A youth with Chester ties has won a national competition.
Jay Fleming, the 10-year old son of 1985 Chester High School graduate Todd Fleming and the grandson of Chester residents John and Dottie Fleming, has won a national video contest sponsored by ESPN and YouTube.
The contest was called Your Highlight and called for home videos of athletic events to be submitted to ESPN. Over 2,000 videos were judged, then a final four were selected, and the winner was decided by online votes. Fleming received 40 percent of the votes, which was more than double the total of the second place video.
The video, which was submitted by Jay’s father is from a city swim meet in Nashville, Tennessee  last July. Jay won the competition for his age group. Jay, like most other 10-year-olds, is active in sports. However, he has only one arm after losing his left arm, at the age of six, in a boating accident.
“I actually put the video on YouTube so that our family could see it,” said Todd Fleming. “Later, I saw the contest online and submitted the video. I hadn’t thought anything of it until recently when it was announced that Jay was a finalist.”
For winning the contest, Jay and his family will be flown to Bristol, Connecticut for a VIP tour of the ESPN headquarters and watch a taping of Sports Center.
“Jay has been pretty subdued about the contest,” said Todd Fleming. “He has really been shy with some of the attention, but he is excited about winning and the trip to ESPN.”
While ESPN’s national contest has brought a lot of recent attention to Jay and his family of Henderson, Tennessee, he has been an inspiration to others for quite some time.
“He has worked extremely hard the past three years,” said Dottie Fleming. “He swims several times a week, and I can’t say how proud of him we all are. He’s my hero.”
“He is a very warm and open boy,” said Todd Fleming. “Nothing slows him down. He doesn’t believe that there is anything  he can’t do. He has such a great attitude.”
Jay also competes in basketball and baseball.