This has been, by any human measure, a horrible school year for Auburn youth sports.

Not on the field, the court or the classroom, mind you, where it was without peer in most folks’ memory.

Edward Little High School gave us a thrill-a-minute football team and a regional championship basketball outfit. It blessed us all with the triumphant and touching story of student manager-turned-player-turned-celebrity Josh Titus.

The Red Eddies produced a boys’ alpine ski squad that was tops in its field and a baseball nine that feared no deficit. And they gave us a valedictorian, Emily Dodge, who tuned up for her speech of a lifetime by leading EL to a girls’ track and field title hours earlier.

Breathtaking, unforgettable stuff. But right now, after a quadruple dose of tragedy and the departure of three fabulous fans, it all rings a tad trifling.

It was tough enough to hear – on the opening day of the state high school basketball, appropriately, where he was a front-row fixture – that Harold Lucas lost his confrontation with cancer. The despair deepened only a day later when the community learned that Mike Goddard, passionate sports parent who couldn’t hide his heart of gold, was taken away when that heart inexplicably stopped.

March ended with another kick in the gut when longtime EL golf coach Tom Kimball died unexpectedly.

Three months of grief passed until a cloudless Tuesday evening surely etched by the Creator with Little League baseball in mind. Then came the text message or phone call that made us sick to our stomach again.

Dennis Sweetser, the man who shaped the lives of more youth in Auburn and surrounding communities than anyone ever – notice I didn’t say “arguably” – was lost to a sudden illness. He was only 69. Only being the operative word, because it felt like he’d been there forever.

And in so many ways, he will.

Other men were primarily responsible for starting Auburn Suburban Little League. Born a few years too late, Sweetser stepped in after graduating from EL and Bates College and simply became Auburn Suburban Little League.

Yes, he would abhor such platitudes. Tough cookies. Dennis defined the organization for more than 40 years. He was coach, manager, historian and onetime occupant of every chair on the governing board.

Wanted to know anything about Suburban’s proud history? You asked Dennis. Needed thoughtful input about how new pitch count restrictions would impact the league? You went to Dennis. Felt a burning desire to air a controversial opinion about some perceived problem with the way adults were handling a kids’ game? Oh, you’d be hearing from Dennis.

That was one of Dennis Sweetser’s most endearing qualities. He was a straight shooter. My generation calls it old-school, and if you look up that expression in Webster’s I’ll bet you a concession-stand hot dog there’s a snapshot of Dennis wearing a maroon ball cap with the letters ‘ASLL’ intertwined and emblazoned upon it.

In this epoch of people who hide behind screen names and flex their keyboard biceps, Dennis was a refreshing dose of honesty at all times.

No man, woman or child needed wonder where they stood with Dennis. He had the courage to confront you if he thought you’d tipped out of your rocker, and he had the kindness and courtesy to shake your hand and offer up an ‘atta-boy when you’d hit a literal or figurative home run.

Of course, I work in a results-driven business. We count wins and losses, probably too stridently when it comes to the youth level. But even there, Dennis had ’em covered.

He skippered the most famous baseball team in this city’s proud history, the all-star team that won state and regional championships and earned a trip to the Chicago suburbs for the 1979 Senior League World Series.

There, Suburban stood cleat-to-cleat with its peers from Teaneck to Taiwan and all points in between, finishing as the third-best team on the planet. Only the pitching exploits of a certain 14-year-old Floridian named Dwight Gooden denied Auburn a chance to win it all.

Auburn seemed to have a pipeline to the then-powerful University of Maine baseball program in those years. So you could make the case that Dennis had a hand in three journeys to the College World Series, too. Ask Bill Reynolds or Mike or Mark Coutts about Dennis and they’ll declare him one of the best coaches in their local and state Hall of Fame careers.

That’s because Dennis was a stickler for fundamentals, on the diamond and off. He conveyed those same tenets in 42 years as a science teacher and countless weekends as a Sunday School teacher.

Dennis didn’t seem bothered by the paradigm shift in society from his days as a wet-behind-the-ears coach to his more recent duties of ensuring that his former players’ grandchildren had a clean, well-manicured place to play.

He told me last year that kids still are basically the same, just fertile minds needing a touch of TLC, a pinch of patience and a dash of direction. And I believed him. I believed him because he spoke with the rare authority of someone who didn’t bow out of youth baseball the nanosecond his own children were done playing. Dennis had three daughters and no sons, after all.

I also believed him because he was, above all else, an honorable man.

One of Dennis’ favorite anecdotes from the World Series trip to Gary, Ind., was a quote from his longtime colleague Lucas, who helped broadcast the games back to the Twin Cities via AM radio. Lucas, as Sweetser told it, said he felt like he’d died and gone to heaven.

Heaven again became a richer place Tuesday. Auburn, on the other hand, will never be the same.