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Matthew Paris
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Fri Jan 30, 2004 9:13 pm
- Stravinsky Night
On October 18th I attended the Mets performance of three practices of Stravinsky. A production that had kept alive since 1981. It includes the intrepid and famous ballet Le Sacre du Printemps and two short but remarkably different operas written fifteen years apart, the transcendental Le Rossignol and the severely neo-classical Oedipus Rex.
In different ways all three pieces under the romantic baton of Valery Gergiev showed off Stravinsky talent for sensational, original and effective theatre music. Le Sacre and Le Rossignol ar sensational pieces that extend inherited and inebriated 19th century romantic ideas of the unattainable ideal, the savage, the exotic, the explosion outward from the narrowness of the Enlightenment as well as the comparable small range of the medieval echoes of church and state that collapsed in both in substance and musical language nearly a century within both worlds, reorganized in a new individualistic way in the 1820s into the very personal orchestral fantasies of Berlioz and the thornily chromatic pianist of Chopin and Liszt.
Le Sacre as well as Le Rossignol attempts to create a sense of metaphysical awe in the audience at the ritual and strangeness of human beehives in different or imaginary cultures, a theme of cultural relativism and the perplexity of all of us at the enigma of human life that goes back to the Persian Letters of Montescquieu. An audience of Parisians taking in the alexin character of the hinterlands of their world as the ultimate in sophisticated analysis of human character was fashionable in Paris over two centuries from Rameaeu through Chopin and Liszt to Diaghelevs champions of the alexin and sensational like Stravinsky.
In another century one has to be aware of the excised character of instrumentation and melody in Le Sacre and Le Rossignol. They are sensational but they are also brilliantly crafted. As absolute music there are impeccable as Haydns quartets. Its important to realize their virtues when the transcendental causes they represent, the Teutonic longing for the unattainable translated into the idiom of Debussy and his circle of whom Stravinsky was one, and the long time Parisian fascination with the exotic, have become less fashionable.
As deliberately strange and esoteric as their vertical harmonies seem even to us, the essential elements of music, melodic, rhythm and the vocal integrity of the musical lines are always impeccable, even classic when even a semblance of a tonal base and conventional triadic progression has disappeared. Perhaps the most severe point of departure in Le Sacre is the way forward extension of ideas become schizoidally episodic with the constant change of meter and unexpected melodic resolutions.
David Hockneys sets for all these productions emphasis various kinds of devices of geometry and color in a powerfully necromantic way. Le Sacre takes place around a circle of crimson colors like a disk of fire. Hockneys costumes are sufficiently revealing to show the virility of the bodies that resonate to this sensuous music. The not notably original retro choreography by Doug Varone deficits savagery and Russian dreams of Central Asian ruthlessness but seems wedded competently to this feral concept.
Le Rossignol with a libretti co-written by the composer based on a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, uses vary shadows of blue in a more conventional transcendental set; only the Japanese contingent is robed in crimson. Its mixture of dreamy dance and drama suggests Pelleas Et Melisande and Le Martyrdom du St. Sebastian. The strange melodies of the nightingale are delivered exquisitely by Olga Makarina. Victor Chernomorotsev is grand and pious as the Chinese emperor. Ronald Nakli gives the fisherman the right aura of naive hunger for the unknowable.
As much as Le Sacre and Le Rossignol are about sublimity and frenzy such as romantic composers have been depicting rather directly since Beethoven and Berlioz, Oedipus Rex is a cold and frozen rite in a closed form about the enigma of fortune and the large riddle of an inexplicable rule by the gods. Cocteaus libretto takes out all of the complexity Sophocles gave the tale, giving the story an iconic and stony character for all its patty and terror. The chilly and remote nature of the piece is mirrored by its use of fossilized Latin. Stravinsky used a similar set of devices later in his more massive Symphony of Psalms. All threes acts in this show were done in masks; if Le Rossignol has the most beautiful of dominos and robes Oedipus has an uncanny tone because the masks are mixed in Hockneys production with ordinary modern dress. It refreshes our notion of costume with a sense of horror.
Oedipus is particularly frightening in the extreme Bacchus with such costumes one sees nothing in two ways. Some of the empty and abstract character of the David Hockney set suggesting is mutineer dress in one more sinister riddle has a reptilian opacity that matches the music. The detached and ironic character of the piece is accentuated by the blend of modernity and the hoary age of the tale, the world of goods that are dead if not forgotten, the feeling perhaps in the audience that more deities than Zeus have joined the stony pantheon of unspeakable and not quite perished entities still abroad in their own lifetime.
In all three acts of this myriad tribute Valery Gergiev is equal to rousing the orchestra to be at awesome, ferocious, gauzy and fey, frozen and obscure when Stravinsky calls for such a uncanny variety in his palette.
Since we have his variousness of many of his works concocted by Stravinsky himself in the 50s and 60s in these days we can compare his notions of his music in his old age both with scores that were written when he was in many ways armed with a very different aesthetic.
We dont have Clause Debussy playing his two piano version with him of the two piano score, we dont know what Stravinsky or St. Seans said to their friends after they eft the hall after the first performance of Le Sacre du Printemps, a spectacle for st. Seans that began when he couldnt recognize the bassoon sound in those high note at its opening; we do can savor performances by Pierre Monteux and Ernest Ansermet, two conductors often associated with Stravinskys music. These masters of the baton and Stravinsky both lived a very long time.
Ensermet had felt in his old age that Stravinskys matter of fact approach to his scores came for a lack of conducting technique. Certainly this evening Gergiev gave a performance of all three works at a polarity from Stravinskys own late aesthetic. The famous opening bassoon and bass clarinet duet in Le Sacre was done in a hyper-romantic rubato. The orchestral colors were brought out for their optimal transcendental and sensational ferocity.
There are a few moments in music of the past in the spirit of this scare, the developments in the first and last movements of Mozarts G Minor Symphony, some of the last movement of Beethovens Second and Seventh Symphonies, some of the Monroe dionysiac music of Debussy and Ravel; nobody including Stravinsky himself had created a whole score of such astonishing mixes of savage rhythms and capricious atonality to capture the romantic hunger for the exotic and forbidden.
Le Rossignol was begun by Stravinsky in 1909 but finished several years later; it is clearly related to the perfumed and exotic style of The Firebird, also part of a turn of the century fey transcendental aesthetic that may remend us of parallel works like Bluebeards Castle and Griffes Pleasure Dome Of Kubla Kahn.
In retrospect Le Sacre is close in subject if not in style to late Stravinsky works in its concern with the past. Though it seemed on the mad side to Monteux, this score has to strike one as exquisitely made, free and mobile in its melodic audacity, very resourceful in timbre, much more like absolute music in its beautiful crafted linear voices than baths in orchestral sensuality one can hear from this time. As jazz musicians discovered in from the Whitman band to Fusion, as long as there is a driving rhythm and one is one step away or less from the sound of shuffling feet the most intrepid harmonies are acceptable to an audience.
This is as much tau in a Haydn minuet where the astonishments arent usually harmonic but detail of sub-structure. In fact one can see in this clarity of line in Le Sacre the very neo-classical qualities that seem soporifically to be at such remove from it one hears in Stravinskys pieces between 1948 and Agon, his first twelve tone work, done of the late 40s. At the time in seemed near impossible for instrumentalists in an orchestra to count Le Sacres relentless changing meters although much of it is slow and in pretty straightforward 4/4 time. Yet enough of it isnt to make an orchestral player leery about his entrances and performance. It must be still seemingly perversely hard to count because I heard several shaky entrances tonight. The wide vertical range of voces leave no place to hide. Of course its a pace that aims to shock and succeeds; the parts that are metrically module as if the dancers have five legs effectively do that.
Yet for some who had led legions of composers into the future Stravinsky was as much concerned with resuscitating the past as much as any reactionary who honestly thought it was the present or should be. His mercurial career didnt really invite disciples though he had many of them. It was obvious in this concert that Le Sacre and Le Rossignol were written by the same composer; it might have astonished anyone who didnt know it that Stravinsky was also the composer of the severely neo-classical Oedipus Rex. Composers audacious as STRAVINSKY or even Beethoven like a point of denature. Sometimes the eclectic initial place is entirely gone by the time the piece is written. Stravinsky of all composers rarely concealed his derivations. After all, his genius lay at least partially in finding fresh things in what had seemed stale and dead.
His early work didnt wander much beyond those static stations of subsequent travel. I dont think anyone in an imaginary quiz show would easily associate either Stravinsky with the composer of the early E Flat Symphony and Piano Sonata or the late Movements For Piano and Orchestra, the latter a lapidary masterpiece of serialist. Both Robert Craft and Milton Babbitt have told me these were seminal works for those immersed in this hermetic sonic arcana.
The several very elegant Craft books are not merely a wonderful collection of wit and profundity such as one rarely finds in non-fiction or for that matter fiction in America; they are a collaboration that made Stravinsky for many into the first and only celebrity outside the achievement of his work we have hade in the Unified States. Some claim Craft had made Stravinsky more articulate in this musical hagiographia than he was; I dont think so. Ive heard others besides Craft personally tell me how epigrammatic Stravinsky could be.
