Along with Slacker’s good advice:
— the news hook (he got an award recently) needs to be in the first two grafs (three if you have a killer feature lead).
— Brown’s quote is a bit of dead weight. It gies in a few different directions.

Brown was one of the players who wanted to honor Lambert.

“I wrote a letter to the Parks Department and it was up to them to make a decision,” Brown said. “They were really anxious to do it, and we appreciated that. Because he was a founder and he should be recognized. When he and Cooper were doing this, they didn’t have all of this high-tech social media stuff. They had to knock on doors and hand out flyers. They had to put some work into it.”

My attempt: The Parks Department was “anxious” to award Lambert, said his former teammate Brown, who wrote a letter recommending the honor.“When he and Cooper were doing this, they didn’t have all of this high-tech social media stuff,” Brown said. “They had to knock on doors and hand out flyers. They had to put some work into it.”