Ben Sirman, a star athlete, successful coach and immeasurably important leader in Delaware sports, has died after an extended battle with heart disease and cancer.

A three-sport star at Laurel High School, where he was the only first-team all-state basketball player in Bulldog history, was the southern team’s quarterback in the Blue-Gold game and was quarterback and defensive back at Swarthmore College, where he also played three sports.

After graduation in 1962, he returned to Sussex County. He turned Bridgeville into a basketball power. More significantly, he used his deployed his ethical, educational and righteous values in the integration of Bridgeville High, through its basketball team when Ben was inducted into the Delaware Afro-American Athletic Hall of Fame a decade ago.

In 1969, he moved to Seaford, where as history teacher, athletic director and for several years the football coach (26-13), he mentored thousands of students, hundreds of athletes and dozens of coaches through his retirement in 1991, and supported the community in numerous ways thereafter.

His intrinsic fairness and unflappability led him to be selected to run the Henlopen Conference, the state basketball tournament and other committees.

"In your lifetime if you are fortunate you come across a person or two who personify good," said former William Penn athletic director Jack Holloway, who also served as DIAA executive director.  "Many people see issues as strictly black or white but almost always there is a lot of grey surrounding every issue. Ben was one of those people who could fight through the grey and come out the other side on neither the white or the black but rather the right.

"He was a man of immense character and I feel blessed to have been able to call him friend."

Sirman received the Herm Reitzes Award for public service from the Delaware Sportswriters and Broadcasters Association in 2009, and was a charter inductee into the Delaware Basketball Hall of Fame.

Ben served on the board of the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame for a decade, declining the presidency to focus on his health. At that point eligible for election, he was inducted into the Hall in the 2014 class. The gymnasium at Seaford High School was named for him in a 2021 ceremony.

His wife Ellen, a fellow educator, has been a constant support, for Ben and other civic efforts. Their son Trey was an outstanding athlete at Seaford who followed his parents into education.