Like many foreigners he may have gotten all the American sounds wrong; like those same educated foreigners he had a mastery of English superior to most people born here. The Craft books dont really tell us anything intimate about Stravinskys inner life or offer the secrets of his creative process though we get the surface of it and him well enough. From wham others say Stravinsky never offered it. The superfluities are fascinating. Craft enriches us with all manner of dateless of the surface of an enigma that talent always is from Stravinsky habit of wearing religious medals when he composed to his noisy scratching on the music paper.
Among other things Craft walks into the sanctum sanctorum to find Stravinskys genius in the objective appearance of his execution of work. Fascinating and audacious as Crafts approach is, grateful as I am to have read these brilliant and lapidary books, I dont find them any more an explanation of why Stravinsky had genius than Eckermamns similar anatomy of the life and tabletalk of Goethe. Whatever happened to Stravinsky between his dull and barely competent early Symphony in E Flat and the pages of Le Rossignol written in 1909 remains an interred mystery to us. If Stravinsky described it, would we then understand it?
One infers from the direct evidence of the scores that Le Rossignol has some aesthetic if not stylistic antecedents in his teacher Risky Korsakoffs Invisible City of Kizeh, that Stravinsky must have studied to scores of Debussy and Ravel very carefully during this time, that he went to Pairs not to escape the Bolsheviks but several years before the Soviet Revolution like Prokeffief to come to a musical capital where sensational music was appreciates by the best of their cognoscenti as a spasmodic epiphany more satisfying than love, at their worst by their jaded philistines as an elaborate civilized frisson.
It was the same sort of move to a world capital Chopin and Liszt had made in the previous century from Poland and Hungary. Stravinsky was a practical man; he nearly always from first to last worked on commission; he rarely did pieces without a stipend though in getting one he insisted he go his own way.
His financial acumen was one of the ways he was different from Schoenberg. Of course the world at that time was not avid to give Schoenberg any such easy guerdons; Schoenberg didnt go to Paris to astound anyone either. Both men werent really performers; Stravinsky had a sense of the sensational and its value that performers have when they dont even have talent.
Its rather amusing to think that Pierre Monteux thought Stravinsky was crazy the first time he heard Le Sacre. His conducing performance at the debut became one of the perorations of Monteux career when he coincided its first performance. Certainly nearly averred but his circle thought Schoenberg was perverse or a crank; few were convinced he was also a lunatic. The best once could say about twelve tone music in those days was that it was a very hermetic art for the few. When creative minds become lunatic as Schumann did they dont necessarily compose less well organized and persuasive music.
Le Sacre did prove something Beethoven showed a century before it and Mile Davis and Chick Cornea realized more than a half century later: as long as one has fierce driving repetitive rhythms one can build almost any harmony and melodic line as well as the most complex polyphony one cares to one cares to and produce effective music. Now we listen to both Schoenberg and Stravinsky as traditional masters and think other people are crazy. We might notice that Schoenberg didnt offer rhythms beyond the ability of the human mind to organize them easily and clearly either. Eventual as music reaches levels of complexity or anarchy that are worthy of being confused with the effusions of those who are certifiably boners we will accuse composers of being irrelevant to us if not madmen and we will be right.
I would guess that long before he met Diaghelev Stravinsky liked to astonish people. Though trained by Rimsky Korsakoff he didnt start out to be a composer, was not a prodigy and composed some rather dull music into his early twenties. His family had not been particularly musical. Something mysterious apparently happened to him in his early 30s that turned him from a bore to a genius. Whatever it was, it was wedded to a restlessness that led him to compose in many styles, even write jazzy pieces, set music in five languages, four of which he spoke with a heavy accent, and live in France, then the United States. His process was severely internal whatever it was. Obviously Stravinsky didnt need inspiration from the environment if he lived most of his last decades in California.
He protected himself well. He didnt waste his creative energy teaching like Schoenberg; he had no pupils. He made a laving performing if he was not a great pianist or conductor; he was however a sui generis emigre celebrity who was able continually to live on solely on commissions and performances that might be described as Samuel Johnson once said about a dancing bear, not notable for its mastery but that he could do it at all. He was frugal and perhaps a little tight with money. His children complained he came first in their family life. Although their respective courts told Stravinsky and Schoenberg that the other was their enemy, to the point here both men, living in Los Angeles, only talked to each other; as soon as Schoenberg died in 1951 Stravinsky sort of took over the niche of Schoenberg, taking over the leadership of serial music to the bafflement of his former musical knights.
The Stravinsky-Schoenberg war of their two retinues was silly stiff. Both composers were influenced early by Debussy, the transcendental, the whole late romantic gestalt, both creates neo-classic works around the same time, the late 1920s, as well, and both of course were for long period of their careers users of twelve tone and serial techniques.
Both were not first class performers either; they were modern specialists rather than all around types like Bach who represented a cleavage in writing and performing music that would have been unthinkable to the very musical tradition that had formed them. Very sensational and original talents who redefined what music could be in ways that in the end werent all that dissimilar, both were influenced by Debussy because, if Chopin skirted it, that composer really wrote the first music in the West that sometimes defined analytical analysis; Debussy represented in practice if not in theory a freedom from translation of inspiration to a hard edged logical extension of ideas.
Stravinsky was the friend and performer collaborating with Debussy; Schoenbergs Pelleas und Melisande is as much a tribute from a distance to that master. Debussy after all was the one who when asked how he explain his choice of harmonies or notes said, mon plaisir. It also disturbs Schoenbergs atonal paired. Yet if one thinks of it is also is a description of the music of Haydn and Mozart.
That timeless aesthetic with its invention pushed to the font is one step or less from atonality if one could say that Mozarts G Major Gigue isnt far away either. Polytonailty and twelve tone systems both tend to undermine inequality of tones, escaping vertical triad chords and conventional harmonic progressions to stress a Pythagorean attention on the integrity of individual notes. It also takes up a new direction to embrace whatever order and logic it can in its Art that is a big stretch from the music of scales, actives, fifths, various consonances that structure music all over the planet. It is a soot of invasion of invention and pure cognition into the previously invulnerable presumptive sonic notions that are programmed into all humans biologically. It is in the sense very much a mirror to a technology in the West that aims to make all substance infinitely plastic and malleable, to be an army of Fausts commanding their amiable Mephistopheles forever to be conjuring endlessly amassing and carnally comforting artifice out of the very atoms.
We think of Schoenberg as uncompromising because he seed to have that scot of thorny earnest character, Stravinsky as a man ready to work at anything in any idiom; its rather unfair to both composers. Although we are accustomed to thinking of Schoenberg and his school as musical purists, that is just a cartoon and a pitch to the rubes. Schoenberg set Strauss waltzes, orchestrated the Brahms G Minor Piano Quartet, wrote concerti after Handel and Monn, did all manner of minor pieces of music for teaching purposes that have still never been rechartered, eclectic vignettes showing the varieties of various styles. Schoenberg real first quartet is a tuneful work full of folksy mediates in the style of Dvorak.
Stravinsky in music aims to be personally neutral while achieving only a kind of uniqueness that is thornily idiosyncratic in its severe asperity. Claiming he took up style a Picasso did is interesting to a point; yet we dont listen to any music, classical music, jazz or blues to do other than savor the geniuses who make music in a certain time to be acceptable or ene out of homage to the personal options a style given them in expression or even an opaque lack of it as they embrace one style or another. The selectivity that has spared us most of the lousy music of the past works to convince us if we dont think about it that there is an objective virtue or lack of it in style. We simply dont listen in music of the past to anything but their geniuses if we can help it. Why should we be citified with competence in a field in which even mere excellence isnt good enough? We are badgered by the vendors of the new to have a more lax standard about music written in the present. Theres nothing intrinsically musical or even objectively tolerable in the romantic athetotic that produce Le Sacre and Le Rossignol. They are great and worth our attention because of who wrote them. Consequently the burden of being amusing in the end rests shelly on the composer, not the style. He must be interesting to seem interesting musically.
Unlike any other composer working in the last century, Stravinsky also became the hero in the rememberable and witty Robert Craft books. He was fortunate that both Craft and Goddard Leiberson championed him in the 50s and beyond. Before their efforts there werent many recordings of any 20th century composer in the stores nor were there many books or other engines of celebrity to make them attractive as products in the bins either. Had Schoenberg such knights he might have been able to quite teaching at UCLA and finish Moses und Aron.
Rather paradoxically, Schoenbergs career took after his death off to its present seeming apogee form the efforts of German conductors like Hans Rosbaud and the German culture generally. He was, as Boulez put it in one of his essays, not quite the Moses of music but he was close to it. Stravinsky thrived in America while he was living as a resident genion European genius. Neither of them did movie scores like Korngold, Steiner, Rosza and other less radical European composers in Los Angeles; none of them except Kurt Weill wrote pop songs either like Stravinskys real nemesis, Vernon Duke.
One should say that Duke and his very witty book Listen Here! is the only man to inspire Stravinsky in the Craft books to wild rage. Stravinsky remarks that all Vernon Duke did was write a hit pop song, April In Paris. Actually Duke wrote several hit songs and some good pop scores but perhaps Dukes career did the one thing Stravinsky never did or could do: he made a lot of money from those hits. Duke became more popular and influential in a populist country with his miniature pop and show tunes than Stravinsky was in America or ever could be.
As great a genius as Stravinsky was, in America he could never enter the lists with Duke or Elvis or Hank Williams. It seems absurd to us to much such a comparison but in Europe Stravinsky was a celebrity to everybody; in America he was only one to the American who for one reason or another felt less like Americans and more like Europeans. As a European with a thick accent he was in a way what they thought they were.
