Latest news with #Nipmuc
Boston Globe
13-06-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Five takeaways from Thursday, as champions were crowned, coaches hired, TMC met, and a big soccer honor awarded
And in Shrewsbury, top-seeded Agawam bounced back after dropping the second set to win the last two in commanding fashion against Wayland and secure its second Division 2 title in three seasons. While not an MIAA sport, St. Mary's captured the 2025 girls' flag football title. With the conclusion of the softball and tennis semifinals, every championship match is locked in, and with a shift in softball to put every game on Saturday, that means 23 champions will be crowned that day, weather permitting. Advertisement You can find out when every championship game is with our title tracker, and you can revisit every game from the last two rounds with Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The rest of Thursday's coverage: 1. Commitment corner Holland (formerly Burke) senior Jay'von Depina has committed to play at Northern Essex Community College, making it five of the six Bulldogs seniors who are going on to play collegiately. Blessed enough to say i'm commiting to Northern Essex Community College! Go Knights! — Jay'von Depina (@DepinaJayvon) ▪ Dartmouth College announced an incoming women's soccer class that includes two Massachusetts products: Brookline defender Anna Leschly , a two-time EMass All-Star and Bay State Conference All-Star, and BB&N's Maeve Theobald , who made the All-NEPSAC and All-ISL first teams. 2. Coaching carousel ▪ Methuen football coach Tom Ryan will be the athletic director at the school after serving on an interim basis last year. Longtime offensive coordinator Ryan Dugan will be promoted to interim head coach. Advertisement Ryan went 81-48 in 12 seasons coaching the Rangers. Dugan has been the offensive coordinator at his alma mater, where he teaches math, for 12 years. ▪ Nipmuc has promoted Britt Kahler from assistant to head girls' basketball coach. Kahler was formerly the head coach at Blackstone Valley Tech. Congratulations to current Nipmuc Asst. Coach and former BVT Head Coach Britt Kahler. Britt will be taking over the helm of the Nipmuc Girls program — Nipmuc HS Sports (@NipmucAD) ▪ Tabor Academy announced the promotion of 2014 graduate Lydia Caputi from assistant to head girls' basketball coach. Caputi takes over for Will Becker , who she coached under the last two years. An All-New England player while at Tabor, she went on to play at Babson, where she was a three-year starter. She has coached at Trinity College and Dartmouth and was head coach at Westminster School in Simsbury, Conn. We are excited to announce Lydia Caputi'14 as the Next Girls Varsity Basketball Head Coach! — Tabor Athletics (@taborathletics) ▪ Westwood athletic director Matt Gillis announced he will be retiring next week after 33 years with the school district. The Blue Hills graduate has served as the Wolverines' AD for 13 years. 3. Milton Academy's Partal wins Gatorade boys' soccer award Milton Academy senior Josh Partal has been named the Gatorade Massachusetts Boys Soccer Player of the Year. The midfielder from Bangor, Maine, notched seven goals and eight assists, leading the Mustangs to the NEPSAC Class A championship game. A United Soccer Coaches High School All-American selection, he participated in the High School All-American Game and will play at Stanford. 'Josh just controls the game from minute one to minute 90,' said BB&N coach Joe Campbell in a release. 'He never plays a bad pass and is silky smooth on the ball. His game awareness is uncanny for such a young player.' Partal volunteers as a youth soccer coach and is a member of the Milton Academy Science Olympiad team and co-head of the MicroFinance Club. Advertisement 5. TMC talks big picture, tweaks wrestling postseason The MIAA's Tournament Management Committee discussed two big-picture topics and made a slight change to wrestling during its Thursday meeting. The only vote of the day was to reduce the number of wrestlers who qualify for All-States from six to five per weight, which was recommended by the wrestling committee. 'They're trying to get their arms around the number of people who are wrestling,' said TMC chair Shaun Hart , the Burlington AD. 'The events are so huge.' Two athletic directors, Newton North's Mike Jackson and Franklin's Karrah Ellis , proposed that basketball quarterfinal games be held at neutral locations instead of home gyms. 'It's definitely difficult to host an Elite Eight game in basketball,' Ellis said. 'From turning people away at the door because tickets sold out, to locking down your facility. We had people break in through our loading dock trying to sneak into a game. That's an unreasonable expectation of your event staff.' The committee decided to add the issue to a future agenda when they have more data, with Paine noting that only three quarterfinal games in 2025 sold more than 1,000 tickets. 'We understand Newton North and Franklin had a problem, but we need to look at the numbers and look at the ticket sales,' Hart said. Hart also noted that while hockey quarterfinals were moved to neutral locations last season, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. 'Everyone owns their own basketball gym and less than half the hockey teams play at a venue that is theirs,' Hart said. 'They're not the same.' The committee also discussed the need to make the alignment process, which just wrapped up for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years, less arduous and acrimonious. Advertisement 'We have to seriously consider what we are doing and why we are doing this work,' Hart said. 'My hope is no person needs to do alignments again. We put the formula together and it runs the state and where you land is where you are.' A sub-committee was discussed to look at alternate methods for settling alignments. Brendan Kurie can be reached at
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
VIDEO: Nipmuc senior Nathan Varney strikes out Framingham batter in first varsity win
VIDEO: Nipmuc senior Nathan Varney strikes out Framingham batter in first varsity win After undergoing major surgery in Alabama in 2024, senior captain Nathan Varney is back pitching for the Nipmuc baseball team.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Tribe members, allies protest hydro utility relicensing along Connecticut River
