“My dad was so happy,” Mr. Hodge said. “He was like, ‘You’re going to mess this up.’ What he meant was, O.K., prove me wrong.” Fella Hamlin was also rooting for them. “He thought it was sweet that his daughter was with his buddy’s son,” Ms. Hamlin said. And Spencer Lennon’s mother, Stephanie Lennon, knew as early as the KanJam game in her back yard that it was meant to be. “I had never seen Jon that in awe. We all wanted it to work out,” she said.

Ms. Hamlin and Mr. Hodge were so in love they didn’t need the familial encouragement, though. Since the fall of 2014 they have made a practice of not letting more than eight weeks pass without a visit. And they talk at length daily. “People ask me all the time, How do you guys do the long-distance thing?” Mr. Hodge said. “But at the end of the day I want to be with her. So it’s not hard, it’s necessary.”

Summers together in Remsen have been especially hardship-free, with the exception of last summer, when Mr. Hodge was struggling with how to propose. By July 4, he found what he called a “low-profile” ring at Lennon’s Jewelry Shop, owned by Mr. Lennon’s uncle, in New Hartford, N.Y. (“I knew she didn’t want anything sticking high off her hand because of her lifestyle,” he said. “It was kind of a safety protocol.”) By July 12, he had the ring in his pocket. But he still hadn’t come up with the perfect way to ask Ms. Hamlin to be his wife.