One might take Stravinskys career and achievement as a point of departure for a more general look on who both Stravinsky and Schoenberg, born in an age in which Artists had been prophets since Beethoven and Byron, became much less important than politician, courtesans, and real estate magnates after the First World War; they declined in their fame into a near oblivion as social influences after the Second World War. If eon was born after 1960 one cannot imagine a classical music composer, a poet, painter or a novelist having the kind of influence and power that Byron, Beethoven, Victor Hugo, DAnnunzio, Ibsen, Shaw or Tolstoy to name a few had on the West o even on those in the colonial hinterlands like Gandhi.
It wasnt a glamour confined to the educated few; it was a central estates held in this time only by movie stars and television hosts that reached into the homes of ordinary people. If one was born after 1970 he notion that musicians or even paladins might be taken seriously much less followed for their leadership and wisdom is really unthinkable.
In America the kind of influence and power that a Hemingway, Kerouac or Ginsberg could still wield in the 1950s is now history. Stravinsky came as close to being a celebrity in his lifetime as such European champion of high art ever are in America; he might have wanted also the income of Kurt Weill and Vernon Duke. He did make achenial tentative forays into a more papillar idiom early and late with Le Histoire du Soldat, Circus Polka, am Ebony Concerto, all on commission, along with some late songs like The Owl and the Pussycat. He certainly was a composer who was ready to try anything.
My guess is that had the Beatles and Roiling Stones asked him to write for them he would have done it. So for that matter would Schoenberg. The notion that they accept only poaches of high art is really not born out by their diverse achievements. We can't say that classical music as a style hid in the realm of high arcana from a genal republican movement in Western history starting in the 1730s and continuing with ever more energy in our present.
The successful history of romantic music can be linked centrally to how much classical European music negotiated with folk and pop music of its time. Verdi when writing Donna E Mobile for Rigoletto told his friends the next day that the whole city would be hamming this tune once the opera was mounted. We can't imagine such ambitions in classical music or for that matter any music today. If any composer were to say tat after mountie an opera anywhere in the West nowadays he would possibly be committed. Yesterdays truth can turn into todays grandiosity.
Similarly we find unthinkable that a novel like Kerouacs On the Road or a few long poems by Ginsberg published by a small press could change not only a nation but eventually the culture of the planet thought they did in my lifetime. Its not that the Arts were not at times or among certain populist talents avid to speak to the common people as the world of kings and priests was dying or dead; something very central in the mechanism of not merely Western art but leadership, authority and trust in excellence and genius itself became marginal to nil as successive waves of more radical departures from the old culture became more prevalent and dominant among the populace.
Its not as if Stravinsky wasnt out there reaching with his genius for the audience he knew was potentially in front of him. Its rather that the audience for Art and thought in the old way was running way from him, the West generally had ontological hares running faster than even Stravinsky could sprint to try to catch them.
We are living now in not merely a world musical sensibility that has escaped its past but a general Luddite suspicion of anything more than very practical thought, language and aesthetics which are manifestations of the hard edged and severe means of departure from old ways revolutions often have in and out of the Arts. Stravinsky early and late did his best to make some accommodations he would live with in this social condition. Like all practical men he knew when diplomacy no longer had any preps.
The last phase of his career after Agon through the late serial works were the response of a realist about the musical landscape he inhabited. It wasnt just that classical music had become elitist arcana when it had aimed to be part of the worlds army of prophets. It was that thought itself about problem solving had seemed endurable fey, complex or otherwise contemptible to an audience that had formerly looked to its most excellent pundits for this kind of formerly timeless meditation and discourse.
It hardly singled our classical music by which we mean European music not dominated by a severe folk style. Pop music, once compel and richly luscious in its harmonics enough to nurture a talent like Vernon Dukes, a.k.a Vladimir Dukensky had declined at the time of Agon, had plummeted further to the level of How Much Is That Doggie In the Window? with its four transparent repetitive chords. We were on our way in the early 50s in our pop culture to a fusion of the treacly and puerile; Stravinsky had to make the most of salvaging what he could from our rhinestone cult of feral or castrated stupidity.
We can see in the pagan pages of Oedipus Rex not a reactionary hunger for the past but one of the first attempts of Stravinsky to play all bases in a reformulation of Western touchstones for values in a world he sensed much earlier had needed or at least wanted new fulcrums of reality.
Many of his subsequent masterpieces from Agon through the Movements for Piano and Orchestra and Abraham and Isaac were in one sense retrospect overviews from a great distance of Hellenic, Jewish and English takes on social reality, not in a way all that removed from his earlier adventures in Scythian and Chinese materials in Le Sacre and Le Rossignol.
We perhaps owe the very imploded and lapidary character of Stravinskys music from 1948 to his death in 1971 to a genius that took up the gilded barnacles left behind in the spiritual wreckage of the Western ship of state that still appreciated him.
One never knows whether one is going to be the first or last of any dynasty or exploration in a certain direction. Though they both lived in Los Angeles nobody hired either Schoenberg or Stravinsky for movie scores; one can see their influences of course in the works of such as Jerry Goldsmith and Johnny Mandel.
Both men stretched a European envelope as far as they could in Calliphorine, but not into the republican roots of the country they had adopted. Stravinsky lived long enough to survive in his last years in a time that lacked the entire mythic idiom of Europe, the very shorthand he had been brought up in of the Old World; it had a new one that he took up only occasionally in Ebony Concerto, his Woody Herman piece. The tradeoff of living for a long while is that everything else around one largely perishes.
Stravinsky had spent his whole life making a recovery from that situation. His last dodocacophonic works show that in his old age he had decided to leave republican music to the republicans and make absolute music like Schoenberg with his own rather different, rich and memorable imported theatre of history.
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Bartlett Hawks
Coach: Denise Sarna (9th year, 245-45)
Conference: Upstate Eight Valley
2011-12 record: 32-2 (11-1, UEC Valley champs, 3rd in Class 4A)
Top returning players: Junior Elizabeth Arco (6-1 F).
Top newcomers: Senior Alyssa Hernandez (6-2 F), Chantel Zasada (5-7 G), Alexandra Fleig (5-11 F); juniors Ashley Johnson (5-6 G), Ally Giampapa (5-9 G), Kayla Gallagher (5-9 G/F), Brooke Kulbeda (5-7 G); freshmen Kaitlin Brohan (5-9 G/F), Kelly Harris (6-1 F).
Outlook: There's starting over, then there's starting over. Bartlett lost its top 8 players and all 5 starters from last year's 32-2 team that took third place in the Class 4A state tournament. Arco is the only returning player who saw significant varsity playing time but the addition of Hernandez, a transfer from Lake Park, will certainly help when she returns from an ankle injury.
"It's been interesting so far," said Hawks coach Denise Sarna. "We've got four freshmen, a senior transfer, two seniors on the varsity who didn't play much last year and some juniors who played some. We're coming together from so many different angles. I think we'll get better, we just need some time. They're nice kids and they're working hard. We should have some versatility."
The schedule is tough as always for the Hawks, beginning with the Naperville Central/Benet Tip-Off Tournament, where they play the host schools, both ranked, in their first two games.
"These kids are going to get thrown into the fire and grow up fast," Sarna said. "The schedule is tough and we open with two really good teams."
Sarna says one thing the Hawks always have going for them is pride and tradition, things she stressed when the Hawks took their team building trip to Wisconsin, where former Bartlett star Jacki Gulczynski now plays.
"We talk about the tradition and dedication and commitment," she said. "We're a different team this year. These kids want to outwork teams. There's pride in our program and the kids want to work hard to uphold the tradition, We have to focus on defense this year and we want to outsmart teams."
Burlington Central Rockets
Coach: Mark Smith (1st year)
Conference: Big Northern East
2011-12 record: 13-16 (6-4 BN-East)
Top returning players: Seniors Erica Haynes (5-8 G/F), Camille Dela Cruz (5-6 G); sophomore Alison Colby (6-0 C/F).
Top newcomers: Junior Kathleen Ratzek (5-6 G); sophomore Jackie Collins (5-7 F); freshmen Kayla Ross (5-7 F), Shelby Holt (5-9 F), Sam Cruz (5-7 F), Sam Pryor (5-10 F/C), Becca Gerke (6-0 C).
Outlook: The Mark Smith era begins at Burlington Central as the former St. Charles North boys and Harper College women's coach takes over as the Rockets' fifth coach in the last seven years. And while the returning experience may be a little thin, the Rockets lead the area with five freshmen on the varsity roster, a core of players who have been ultrasuccessful at the middle school level and in AAU basketball with the Illinois Hoop Dreams program. Colby (11.4 ppg, 6.6 rpg) had a good freshman campaign, while Haynes and Dela Cruz, who will play soccer on scholarship at Northern Iowa, bring senior leadership to the floor.
"I had no idea about this freshman group," said Smith, whose daughter Kelsey, a St. Charles North grad, is a scholarship player at DePaul. "I felt like we could work with whatever we had but I went to the Dundee-Crown summer league and had people like (Hampshire coach) Ed Haugens tell me we have a great group. It's the positive affect of AAU and the exposure of the girls' abilities. We're putting a lot of new stuff in and in 2-3 years they'll know it well. They've got basketball savvy and they pick things up pretty good."
