‘Inseparable’ student-athletes killed in car crash remembered in Falmouth
The two 17-year-olds were stars on and off the field, according to their coaches and family.
By all accounts, James Lavin and Owen Higgins were best friends.
The two 17-year-old Falmouth High School seniors had finished an evening hockey practice on Thursday and were carpooling home for the first night of their holiday break when Lavin’s black Honda Civic veered off the road and struck a tree.
Lavin was pronounced dead at the scene, a remote, woodsy area just a mile away from the ice rink. The following afternoon, Higgins succumbed to his injuries from the crash, which remains under investigation, at a Rhode Island hospital.
Less than a month ago, “Lav” and “Higgy” were celebrating their football team’s division state championship. Now, the two “inseparable” student-athletes’ lives leave legacies that extend far beyond the field, rink, track, or diamond.
GoFundMe fundraisers have been set up on behalf of the families of both Lavin and Higgins in order to cover the costs of their funerals. Additional funds will be put toward scholarships in their memory.
Throughout their lives, sports provided a common backdrop for the two three-season athletes. In addition to playing together on the football and hockey teams, Lavin participated in the discus and shot-put events for Falmouth’s track and field team, while Higgins played baseball in the spring.
Lavin’s mother, Sheila Lavin, told SouthCoastToday that her son had played sports for effectively his entire life.
“It’s maroon and white,” she said, referring to the Falmouth Clippers’ colors. “That’s what he lived for.”
“James was the best person we knew,” reads the obituary for Lavin. He planned to continue playing football and pursue a business career in college.
“He was a very fun-loving, smart, caring, and funny young man,” his obituary reads.
Higgins was known for his “mischievous grin” and “unparalleled zest for life,” according to the GoFundMe page in his honor.
“His real talent was not athletics but rather his ability to share of himself with his many friends,” reads his obituary.
His mother, Shannon Rouvalis, died unexpectedly at the age of 40 in 2012. A few months later, so did his uncle. According to his obituary, Higgins had since been living with his grandparents in East Falmouth.
“Sports, hockey, certainly football, which became his passion, was a great distraction from some of the tough times he had,” Paul Moore, Falmouth’s high school hockey coach, told SouthCoastToday.
Higgins was voted captain of the hockey team, Moore said at a press conference Friday, according to The Boston Globe. Moore said Lavin was the team’s emotional leader.
“They are two remarkable young men who put their footprint on this community, and not just in the school, or the football field, or the ice arena,” he said.
At a mourning at the high school’s track Friday, Falmouth football coach Derek Almeida told the Globe the two “hard-working kids” were among the best in the state on the field, but even better off it. As evidence, Almeida noted the hundreds of Lavin’s and Higgins’s classmates who gathered to mourn.
“It seems like a lot of people loved those two kids like I did, I guess,” he said.
Lavin’s funeral was held Tuesday morning, with friends and family reportedly filling up a local church, strewing the pews with his beloved school colors. Higgins’s funeral is scheduled for Friday.
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