Copa de Dillon Returns—At Pali High and a World Away

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

Eight co-ed soccer teams will take the field at Stadium by the Sea on Oct. 22 to compete in Pacific Palisades’ fourth annual Copa de Dillon—a day of celebration, memories and friendship held in honor of former Palisades Charter High School student Dillon Henry.

A group of Dillon’s friends created Copa to help spread his legacy of “love and happiness,” and to support the Dillon Henry Foundation Scholarship Fund, which awards college scholarships to outgoing Pali High seniors each year.

Dillon tragically lost his life in a car accident at the age of 17, and since his passing in 2007, friends, family and Palisadians at large have been galvanized by his memory to perform charitable works both at home and abroad.

Dillon’s parents, Harriet Zaretsky and Stephen Henry, will have just returned from the Congo in time for Sunday’s event. They visited Africa to help share Dillon’s story and host a soccer tournament featuring local teams—a now yearly tradition to correspond with the Palisadian Copa.

They were also on hand to witness groundbreaking for the Congo Peace School, a new learning center that will be tailored to the specific needs of the region and provide “a safe place to gain an education and become ambassadors of peace.”

The Dillon Henry Foundation significantly underwrote the project, and Dillon’s parents were there to write their names in the structure’s cement as the governor and king looked on.

Back at home, this Sunday’s event will feature food (an In-N-Out truck alongside pizzas from Tivoli Café and water donated by Cali Water), vendor tables (including a stand for Major League Soccer’s newest team, the Los Angeles Football Club) and, of course, plenty of soccer on the turf.

Zaretsky credited her son’s friends for founding the event, and the Copa de Dillon committee and its league of volunteers for the time and effort to bring it all together.

The Copa’s eight teams—already filled—will compete in five-against-five tournament play starting at 4 p.m., with a trophy awarded to the winning team and medals to runners-up.

Pre-registration was a $350 donation to DHF, but admission to the event is free.

Dillon himself was a voracious soccer player—“a hardworking defender who was respected by his teammates for playing with heart,” Zaretsky told the Palisadian-Post.

He was also a poet, surfer, activist, honor student and friend to just about everyone he met.

It’s little wonder to those who knew him well that the Copa event is only growing in its size and reach.

“He was this amazing, charismatic creature,” family friend and volunteer Anne Roberts told the Post. “To see Dillon’s friends, who are the ones who created this, come together … on the field playing and remembering Dillon—it’s really special.”