Smith knows full well that as talented as the freshmen may be, it's still their first crack at varsity basketball.
"I think it's more their talent and reputation," Smith said. "I talked to (former BC coach) Darlene (Guyett) and she saw these kids in grade school. It will take these freshmen a while. They're used to playing eighth-grade basketball and winning by big margins. The age difference will be huge. But once they get the system down we'll be OK."
Smith has also welcomed former Rocket standout Tia Sportsman to the coaching staff. She will coach the BC freshman team this season.
Cary-Grove Trojans
Coach: Rod Saffert (7th year, 135-43)
Conference: Fox Valley (Valley)
2011-12 record: 21-9 (11-1 FVC Valley)
Top returning players: Seniors Olivia Jackubicek (5-10 F), Joslyn Nicholson (5-10 G), Megan Leisten (5-8 G), Hannah Phillips (5-8 F), Kylie Smith (5-8 F); juniors Sarah Kendeigh (5-7 G), Abby Glaysher (5-9 G); sophomore Katie Barker (5-9 G);
Top newcomers: Juniors Abby Jakubicek (5-10 F), Amy Clemment (5-0 G); freshmen Jen Pilut (5-8 G), Becky Koch (5-1 G).
Outlook: Three straight conference titles, three straight regional crowns and two straight Sweet Sixteen appearances have made Cary-Grove the team to beat in the FVC Valley again this season. Seniors Olivia Jackubicek (13.4 ppg, 7.5 rpg) and Joslyn Nicholson (7.1 ppg, 2.9 rpg) are coming off all-area seasons and will join with sophomore guard Katie Barker to form the core of this Trojans' team. Barker, though, will be out until around Christmas time after undergoing meniscus surgery. All three will be C-G captains this season.
"Olivia will be out starting go-to girl inside," said C-G coach Rod Saffert. "Her physical strength makes her very tough to deal with one-on-one. She is also one of our best defenders. Joslyn will be one of our starting guards who has the capability of posting up as well. Her length on defense helps the team tremendously as does her ability to put the ball on the floor and shoot a true jump shot. She will be attending Olivet Nazarene next fall to play in their run-and-gun system. Katie Barker started as a freshman last year. Her stats weren't remarkable but the improvement in her game since then has been and will be felt by her opponents. Katie is the most vocal player we have and will be a powerful outside threat for us, especially from 3-point range, but she can also post up as well."
Saffert is also pleased with the depth of returning players he has and he has high hopes for the Trojans' newcomers.
"The returning players fulfilled their roles admirably last year and will no doubt be important to our success again this year," Saffert said. "Our four newcomers will also prove to be valuable members of our team this season."
It all adds up to Cary-Grove having high expectations again.
"We should contend for the Valley Division title, a regional title and even a sectional title," Saffert said. "We lost two very good players to graduation, but this team's main goal is to keep the winning tradition alive."
Saffert is also pleased he has an intelligent team and program. In the first quarter of this school year, 27 of the 29 players in the C-G program were on either the honor roll or the high honor roll. The varsity team had a combined GPA of 4.07 in the first quarter of the academic year.
Crystal Lake South Gators
Coach: Kyle McCaughn (12th year, 158-169)
Conference: Fox Valley (Valley)
2011-12 record: 12-18 (4-8 FVC Valley)
Top returning players: Seniors Stephanie Oros (5-6, G), Lauren Del Vecchio (6-0, F), juniors Sara Mickow (5-11, C), Rachel Rassmussen (5-6, G).
Top newcomers: Sophomore Carly Nolan (6-0 C), freshman Chanel Fanter (5-8, F).
Outlook: When the Gators took care of the ball and the defense came together late last season for coach Kyle McCaughn, the success came. South will look to copy that blueprint again. The key is if they can gel on defense early on with the return of last year's defensive MVP Stephanie Oros, who averaged 2.5 steals and if they can combine that with this season's balanced attack to spike their scoring output, it'll allow them to climb further up in the FVC Valley.
"Defense was fundamentally sound, we weren't giving up as many points," McCaughn said of the squad late last year, who allowed a 42.6 points per game average. "We took care of the ball. We had more opportunities that allowed us to play competitive at the end. The defense should be strong based on returners knowing the system, knowing the defensive philosophy. If we reduce opponent's scoring the offense will take care of itself."
South averaged 38.4 points per game and center Sara Mickow averaged a double-double (10.3 ppg, 10.4 rpg) last season. She has gotten stronger and more confident over the summer and Rachel Rassmussen, a 70 percent free throw shooter and a confident, top outside threat, worked hard on her midrange jumper and getting to the basket. Rassmussen took a lot of threes (15-for-70 last year but CL South will look around the basket with Mickow while also looking for best shot available while making the defense work. Six sophomores were moved up and some questions marks remain with the roster, including who'll step in as the fifth starter, as Lauren Del Vecchio (4.9 ppg) will aid Rassmussen, Mickow and Oros in the lineup.
"When we gel, which will take some time we'll have great balance with our starters and our bench," said McCaughn, who does have six experienced seniors on the roster. "Even though we're starting two seniors and two juniors, we're still feeling kind of young. If we play disciplined, competitive basketball, we could be competitive every single night."
It bridges to South's main goal, to be a part of the upper echelon of the FVC Valley. A tough schedule at the Dundee-Crown Thanksgiving tournament against the likes of South Elgin, Streamwood, St. Viator and Palatine along with and the Northern Illinois Tournament in Woodstock during Christmas should be a good measuring stick for the Gators as to what they'll expect come conference.
"Huntley, Cary-Grove, Prairie Ridge are very solid, very well-coached. Our conference is competitive," McCaughn said. "If we work for each other, play for each other ... if they do, then we'll be successful. "
Dundee-Crown Chargers
Coach: Michelle Russell (6th year, 28-79)
Conference: Fox Valley (Valley)
2011-12 record: 15-11 (8-4 FVC Valley)
Top returning players: Seniors Jordan Bartelt (5-5 G), Stephanie Magsamen (5-6 F), Jillian Weichmann (5-8 F); junior Emily Michalski (5-11 C); sophomore Jess Laboy (5-9 F).
Top newcomers: Juniors Julia Tabor (5-5 G), Jereneka Baker (5-7 F); sophomore Lauren Lococo (5-9 F); freshmen Melissa Barker (5-5 G), Frankie Cavallaro (5-8 F).
Outlook: Replacing one of the top scorers in program history to the graduation of Ali Sanders won't be easy for the Chargers, who were in contention for the FVC Valley late into the season last year. There is some experience returning in senior Jillian Weichmann (2.3 ppg) and junior Emily Michalski (3.4 ppg), but inexperience is the rule at D-C this season.
"It's hard right now to say what the outlook is," said Chargers' coach Michelle Russell, who has just 10 girls on her varsity roster. "The girls are getting after it and I think our scoring will be more balanced this year."
Russell is high on the potential of sophomore Jess Laboy, who played some varsity last season, as well as freshmen Melissa Barker and Frankie Cavallaro.
"I think we can be competitive," Russell said. "As a team I think it will be a much more balanced effort. Last year we were able to let Ali go and do her thing. This year the abilities are all pretty even. We'll just have to play hard defense and the scoring will have to come along."
Elgin Maroons
Coach: Dr. Nick Bumbales
Conference: Upstate Eight River
2011-12 record: 1-26 (1-11 UEC River)
Top returning players: Senior Kristen Tayag (5-7 G); juniors Maggie Powers (5-5 G), Melanie Berg (5-8 F), Anna Eckholm (5-7 F), Jess Ramirez (5-8 C), Tamara Milosevic (6-1 C).
Top newcomers: Senior Joe Lanette (5-0 G); juniors Fantasia Griffin (5-2 G), Lauren Alexander (5-9 C), Lisseth Villacorta (5-1 G), Jennah Perryman (5-8 C), Tierra Sharks (5-10 C), Monica Chavez (5-10 C); sophomores Destiny West (5-8 C), Abby Pierre-Louis (5-10 C); freshman Sarah El Rahmany (5-8 F).
Outlook: Elgin does return some experience to the court this season but will have to replace the 15.8 points and 13.3 rebounds per game it got last season from now graduated Bri Hamilton (Benedictine).
"We lost over half our scoring and rebounding in Bri but we do have three starters back and the skills have greatly improved," said Bumbales. "We don't have to spend as much time in practice on skills, we can scrimmage more. It's a cohesive unit but we're still young."
The three starters back are all juniors -- Maggie Powers, Anna Eckholm and Jess Ramirez. Bumbales also says senior Kristen Tayag has improved her shot and that Milosevic's skill set has improved. They noth saw significant varsity time last year.
"We've looked really good in practice," Bumbales said. "We've been getting after it defensively and the offensive skills have improved. We can get up and down the floor. It's a nice group. There's no drama, they all get along real well and they play hard."
Bumbales has lightened up the Maroons' schedule somewhat by playing in the Elgin Academy Thanksgiving tournament and the Elgin City Classic, which he developed and will include Westminster Christian, Harvest Christian, Elgin Academy and Larkin.
"I just think we need some confidence," he said. "It's a program that's struggled for a long time now. The numbers are consistent, but we need to get some confidence against competition they can compete against. In our conference, we've played Final Four teams the last few years. Our motto and our No. 1 goal this year is that it's time to believe. My No. 1 goal is to get these kids some confidence. We've won three games in three years."
