Legendz Sports Academy hosted its annual community leadership night Thursday, Feb. 10. The event, benefitting the Zachary Food Pantry and hosted by Fellowship Church, officially kicked off the 2011 season for the Legendz Baseball teams.

Several community leaders including Mayor David Amrhein, Metro 1 Councilman Trae Welch and Councilman Francis Nezianya were in the audience of Legendz players, parents and siblings all excited to hear this year’s guest speaker Jeffrey Marx.

Marx is an accomplished author, journalist and public speaker. He has been involved in public speaking for close to 20 years. In 1986, at just 23 years old, Marx won acclaim as the youngest-ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

He has written and published five books, including his first two, “Inside Track” and “One more Victory,” written with Olympic champion Carl Lewis. In 2000 he published a third book, "It Gets Dark Sometimes," about his sister. His two most recent books, "Season of Life" and "The Long Snapper," published in 2003 and 2009 respectively, are both New York Times bestsellers.

Marx connects with people about real life issues by combining sports and storytelling as a public platform. At the Legendz event Marx presented “This thing we call success” based on his book "Season of Life."

Legendz Sports Academy is a non-profit organization directed by 19th Judicial District Court Judge Todd Hernandez. The group offers team sports and individual camps for things like fitness, speed, strength and conditioning to children ages 5 – 15.

"Basically we're trying to teach life lessons through athletics," said Hernandez. "['Season of Life'] is about a man who kind of does the same thing. It's about having an objective bigger than oneself [and the idea that] success is not always measured in terms of wins and loses."

The Legendz mission is to teach children sports specific fundamentals while providing quality athletic programs. The group seeks to mentor young people in an effort to mold them into productive members of the community through demonstrated examples of good character, faith and charity.

“Events like tonight are a very important part of the Legendz Academy program and our mission,” said Hernandez. “We’d like to thank each and every one of you that provided items to our local food pantry.”

The Legendz event was open to the public and required a non-perishable food item to be donated to the Zachary Food Pantry for admission.