It will be a bittersweet moment on Saturday morning when the baseball diamond at Hickory Glen Park in Commerce Township will be re-named Justin Hussin Field for the day in memory of the former little league and prep baseball star who died while taking part in a fight between rival teenagers last September. The dedication ceremony is being put on by the Lakes Athletic Association, a Commerce Township area little league sports association that Hussin participated in and umpired for in the past decade.

Hussin prepped at Walled Lake Western and was a three year varsity letter-winner on the diamond for the Warriors. Graduating from Western last June, Hussin and a group of friends got into a verbal altercation with another group of local kids at a concert in late-August. Following the incident at the concert, the two groups of teenagers agreed via cell phone to meet in the back of a Wixom subdivision to settle the score physically in the early morning hours of September 1. In a decision that everyone involved will regret for the rest of their lives, one of the kids swung a golf club that hit Hussin in the head and he died shortly thereafter lying unconscious in the street. Robert Lowry, the boy who delivered the fatal blow, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and recently pled guilty, receiving a 15 year prison sentence.

This is a type of situation occurs more than we as a society would like to admit and most of the time kids only end up with black eyes and bruises, not in box, cut down before they ever had the chance to experience life as a full-fledged adult. To say this event was senseless would be the understatement of a lifetime.  Justin will never get an opportunity to go to college, get married, have kids, etc, etc. and his family and friends will be feeling the effects of this tragedy for an eternity.

However, when you're 18 and you feel disrespected things can and often do get out of hand very fast. More often than not, the result is not life-altering. Unfortunately in this case it was – for Justin, for Robert, for the whole Walled Lake/Wixom/Commerce Township community.

All I can say to any teenager reading this right now is that I've been there before. I understand how this powerkeg of a situation can develop and quickly spin out of control because I was personally involved in a similar situation when I was 17. Fortunately for me and my friends, nobody got killed.  But mind you, there were consequences.

To make a very long story short, a pick-up basketball game between two sets of players from rival high school basketball teams turned into an all out-brawl with someone getting seriously injured, a car getting vandalized and criminal assault charges eventually being filed. My buddy who got charged with a crime has to live with that fact for the rest of his life. Looking back on what started the fight, it was so ridiculously stupid. But when adrenaline, big egos, and youth combine, the results can be very bad, whether if it ends in death or not. Trust me, whatever the beef was/is, when you're a couple, five, ten years past it, you'll look back and be shocked at how upset you got over most-likely something extremely petty in relative terms.

So, just try to stop and think before you take things past words and start throwing fists or in Hussin and Lowry's case lethal objects. Try to remember that even though you might not intend to do grave bodily harm to someone else, that doesn't mean that if grave bodily harm does come to that person that you won't be held responsible. And what was it all for…the risk that someone can end up like Justin or Robert if you engaged in this type of activity and came out unscathed?

Don't take the risk. Don't start throwing punches. Let cooler heads prevail.    

I don't know what else to say other than this is tragic in the most precise sense and it makes me very very sad.

RIP JUSTIN HUSSIN 1991-2009!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!