Bumbales says he sees progress already.
"We brought up six sophomores last year knowing we'd take our lumps but the program had to make that sacrifice," he said. "We're seeing it in practice so far. The mindset is much better and the expectations are different. The last two years it was just to survive. I think we're out of survival mode now and ready to be more competitive."
Elgin Academy Hilltoppers
Coach: Bill Rodriguez (1st year)
Conference: Independent School League
2011-12 record: 6-18 (2-5 ISL)
Top returning players: Senior Samayra Siddiqui (5-9, F/C), junior Susanna Cain (5-5, G), sophomores Kaitlyn Pearson (5-5, G), Alysson Wittmeyer (6-0, C).
Top newcomers: FreshmanRachel Cain (5-7, G/F), Corrine Lam (5-7, F), Melissa Trudrung (5-8, F), Elizabeth Clements (5-7, F/C), Trennedy Kleczewski (5-7, G/F).
Outlook: First-year coach Bill Rodriguez will not enter the Elgin Academy program blind, nor alone. The former Hilltoppers' 8th grade coach inherits the varsity role with an arsenal of 9 freshmen he coached last season who went 18-3. His familiarity is uncanny with everyone but Alysson Wittmeyer, who was home-schooled until her freshman year. Though it's a mighty step to varsity, the youth must infuse with lone senior Samayra Siddiqui and junior Susanna Cain to offset the loss of standout Ashley Barnes to graduation. Barnes averaged nearly 12 points per game, accounting for half of the Hilltoppers' scoring.
Spearheading the freshman attack is Rachel Cain, who will act more like a point-forward. Rodriguez said she could be the team's best 3-point threat. The freshmen will have to adapt quickly to a faster and much more developed game with more experienced players.
"We told the freshmen there is no freshman team, no sophomore team. You go from 8th grade to 12th grade. They really have to adapt," Rodriguez said."They know they have to step it up. We'll see what happens with this preseason tournament (at Elgin Academy). It'll be a test; they have to get a taste of what's going on."
Elgin Academy fields a roster of 13 girls, depth rarely seen at the school. It will use its numbers and height to an advantage, especially in Wittmeyer, who began playing organized basketball 2 years ago. The Hilltoppers' success will hinge on how Wittmeyer develops and on how they handle the ball.
Wittmeyer and Siddiqui will be the beneficiaries of an offense that will have to go through them first, then come out to guards Susanna Cain and Kaitlyn Pearson on the wings, a pair Rodriguez says can score anywhere from 6-10 points a game.
"The first thing we'd like to do is hit the post girls if we can, we want to utilize them," said Rodriguez. "There's not one dominant player that sticks out, it's a whole new team."
Rodriguez plans to play man-to-man defense and you may see some 1-3-1.
"We have to be quick on our feet as far as movement back and forth. With the freshmen coming up they're a little quicker," he said.
Hampshire Whip-Purs
Coach: Ed Haugens (10th year, 194-83; 3rd year at Hampshire, 44-18)
Conference: Fox Valley (Fox)
2011-12 record: 17-15 (7-5 FVC Fox)
Top returning players: Seniors Jen Dumoulin (5-9 F), Lizzy Panzica (5-10 C), Samantha Okubo (5-5 G); junior Sara Finn (5-5 G).
Top newcomers: Juniors Becky Dumoulin (5-4 G), Hannah Detiveaux (5-5 G), Anna Baxter (5-6 G/F); sophomore Tricia Dumoulin (5-4 G).
Outlook: Hampshire coach Ed Haugens says patience will be a virtue for his team this season.
"They're working really hard but we've got a lot of new faces and it might take some time to get things clicking," said Haugens, whose team won a regional championship last year and went .500 in its first year of competition in the Fox Valley Conference Fox Division.
The Whip-Purs of 2012-13 will be led by returning seniors Jen Dumoulin (9.4 ppg, 5.3 rpg) and Elizabeth Panzica (4.0 ppg, 4.8 rpg) and junior Sara Finn (4.2 ppg).
"I've got high expectations," said Haugens. "We have a lot of athleticism and potential but the newer kids need to get more physical. It's about sharing the ball and playing as a team. We won't go anywhere trying to ride one or two people."
The Whip-Purs will open the season in the Dundee-Crown tournament, and then at Christmas will move from Oswego to the Lisle Holiday Cage Classic.
"That tournament will be great for us to gauge where we're at," said Haugens of Dundee-Crown. "You only get better by playing good competition."
Harvest Christian Lions
Coach: Kelly Friestad (2nd year, 17-11)
Conference: Northeastern Athletic
2011-12 record: 17-11
Top returning players: Juniors Sydney Doby (6-2 C), Carol Kauffman (5-5 G); sophomores Kylee Knox (5-5 G), Morgan Lockwood (5-8 G/F).
Top newcomers: Senior Sarah Kott (5-10 F); juniors Anneliese Herman (5-7 G), Sydney Koonce (5-6 G/F); freshman Rachel Oostdyk (6-0 C).
Outlook: With a roster of just 8 players, the Lions have already been hit by the injury bug. Junior forward Sydney Doby (14.8 ppg. 12.9 rpg) is nursing a bruised knee suffered during Harvest's run to the Elite Eight in volleyball and sophomore guard Morgan Lockwood (3.8 ppg) is also out a few weeks. But the Lions do return starting guards Carol Kauffman (3.4 ppg) and Kylee Knox (8.3 ppg. 4.8 rpg) and they have added 5-10 senior forward Sarah Kott to the mix. She was also on the Elite Eight volleyball team. Freshman Rachel Oostdyk will also add some size to the lineup.
"Doby isn't practicing fully yet and Lockwood will be out a few weeks but I think we'll be all right once we get everyone back and in there," said Lions' coach Kelly Friestad. "Sarah Kott hasn't played basketball since sixth grade but I think she's going to help out a lot. And Rachel Oostdyk has come a long way."
Harvest will compete in the Northeastern Athletic Conference this season, a league that was dominated by IMSA and Westminster Christian last season. Harvest played as an independent last season.
"We want to improve on what we did last year and we'd love to compete for the conference championship," said Friestad. "We've got four returning starters and they're older. They played a lot of games this summer and that experience is huge. They're getting stronger."
The Lions aren't playing in a Thanksgiving tournament and will open the season Tuesday against Paw Paw.
"It's good for us to have that extra week off with our injuries," Friestad said.
Huntley Red Raiders
Coach: Steve Raethz (14th year, 193-177)
Conference: Fox Valley (Valley)
2011-12 record: 13-15 (6-6 FVC Valley)
Top returning players: Seniors Haley Ream (6-0 G/F), Amanda Kaniewski (5-6 G); junior Sam Andrews (6-0 F)
Top newcomers: Juniors Bethany Zornow (5-9 G), Rachel Zobott (5-9 F); sophomore Jessica Brock (5-4 G); freshmen Kayla Barreto (5-2 G), Ali Andrews (6-2 F).
Outlook: With two of the top returning all-area players coming back this season in Haley Ream (7.4 ppg, 7.8 rpg) and Sam Andrews (14.9 ppg, 6.1 rpg), Red Raiders' coach Steve Raethz has high hopes for the coming season. Add in 6-2 freshman Ali Andrews and freshman point guard Kayla Barreto and Huntley appears to have a good mix of veterans and newcomers to make a run at the FVC Valley title, which has been dominated by Cary-Grove the past 3 years.
"I like our team and what we've been doing," Raethz said. "We're working hard to build team cohesiveness. We've got a nice mix of returning players and new talent. It's nice to have two all-conference players returning and they've both worked hard on their games during the offseason. I really like Haley's versatility and Sam has really improved her game."
After the summer season, it became no secret that freshman Ali Andrews has special potential.
"Ali is a very talented player," said Raethz. "This is my 14th season and I haven't coached a freshman who is as talented as her. She has a bright future."
The mix of experience and new talent has Raethz thinking big.
"I really like the prospects for the season," he said. "We've got a really solid core group and a very coachable group. I like the potential of this team and what we can accomplish. We want to win the conference and get deep into the postseason and I think this group has the potential to reach those goals. We want to put ourselves back into a position to contend."
Huntley left the West Aurora/Waubonsie Valley Thanksgiving Tournament to play closer to home, at Dundee-Crown.
"We're looking forward to the Dundee-Crown tournament," Raethz said. "It will be good competition for us."
Jacobs Golden Eagles
Coach: Joe Benoit (1st year)
Conference: Fox Valley (Valley)
2011-12 record: 9-20 (3-9 FVC Valley)
Top returning players: Seniors Tori Tamburrino (6-0, F), Payton Berg (5-7, G), Nicky Chapa (5-4, G), Jackie Bartolai (5-11, F), junior Kelly Grady (5-6, G), sophomore Jennifer Barnec (5-9, G),.
Top newcomers: Junior Nicole Cook (5-8, G), sophomore Lauren Van Vlierbergen (5-7, G).
Outlook: Good luck talking about the past with new Golden Eagles coach Joe Benoit. Mainly because when Benoit was promoted from the head sophomore job in July, he felt the program badly needed a culture shock. So far in practice, there's evidence on display that shock has been absorbed.
