourney’s conclusion, his son Brycen Widhalm held the Kenny Kup trophy, the rest of his teammates that day standing beside him.

“Ken would be proud,” Sanchez said. “He'd be proud that there's a scholarship, academic element. He would be destroying all of the kids on the field who he wouldn't have cared about their age. He'd still taken them out. And he would have loved playing alongside his son, I think, a lot.”