TURNERS FALLS — Opponents of the Northfield Mountain hydroelectric facility gathered late last week to protest its recent state relicensing and to celebrate the natural wonders of the Connecticut River. Members of the Chaubunagungamaug tribe of the Nipmuc Nation performed drumming and singing last Friday at Unity Park in Turners Falls. The Nipmuc are Indigenous peoples of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. 'We are honoring those who came before us who struggled here,' said Ite Santana, a member of the tribe. 'We are offering gratitude, a thank you, to this river, in our language — Kuttabotomish. And a call to repair the damage by this company to the river and to support the people who are fighting the good fight.' On April 22, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection certified the operator of the Northfield Pumped Storage Station, FirstLight, paving the way for it to obtain a 50-year license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The station was built in 1972 to power-up on electricity from the now-closed Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station and pumps water about 800 feet above the Connecticut River to a man-made, 5 billion gallon storage reservoir. Largely powered by electricity, the 1,100-megawatt station releases water to then generate energy to sell at a profit. FirstLight Power Resources is owned by the Canadian pension investment firm PSP Investments and reported $158 million in earnings from the facility in 2019. Environmental activists, including those with the nonprofit Connecticut River Defenders, have been pressing for the facility's closure for three years. The station 'halts, cripples and reverses miles of the Connecticut River,' according to environmental scientist Karl Meyer in an opinion piece in the CommonWealth Beacon. Meyer formerly worked at Northfield, on the safety committee and for the Connecticut River Watershed Council. The station's 'turbines annually kill hundreds of millions of eggs, larvae, and juvenile and adult fish, and other assorted aquatic species in a four-state river system,' he wrote. In an email to The Republican, Claire Belanger, FirstLight communications manager, wrote: 'While we do not agree with the characterizations made about (the station), and the calls for its shutdown, we respect the perspectives of advocates and activists, and their right to conduct peaceful and safe demonstrations.' MassDEP Director of Communications Lauren Moreschi wrote in an email that the most recent water quality certification 'provides more protections for the Connecticut River than ever before.' Input from 'neighbors, advocates and stakeholders,' public hearings and scientific modeling 'were critical in creating strong water quality protections included in this certification,' she wrote. Most comments made in the public hearings held recently 'actually condemned the DEP's draft certification,' said Priscilla Lynch, of Conway, a member of the Connecticut River Defenders. Lynch said the station creates enormous private profits at the 'public expense,' wastes large amounts of energy and destroys the environment. 'Where is the full-on energy reduction program so desperately and urgently needed right now?' Lynch said. 'The state is failing us.' Gary Seldon, of Greenfield, attended the event and said that he opposed the station on moral grounds. 'All aquatic life goes through the turbines, which definitely grind up all the fish,' he said. 'The station creates a greater flow than the river itself, so it runs the river backwards both ways. It's an intense river desecration.' Liz Cold Wind Santana Kiser, a member of the Chaubunagungamaug tribe, told The Republican at the event that the station's certification is not a defeat. 'There's no signature on the dotted line either way,' she said. 'We will continue the fight no matter what. We must talk about what these waters are and what the damage is going to be. I think it's important to let everybody know.' Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Killingly High School will choose new mascot to replace Redmen
Killingly — Killingly High School will unveil its next mascot by the end of the school year, district leaders said Thursday. Superintendent Susan Nash-Ditzel told school board members at a meeting for an ad hoc mascot committee Thursday that a committee composed of high school students, alumni, coaches and town leaders, has narrowed the list of potential mascots to replace Redmen to four finalists. The committee decided Thursday that five groups — high school students, staff members, coaches, parents and middle schoolers — will have a chance to weigh in on the final decision via an online survey that is tentatively slated to be released May 14 at the close of the town's budget season. After the survey, the mascot committee will forward a recommendation to the full Board of Education, which will have the final say on the mascot. Committee members emphasized that the survey is not a vote and that the results will be used to inform board members' decisions. Thursday's announcement moves the district one step closer to selecting a new mascot after the controversial Redmen name was officially retired at a ceremony in November. Tension over the Redmen mascot, which represented the high school for decades, began to fester in the early 2010s. In 2019, the Board of Education voted to ditch the mascot, citing criticism that its name and image were racist. For a time, the school mascot became the Red Hawks, until 2020 when a new slate of the Board of Education members — who ran on promises to reverse the vote — restored the Redmen logo. Representatives from the Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan and Nipmuc tribes blasted the mascot as a degrading caricature that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Native Americans. In 2021, the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management determined that the town was ineligible for $94,000 from the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan Fund Grant due to the Redmen name. Last June, the Board of Education voted 5-4 to retire the Redmen mascot, presumably once and for all. The historical committee charged with exploring options for the Redmen's replacement has emphasized options with historical significance. 'I think it will give us, students and the community, a better awareness of our past,' said Town Historian Margaret Weaver, who helped provide historical guidance to the committee. Nash-Ditzel said the community should not be surprised if there is no imagery to accompany the mascot options in the survey. 'The (historical) committee felt pretty strongly ... that we don't include possible imagery,' Nash-Ditzel said. 'Adults and kids both thought that people, particularly students, might just choose the coolest-looking (option) without really looking at the historical significance behind them.'