"I'm fortunate to take over a group of girls to take the next step forward," Benoit said. "They've tremendously had a shift in attitude, a change in work ethic, a new fresh, positive vibe, not the program of the last couple of years. I have seen the program at its best and seen it when it's struggled. It's time to change the culture, get the program where it needs to be.
"Change doesn't happen over night, though. It's nothing but being positive and creating an atmosphere of hard work, pride. Wins will take care of themselves."
His coaching staff does have the pedigree to send that message. Benoit also played on St. Edward's varsity team from 1998-2002. Christy Freeman, a former 4-year varsity player at Palatine who played college ball at Lake Forest is also apart of the staff that hopes to help the Golden Eagles begin a winning culture on the defensive end.
"Consistency and opponent's field goal percentage will really tell the tale of this season," Benoit said. "Despite our lack of height, we'll pride ball pressure and we'll have to be aggressive on the boards both offensively and defensively."
Expect junior Kelly Grady to lead the defensive tone along with senior Nicky Chapa to pressure opposing guards. The scoring load is up for grabs since Lauren Grady, Amy Becker and Jessica Tennant all are gone to graduation.
"We'll find out who's ready to take over the scoring load. It's an excellent opportunity for the girls to step up," Benoit said.
It might be Jennifer Barnec, Payton Berg or Tori Tamburrino, who will look for high percentage shots off screens. Barnec led the team with 22 3-point shots made while averaging 6 points per game as a freshman. Berg is scrappy and will be relied upon heavily. She's been asked to shoulder the load at point guard while Taumburino must be her versatile self and go inside and out.
"She has a good pull up jumper," said Benoit of Berg. "We're hoping to see her step up as a leader."
Larkin Royals
Coach: Ruben Flores (1st year)
Conference: Upstate Eight River
2011-12 record: 5-22 (1-11 UEC River)
Top returning players: Seniors Amber McGhee (G/F), Paris Patterson (G/F)
Top newcomers: Seniors Taylor Lindsey (F/C); juniors Sky Evans (G), Rachel Martinez (F); sophomore Quixmia Washington (G)
Outlook: Flores becomes Larkin's fourth coach in the past 5 years, but he says he's in it for the long haul. "It's going to take consistency," Flores said. "This is their third coach in the last three years at the varsity level. I see myself five years down the road being here and bringing the program back to where it was in the 2000s. We need the philosophy to be the same from top to bottom and all levels on the same page. We want to establish a consistent Junior Royals program and get younger girls coming in on a consistent basis."
This season, the Royals will be somewhat inexperienced, especially until the second half of the season when junior Tori Patterson becomes eligible. Flores feels his familiarity with the girls on the team will help immediately. "I've coached them at the lower levels and they're used to my play calling and the game I like to run," said Flores, who coached the sophomore team the past two years after a year at the freshman level.
Paris Patterson and Amber McGhee will bring some experience to the court, but Flores is also high on sophomore Quixmia Washington, senior Taylor Lindsay and juniors Rachel Martinez and Sky Evans as players who he expects to contribute.
"We're looking for Amber to be a leader and Paris can be a tremendous player when she really puts her mind to it," Flores said. "Washington is really aggressive. She's got a high motor and we'll be looking for her to push the ball up the court while Tori's out. We're looking for Taylor Lindsay to motor up and down the court and give us good minutes on defense and Sky Evans is a nice 3-point shooter. Rachel Martinez is a consistent kid who is smart."
Flores says his style will fit his team, which does lack in size.
"I like to play high energy," he said. "We'll be a small team so we're going to have to attack as much as we can and disrupt what the other team is doing. We're looking for the kids to compete this year by being aggressive and attacking. We'll do our best. I expect our kids to walk off the floor with their heads held high."
South Elgin Storm
Coach: Tim Prendergast (6th year, 74-67)
Conference: Upstate Eight Valley
2011-12 record: 19-11 (4-8 UEC Valley)
Top returning players: Seniors Kara Rodriguez (5-7 G), Amanda Behles (5-8 G), Amanda Smogolski (6-1 F); juniors Anna Tracy (5-7 G), Kennede Miller (6-1 F), Savanah Uveges (5-7 G, injured).
Top newcomers: Senior Nell Wentling (5-7 G); juniors Julia McIntosh (5-9 C); sophomores Delaney Kelleher (5-9 G), Laura McIntosh (5-8 G), Cara Fahey (5-7 G/F).
Outlook: If South Elgin can maintain some consistency until about Jan. 10, the Storm could be tough down the stretch. That's when all-area junior point guard Savanah Uveges (9.0 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 4.4 apg, 3.6 spg) is expected back from an ACL injury suffered in club soccer this past summer. Until then the cupboard is far from bare. Senior Kara Rodriguez, one of the top female athletes in the area, is back after missing last season with an ACL. And 6-1 Kennede Miller (7.6 ppg, 6.1 rpg) returns along with Behles, Smogolski and Tracy (20 3-pointers), who all saw plenty of varsity time last season. Kelleher and Laura McIntosh, who played some varsity last year but were key players on the Storm's 24-1 sophomore team, will man the point until Uveges returns. And the Storm will need all of that after winning their first regional championship but also losing all-area co-captain Becca Smith and her 2,038 career points to graduation and Loyola University.
"With Becca you always figured you'd get 20 points and then fill in from there," said Storm coach Tim Prendergast. "But these kids are excited about filling the scoring role."
Prendergast knows there will have to be some fairly inexperienced varsity players step up in Uveges' absence.
"Savanah is a huge loss," he said. "But it will allow some of our other kids and opportunity to play and then we'll be even better when Savanah comes back. We might take some lumps early but we'll be a better defensive team than in the past and if we play 25 games we might have 25 different leading scorers."
Having Rodriguez back and a year of varsity experience under Miller's belt won't hurt anything.
"Kara looks like she's 100 percent recovered from last year," Prendergast said. "Kara is my definition of a true athlete who plays basketball. And Kennede Miller is going to be a matchup problem for a lot of teams. We have a lot of depth but we're not that big so we'll have to continue to do the same things we've done in the past -- run the floor and play the whole floor on defense. I think we can make things happen and score off our defense. These girls are real good in transition."
Even though last year produced a regional title, Prendergast would like to see his team fare better in the UEC Valley, where the Storm was just 4-8 last season.
"We're really looking to do better in our conference this year," he said. "I feel like when we get Savanah back we're going to be a really strong team."
Streamwood Sabres
Coach: George Rosner (33rd year, 364-478, 322 wins at Streamwood)
Conference: Upstate Eight River
2011-12 record: 15-14 (8-4 UEC River)
Top returning players: Seniors Jessica Cerda (5-9 G/F), Deja Moore (5-7 G), Kimberly Jimenez (5-2 G), Brittany Delao (5-5 F); juniors Hannah McGlone (6-0 C), Holly Foret (5-9 F).
Top newcomers: Juniors Stephanie Caldera (6-1 C); sophomore Kiana Jeremiah (5-6 F).
Outlook: With a Division I returnee and a junior who will likely be getting a lot of D-I looks this season, the future looks bright for the Sabres. The five starters who ended the 2011-12 season as well as a returning injured player who started before she was hurt all return for a team that contended for the Upstate Eight River title until the final week of the season.
"It's good having experience back," said Sabres' coach George Rosner. "There's really no substitute for that. It's a good nucleus. They know what we're doing and they know how to look for each other."
Jessica Cerda, who has committed to Chicago State, and junior Hannah McGlone lead the way. Cerda moved to the point midway through last season when Streamwood lost Amanda Patterson to injury, but she will moved back to more of a matchup role this season, after averaging 14.1 points per game last season and hitting 48 3-pointers to become the program's all-time 3-point leader. She comes into the season with over 800 career points. McGlone averaged a double-double last season, scoring 14.5 points and grabbing 10.8 rebounds per game. Deja Moore averaged 7.8 points and 5.3 rebounds last season and with Holly Foret back from injury and Delao and Jiminez each seeing significant varsity time last season, the pieces appear to be in place for a strong season at Streamwood.
"Jess can shoot the 3s and take it to the basket, Deja takes it to the basket as strong as anybody and she's added a jump shot, and Hannah is as good an inside player as we've had in a long time," Rosner said. "Having the talent back that we do ... we have to take advantage of it this year. Up and down the floor this is probably the fastest team I've ever had. We'll have to rebound and play defense to run. We need to get steals and layups."
The first order of business for the Sabres is to contend for the UEC River title again. But the program's first regional title in 25 years would be an added bonus.
"It's a tough conference," Rosner said. "We know how strong Geneva, St. Charles North and Batavia are. We'll shoot for that and we'd love to win a regional. It's all there if we play team ball and play defense. We have the ability to shut teams down defensively."
The Sabres open the season in the Dundee-Crown Thanksgiving tournament, where they will play Huntley on Saturday morning in a matchup of two of the top teams in the area.
St. Edward Green Wave
Coach: Michelle Dawson (10th year, 131-92)
Conference: Suburban Christian Blue
2011-12 record: 21-8 (6-4 SCC Blue)
Top returning players: Seniors Hayley Budish (5-3 G), Kailey Durkin (5-8 G), Mary Kate Nastali (5-11 F), Rena Ranallo (5-8 G); juniors Katie Swanson (5-11 G), Clarissa Ramos (5-9 F).
