HYANNIS — Cape Cod would seem an unlikely setting for such a story as this, but even the Garden of Eden had its evil snake. So it is here, where the sand meets the sea but darkness lurks.

According to the Cape Cod Times, Barnstable County last year had the highest per capita opiate-related overdose death rate in the state, 30.33 per 100,000 people. In nine of the past 16 years, the Cape’s opiate-related death rate placed it among the top five counties in Massachusetts, a state in which 1,379 opiate-related overdose deaths were recorded last year, and that did not include Boston, Worcester or Springfield, which means the number surely was higher. That’s a 7.5  percent increase from a year earlier.

More than half those victims were found to have traces of Fentanyl in their system, a synthetic opiate 80-100 times more powerful than morphine and 40-50 times stronger than pure heroin. It is often found in prescription pain-killers but also is sold illegally on the street. It is believed as many as 80  percent of opiate abusers begin their descent into this growing epidemic through the misuse of pain-killers following an accident or surgery. So it was with Ryan Loughlin.

Loughlin was a 32-year-old attorney who struggled with addiction but put himself through the New England School of Law and embarked on a personal injury career in Lawrence. Sometime after staying late at his sister’s house on Halloween to watch a movie with her family two years ago, he went to his office instead of going home. He must have made a stop first.

According to his uncle, former Green Bay Packers coach Mike Sherman, he was flush, having just won a big case. By sunrise, he was dead from a heroin overdose. The local paper said he “passed away suddenly.”

That’s how Sherman came to be standing in an open field across from Cape Cod Community College with his partner, Warren Nighan, holding a dream wrapped in tears. In his hands were plans for a massive new sports complex, but that was only part of the idea.

The dream is to build a $12  million sports facility in an empty industrial park that would service not only the needs of the Barnstable’s kids and families but become a magnet for Cape kids aged 18-25 for whom there is too little to do in the winter and too many empty hours to fill.

Sherman’s hope is such a facility will “build champions,” which in a sense has been his life’s work, but not just as athletes. He wants the center called Total Athletics Cape Cod to do for young men like his nephew what wasn’t done for Ryan Loughlin in time.

“When my wife and I moved to the Cape two years ago, I thought it might be a one-year deal,’’ Sherman said this week. “I hadn’t totally bought into the fact it might be the end of my NFL (coaching) career.

“I hadn’t been in the area for more than a week or two of vacation for a long time. You get so wrapped up with coaching, I hadn’t seen my family much. You lose touch with things that are happening.”

One of those things was the downward spiral of his nephew and godson, who had gotten hooked on oxycontin. From that root grew an addiction he could not shake, try as he might.

“I used to see him here on vacation,’’ Sherman said. “The last year I saw him was my last year coaching with the Dolphins. He didn’t look good. I knew Narcan (an opiate antidote) had already saved his life once. I guess I hadn’t been a real great godfather.

“When we moved here, he seemed to be doing well. . . . He told me he really felt like he had a handle on it. He said he couldn’t keep doing this to his mother. He was really trying. He was a great kid. But drugs don’t discriminate. Nov. 1, 2014. That day made me realize even a mother’s tears can’t protect a kid from addiction.

“After that I started paying more attention to opiate addiction, especially on Cape Cod. I saw those OD death numbers accumulating. They were exceeding gun violence. It was shocking.’’

Sherman got wind of an effort in Sandwich. When it began to falter because of the usual political and environmental red tape, he began seeking other options.

One day, out of the blue, he got a call from Nighan, a Northeastern-trained nurse and former hockey player who’d become an executive in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry before moving back to the Cape from Minnesota. Nighan had an idea to build a similar complex centered around a hockey rink. Soon they joined forces.

“I see all these kids leaving the Cape to find places to play,” Nighan explained. “Everyone’s going over the bridge. I saw there was only one men’s (hockey) league on Cape Cod because of lack of ice time. There just aren’t many structured programs or adequate facilities, so I started to think about a business model.

“Nine of the 10 points that interested (Mike) were the same as mine. A project like this has to make enough money to stay open, but it can also serve another purpose. We hope it will give kids and their families a place to go and something constructive to do.’’

Such an ambitious effort needs a home, of course, and through the philanthropic efforts of successful Cape businessman Sam Lorusso and his family, they have it. It’s an 8.6-acre parcel of land they not only can lease but which was long-ago zoned for a hockey rink. If Sherman and Nighan can successfully navigate the permitting process, they’re hoping to have shovels in the ground by November and an opening date sometime in 2017.

“We have a good idea and a good business plan, but we could never buy the land to do this,’’ Sherman said. “Without the Lorusso family, this couldn’t happen. They’ve done so many charitable things all over the Cape.”

The master plan includes a hockey rink; a full-size, lighted, outdoor turf field for football, baseball, lacrosse and soccer; a fieldhouse with an indoor track and smaller turf field; a training facility; food services; a rock wall and an arcade. The outdoor field would be covered by a bubble 180 days a year, making it operational even in the coldest winter.

It’s an ambitious effort born not only out of a sporting need but also a larger one. A human need that will use sports and families to fight what has become an epidemic so prevalent HBO recently aired a documentary entitled “Heroin: Cape Cod, USA.’’

That’s not what Sherman expected to find on the Cape, and fighting it isn’t like preparing a NFL team for a playoff run.

“The Cape desperately needs a facility like this,’’ he said. “We want to provide a place for young athletes to train and play, and for their families to come and relax and watch or work out themselves. Our hope is it could be a place where young adults, the ones 18-24 who are kind of unmoored after high school, come and play in organized leagues and get connected to something that helps them avoid some of the pot holes that lead to bad choices. Our concept is to build champions on and off the field.

“This is pretty much it for me. I’m more accepting of that now. I’m going out to the Hall of Fame for (Brett) Favre’s induction, and I’m sure that will be a little itch I’ll have to scratch, but this is my work now.’’