Club Spotlight: The Story of How Atlanta Vipers’ Jerseys Reached Young People in Africa

If you are fortunate enough to coach youth sports, you know how fulfilling it is to make a positive impact on the lives of your players.

If you are really fortunate, you can have a positive impact on the lives of people a continent away.

Steve Palazzo, currently head coach of the Atlanta Vipers 04 team, is one such coach.  For more than 20 years Steve has spent most Saturdays and Sundays out on the field with his softball players.

He’s been pretty good at it too, with more than 100 players who have played in college after being on one of his teams.

What no one tells you when you take over the role of head coach is that you also become the garage or basement where all the extra helmets, jerseys, t-shirts, and other swag that comes with the territory! Coaches, however, have the authority to delegate responsibilities and when it comes to team apparel and other playing items, the only person who winds up with more is the team parent who handles all of the ordering and maybe is foolish enough to take in all the stuff from the coach’s garage.

In 2019, Staci Payne, mother of standout 2022 catcher Livi Payne, ranked #62 in the 2022 Extra Elite 100, became the Viper parent with all the extra gear.

She heard about a Boy Scouts Troup in the Brookhaven area of Atlanta that was looking for donations to the “Scouting Bridges” program in Uganda and saw a way to offload all the unused items just sitting in her basement.

Fellow softball parent Tiffany Robbins had travelled with her family to Uganda as part of North Point Church’s Global X Program and saw first-hand how desperate the need for uniforms was. One casual conversation on a bleacher lead to some phone calls made and, before long, Tiffany was connected with Staci and the idea was created on who could really use the excess jerseys.

More than 40 Atlanta Vipers playing tops that previously had been in the Payne basement were given to Troop 370’s Scouting Bridges Uganda program and shipped halfway across the world.

Staci had only one wish with the donation of more than three dozen nice-looking green or white Viper tops—she sent a note requesting that, once the donated jerseys reached their ultimate destination, she’d love to have a picture taken of those who received them to share with her own team in Georgia.

“I received communication prior to the trip they would send pictures,” she recalls. “I honestly forgot about it until I started organizing and cleaning more uniforms in my basement and wondered what happened to those jerseys.  I searched my texts and found one from Fontaine Kohler with Troop 370.”

Staci reached out to Fontaine and soon got her picture of happy young people, from children to college-age students, sporting the Georgia-based travel ball org’s colors.

“Now there is visual proof that there are Vipers playing on both sides of the ocean,” she says. “The families on the 04 team are especially thankful to see how much happiness the donation has brought to others.”

If you are in the position of being the storage unit for your team or organizations excess gear and are interested in making a similar donation to those in need in other communities, Staci suggests reading your church bulletin or keeping watch on places like Nextdoor for people going on mission trips.

“Most importantly,” she advises, “keep your extra and surplus gear organized and ready to go as soon as it’s needed!”