Top newcomers: Juniors Stephanie Armstrong (5-3 G), Cory Kelly (5-9 G/F), Bridget Mastali (5-7 G), Maria VonAhnen (6-0 F/C), Olivia Walschot (5-6 G), Victoria Walschot (5-6 G), Emily Witt (5-7 G); sophomore Cece Rapp (6-1 F/C).
Outlook: It will be a young and inexperienced St. Edward team that takes the floor this season, especially until senior guard Rena Ranallo (8.3 ppg) returns from an ankle injury. Junior Katie Swanson (2.6 ppg) saw some varsity time last season but other than that, it's a new group playing the later game every night. Durkin did see some time on varsity last year, and a strong junior class should become competitive when it gets its varsity feet wet.
"We've got talent we just don't have a lot of varsity experience," said Wave coach Michelle Dawson. "They're working hard and they're good kids, very coachable kids. I think we'll have good guard play and strong forwards, it's just trying to get them to play together and get to that next level."
St. Edward has added Westmont, St. Viator and Bishop McNamara to its schedule this season, competition that will help the Wave when the postseason comes as St. Edward jumps to Class 3A this year.
"I'm disappointed that we're 3A," said Dawson, whose team will also see plenty of 3A competition in the ultra-tough Suburban Christian Conference. "I don't see how it works to the advantage of schools with 400 kids."
That said, Dawson knows her team will need to get better every night if it's going to compete in the SCC and have any kind of postseason run.
"We're just looking for improvement in each practice and each game to get to that higher level and be successful in the 3A postseason," she said.
Westminster Christian Warriors
Coach: Ken Flickinger
Conference: Northeastern Athletic
2011-12 record: 22-9
Top returning players: Juniors McKaila Hayes (5-7, G), Claire Speweik (5-10, G/F), Liz Meschewski (5-10, G/F), Kinsley Donahue (5-10, G), Christina Cusumano (5-6, F), Courtney Gnan (5-7, G), Libbie Atchison (5-10, F)
Top newcomers: Sophomore Savannah Dutcher (6-1, C), freshman Maddie Versulys (5-9, F/C).
Outlook: Expectations are high at Westminster Christian, which graduated just 3 seniors and returns most of the team that fell to Seton Academy in a Class 1A sectional final last season on a 30-foot buzzer-beater. With a roster comprised of 8 juniors, 2 sophomores and 3 freshmen, the Warriors are deep and their youth is very much experienced. Coach Ken Flickinger's best returning class looks to improve on last year's success, which included the program's first regional title.
"They're all capable of having big nights, we're that versatile," said Flickinger. "We're more balanced, everyone can average at least 8-9 points per game. We certainly think we can score."
Gone to graduation are Porsche Griggs (9.3 points per game) and Whitney Vanden Bos (6.4) and her 47 three pointers. Westminster shot a 40 percent clip from downtown last season as the team hit more 3s than the past 2 years combined. But tri-captain McKaila Hayes is a pure shooter who connected on 30 3-pointers last season while averaging 8.9 points per game. Flickinger hopes to see Hayes' average increase while forward Claire Speweik and her 9.1 points and 8.2 rebound average will even things up around the basket. Forward Liz Meschewski is expected to contribute along with Hayes and Speweik.
"Speweik is tremendously gifted all around," Flickinger said. "She's a monster on the boards. She brings that competitive edge. She thrives in those situation, attacks from different parts of the floor. She takes it all in stride."
Sophomore Savannah Dutcher (6-1) has the potential to be a force in the paint this season.
"She's a centerpiece of the volleyball team. She has huge upside with potential both inside and outside. We're working to develop her in the post, teaching her to face up," said Flickinger of Dutcher.
Forward Libbie Atchison has worked with Griggs down low and Flickinger noted she's absolutely solid on the block and gets good position. She also has a midrange jumper to boot while Maddie Versulys is a natural post player who really moves well without the ball. Flickinger says the freshman "uses her body and goes out and gets it."
Westminster's defense has to be as effective as it was last year when the Warriors surrendered a conference-best 34.7 points per game.
"We must set defensive goals to be better," Flickinger said. "Courtney Gnan is really good defender, we relied on her. She's a solid on the ball defender, which is important."
The Warriors' strength of schedule features Schaumburg, St. Francis and Hampshire, which should go a long way in helping them prime for action in the Northeastern Athletic Conference. Winning conference and getting back to where they were last season will be goals.
"We have a great rivalry with Harvest (Christian) because they're so close," Flickinger said. "Luther North is much improved. Christian Life looks different. IMSA is always a handful. You can't have a bad night. If you don't play your best, you run the risk of getting beat."

subset: commoncrawl


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Another Empty Suitcase In Lakewood
Another random, unattended suitcase turns up in Lakewood, leading to an evacuation and police response.
The NJ Transit bus terminal on First Street was cleared out when the luggage was spotted. Ocean County's K-9 units were called in.
Like the last two times this happened, the suitcase was empty.


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Departures, explanations and an update at Sanford AGM
Article – BusinessDesk
Jan 30 (BusinessDesk) Sanford has informed shareholders of the retirement of its managing director and an experienced board member, and explained how it has fixed things after copping a multi-million-dollar fine from a US court.
Departures, explanations and a trading update for Sanford shareholders
Jan 30 (BusinessDesk) – Sanford has informed shareholders of the retirement of its managing director and an experienced board member, and explained how it has fixed things after copping a multi-million-dollar fine from a US court.
The fishing company also said it has made a positive start to the new financial year and disclosed a deal with the New Zealand Shareholders' Association that will hold the total fees paid to directors at $500,000 for another year.
Revenue for the first three months of the year is up 10 percent, helped by increased sales of salmon to the New Zealand market.
Chairman Jeff Todd said the board had accepted notice of managing director Eric Barratt's retirement after 15 years in the job.
He will continue in the role, and subsequently as an independent adviser if necessary, until Dec 31 at the latest.
"I am sorry to inform you that our long-standing and respected director David Anderson has decided not to seek re-election at today's annual meeting which marks the end of his current term," Todd said.
Anderson joined the board in 1982 and served as managing director from 1991 to 1997. He took on industry roles, including deputy chair of the New Zealand Fishing Industry Board and president of the New Zealand Fishing Industry Association.
At last year's meeting shareholders endorsed an increase in directors' fees to a total of $550,000 per annum, but the board agreed to only pay $500,000 out in recognition of the company's less than satisfactory performance in 2011.
"Given the 2012 results, the board now confirms to shareholders their intention to hold total fees payable in the current year to the same level, $500,000," Todd said.
Chairman of the New Zealand Shareholders' Association, John Hawkins, had confirmed the association was comfortable with this arrangement.
It was left to Barratt to explain that a judge in the US District Court in Washington DC fined Sanford US$1.9 million and ordered it to pay US$500,000 to a fishing foundation after its tuna fishing vessel, the San Nikunau, breached rules for discharging waste in international waters.
Barratt said the verdicts and sentence indicated there had been a pattern aboard this vessel of not following required protocols for bilges and bilge waste.
This was acknowledged by a Filipino relief engineer who never followed required rules on this or any other US or foreign flagged tuna vessel that he ever worked on. The regular chief engineer claimed he did but the court found otherwise.
"Sanford has been held vicariously liable for the actions of the engineers and other crew and we must accept responsibility for not detecting that these practices were occurring," Barratt said.
"One aspect of our defence was that the vessel and its records had been regularly inspected by New Zealand and US government officials many times during the period of the offences and these issues were not detected at the time."
"I could spend some time detailing the many arguments and counter arguments raised in this case but it is time to move on and to ensure that with our actions and responses we are never faced with this situation again."
Content Sourced from scoop.co.nz
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TELL CITY – In celebration of Teen Read Week, Sunday through Oct. 23, the Tell City-Perry County Public Library will host two events for local teens.
From 5 to 8 p.m. Monday there will be a "Game Night" where teens are invited to go to the library and play games on the Wii gaming system or play a variety of card and board games.
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Longtime Reader, First Time Emailer
I have been subscribing to Chevy High Performance for 21/2 years now and have been picking up issues off newsstands for many years. I must say CHP is my favorite magazine out there. I have been a Camaro nut since my first car-a '68 RS-and have had many Camaros since then.
I currently own an '81 Camaro Z28 street/strip ride that I enjoy tooling on and hopping up for local cruises and the occasional dragstrip passes. You guys always have great tech articles and features that are not only informative, but enjoyable to read. Thank you very much for such an awesome way to spend my lunch at work and evenings on the couch in my garage-next to my Camaro, of course.
Also, I got this awesome hat when I signed up for a two-year subscription and I ended up wearing it out pretty quickly. Even worse, it somehow disappeared. I don't know if it was stolen, maybe my son lost it, or what, but I've looked everywhere for it. It was my favorite hat and I wanted to see if it would be possible at all to get another one. I would really appreciate it!
Gregg Sicari
Queen Creek, AZ
We just happen to have a new hat sitting here, so check your mail for a fresh one. We even added a few stickers. Enjoy and thanks for writing in.
Let me start by saying I subscribe to automotive mags based on their technical Q&A, so I just get one magazine, which is CHP. Enough flattery; I have a question for you. I have a complete Ram Jet 502 injection system, minus the fuel pump. Is this system capable of supporting a much more aggressive engine?
Tyler Murdock
Via email
The Ram Jet 502 system is a nice system that was originally designed and tuned for a GMPP crate motor. While it's a good system, the only adjustment you have control over is the initial timing. Should you decide to use the system; Rinda Technologies (rinda.com) does offer tools to interact with the supplied computer.
