Centralia Community Gathers on the Pitcher’s Mound to Say Goodbye to Local Baseball Player Weston Gibbs

The Centralia community came together in grief and solidarity after the passing of Weston Gibbs, a young man whose memory touched the hearts of everyone around him.

Brent Alverson organized a candlelight gathering at the Centralia baseball field, inviting friends, family, and neighbors to meet on the pitcher’s mound under the lights at 9:00 p.m. to share prayers, worship music, and stories about Wes.

Alverson described the baseball field as the place where he remembered Weston’s smile being the biggest, making it a deeply personal and fitting location for the community to come together.

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“Please join us on the Mound Under The Lights,” he wrote, as he called on the broader community to show up for the Gibbs family during what he acknowledged were extremely difficult times.

A Community United in Prayer and Remembrance

The event drew an outpouring of support from people across Centralia and surrounding areas. Community members flooded social media with prayers and messages of comfort for Weston’s parents, Jay and Emily Gibbs, along with the rest of their family.

Coaches, teammates, and friends were specifically mentioned as people in need of support, underscoring just how wide Weston’s circle of influence had been.

One commenter, Terry Jordan, summed up the feeling that rippled through the community: when a child is lost, it affects everyone. That sentiment seemed to echo in every prayer posted, every candle planned to be lit, and every story that would be shared that evening on the mound.

The Panther Fan Club, a local group connected to the Centralia school community, also shared the post and urged followers to keep the Gibbs family in their prayers, reminding people that we never truly know what others are silently carrying.

Grief Shared, Memories Honored

The gathering was designed to be simple but meaningful. Light worship music was planned alongside open moments for people to share their memories of Wes. The candle lighting was intended as a final tribute, a moment for the community to stand together in the dark and let their light speak for itself.

For many in attendance, the baseball field was not just a venue. It was sacred ground where Weston had played, laughed, and smiled. Choosing that space for a vigil was a way of giving his memory back to the place that had known him best.

As Alverson put it in his post, the goal was for communities, plural, to come together. That word choice was not accidental. Grief like this does not stop at city limits. It travels with every person who ever watched a young man stand on a pitcher’s mound and give everything he had.

The Gibbs family remains in the thoughts and prayers of an entire community that is leaning on faith, on each other, and on the memories of a young man clearly loved beyond measure.