Got Camera?
What kind of camera are you using for your tech stories and features?
Steve Virone
Via email
There's a wide variety of cameras used throughout the pages of CHP. On staff, we have everything from the Canon G-series for tech stories to the professional level 1DS DSLR for features and cover shoots. If you're looking to shoot feature-style images for yourself, you really can't go wrong with any of the entry-level Canon DSLR bodies. Nikon has a great selection too, so it really comes down to personal preference. That said, used EOS Rebels can be had for relatively cheap these days. Beyond that, you just need to get out there and practice, practice, practice.
Nova Passion
I really like your site and articles and I just wanted to tell you about how much I love my '72 Nova SS that I bought brand new. The past few years have been a little rough, considering I lost my house due to an illness. I ended up having my car towed to my family's place, where it sat for two years. More recently, I'm back into a home and was able to bring my Nova back to where it belongs: with me.
Since then I've repainted it and [was] even offered quite a bit of money for it, I didn't want to part with it! Why? This is the first car I've purchased new and I've left it mostly stock, right down to the original small-block 350, four-speed Muncie, and posi.
At 62, I still know that I will never get rid of it. I need to redo the interior and get new bumpers, but that's just a matter of time. I always hoped that a show would surprise and me and restore the car, but that may never happen.
I've noticed that Novas aren't as popular as the Camaro, Chevelle, or El Comino, but that's OK, I love my muscle car and I just wanted you to know how much it means to me.
Via email
We're glad to hear things are going well and that you're reunited with your Nova. Also, be a proud owner; Novas are a lot more popular than you think and there are plenty of people who would love to get into one.
Got something to say? We'll make you famous and put your letter here. Email us at firstname.lastname@example.com
Rooster call
Sean Haggai
In the San Fernando Valley, local coffee digs are hard to come by. Lucky for me, I ditched the hustle and bustle of the Panera Bread eatery in favor of a more secluded corner coffee shop that serves up fresh baked goods and coffee, and even provide free wireless internet service. This means I can write as if I were at home or in the office and even get my cup of Joe as well; besides, it's delicious. It's the sort of place where the coffee techs (I refuse to call them baristas) know you by name and begin preparing your favorite coffee drink.
So why the change from a mainstream, corporate place to a locals only spot? Simply, I've never been a huge fan of the high volume of people that rotate through Starbucks like robots. To me, they all look a little stiff. At Gayle's Perks coffee shop you can pop in, grab your usual seat, and moments later your steamy drink arrives. I'm also a super-fan of their black tea. Perks serves up a very refreshing iced tea that's hard to beat. No, its not sweet-tea, but it gets the job done. At that point, it doesn't feel like work anymore and more like a great social hangout. It's sort of comical to see the same exact patrons there day after day. They must be doing something right. Either way, I can't tell enough people about this place and they serve some of the most delicious Panini style sandwiches I've ever had. Believe it or not, a lot of the edit you see from me has been hashed out here at Perks.
As I get older, the virtues of traditional mom and pop shops are becoming more important to me. I've always been a huge supporter of buying parts and services from local speed shops, but now that has expanded to other goods and services. It doesn't take much effort either; it just takes being more aware of what's local and a conscious effort on our part to patronize them.
In the end, I believe paying attention to local businesses will keep more of them around. Going a bit further, it's the same for our industry. This means visiting local newsstands for any printed literature. This also helps to keep magazines on the newsstands for all to be enjoyed and allows us to keep doing what we are doing. I think I'll take that turkey Panini now.
Department Of Corrections
Back in the August issue, we showcased the complete AutoRad radiator assembly ("Totally Cool," pg.46) being installed onto our Project F73 Camaro. In the caption, we inadvertently listed the bushing as a urethane piece. It's actually a core support mount (accessory component) supplied by Detroit Speed with their body mount kit. These trick pieces are CNC machined from billet aluminum, which are then hardcoated to resist corrosion and include their CNC machined stainless steel bevel washers. We even went with the optional 17-4 stainless steel flanged body bolts. For more information, head over to detroitspeed.com or call them directly at 704.731.0989.
Classic Industries Extends Hours
At a time when many restoration parts retailers are cutting back on customer service, Classic Industries is bucking the trend by offering greater service than ever. To better serve its customers as the world's largest distributor of GM restoration parts and accessories Classic Industries has extended its business hours! Beginning in June, Classic Industries will open its call center two hours earlier, now available from 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST, Monday through Friday. Their Saturday call center hours will remain unchanged, opening from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. PST. Classic Industries hopes this move will better serve customers who were either previously unable to order over the phone due to scheduling or time zone differences. You can also check them out online at classicindustries.com


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Stormy Weather: A Novel (Paperback)
August 2008 Indie Next List
"In Paulette Jiles' novel, set in Texas during the Great Depression, a family faces the chaos of dust storms and the debilitating experience of poverty, as Jiles tells a compelling story of characters balancing survival and taking major risks. This is a very good work of historical fiction."
— Dianne Patrick, Snowbound Books, Marquette, MI
Oil is king of East Texas during the darkest years of the Great Depression. The Stoddard girls—responsible Mayme, whip-smart tomboy Jeanine, and bookish Bea—know no life but an itinerant one, trailing their father from town to town as he searches for work on the pipelines and derricks. But in a year of devastating drought and dust storms, the family's fortunes sink further than they ever anticipated when a questionable "accident" leaves the girls and their mother, Elizabeth, alone to confront the cruelest hardships of these hardest of times.
Returning to their previously abandoned family farm, the resilient Stoddard women must now place their last hopes for salvation in a wildcat oil well that eats up what little they have left . . . and on the back of late patriarch Jack's one true legacy, a dangerous racehorse named Smoky Joe.
Praise For…
"Jiles's follow-up to her highly praised debut, Enemy Women, [is] a deeply satisfying novel with wide appeal."
"Jiles's eloquent, engaging novel celebrates four strong women toughing out the Great Depression . . . [a] gritty saga."
"[A] stirring story . . . of self and home in language as spare and stark as the Texas landscape."


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February 26, 2010
Virginia's Stephanie Myrick and Cal South's Kyle Kazmer honored at Awards Gala
FORT WORTH, Texas (Feb. 26, 2010) - The recipients of the 2009 US Youth Soccer Female and Male Young Referees of the Year award were announced tonight at the US Youth Soccer Awards Gala, held in conjunction with the 2010 US Youth Soccer adidas Workshop at the Fort Worth Convention Center in Fort Worth, Texas. The Female Young Referee of the Year is Stephanie Myrick, of Woodbridge, Va., and the Male Young Referee of the Year is Kyle Kazmer of Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Hilary Kennedy, host of The US Youth Soccer Show on Fox Soccer Channel, set the stage for the night as the master of ceremonies for the more than 1,000 in attendance. Boys and Girls Competitive and Recreation Coaches of the Year, Administrator of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, Goal and Save of the Year, TOPSoccer Buddy of the Year and the Dr. Thomas Fleck Award were also presented during the Gala and the US Youth Soccer Hall of Fame inductees were honored as well.
Stephanie Myrick, of Woodbridge, Va., is known within Virginia Youth Soccer Association for her dedication, hard work and commitment to achieve the highest level of success as a referee. Her goal was to become a Grade 7 referee before she was 17, and she did that, becoming the youngest in the Virginia - Washington, D.C. area to achieve this grade. Myrick's experience ranges from competitive leagues and the Virginia State Championships to US Youth Soccer Olympic Development Program tournaments and training camps. She also writes articles and speaks at referee meetings.
Kyle Kazmer, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., began refereeing at age 11, moving up to a USSF referee at 13. Kazmer is currently a Grade 6 referee who has completed requirements for Grade 5. His time as a referee has taught him how to command respect and learn from others. Through the years, Kazmer has refereed various levels of play including the 2008 Region IV Championships, semi-pro MLS games and pre-season MLS games. Kazmer also places volunteerism at the top of his priorities and has traveled internationally for mission trips.
Recipients of the Young Referee of the Year awards are selected by the US Youth Soccer Board of Directors based on work ethic, knowledge of the rules of the game and influence as positive role models.
Through the Young Referee of the Year program, US Youth Soccer helps foster the development of referees for the future of soccer in the United States. Many of the leagues around the country would not be able to cover all of their games but not for the involvement of youth referees.
The regional winners of the 2009 US Youth Soccer Female Young Referee of the Year are:
The regional winners of the 2009 US Youth Soccer Male Young Referee of the Year are:
*denotes national US Youth Soccer Young Referee of the Year
For bios on each of the regional award winners, click here.
The Young Referee of the Year recipients are awarded for their dedication to the game, their outstanding personal accomplishments, serving as role models to other youth referees and players, and for their excellence as recognized by their adult referee peers and mentors.
For more information about the US Youth Soccer Awards Gala and award winners, go to USYouthSoccer.org/workshop/galaawards.


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October 18, 2012
Milford's "Gathering Pond" will switch to winter hours on Nov. 1
PRATT— The Milford Hatchery Supply Lake, known locally as the Gathering Pond, below Milford Reservoir Dam reopened last March, and was open from 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Beginning Nov. 1, the supply lake will be open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, except for holidays and during inclement weather.
When zebra mussels were discovered in Milford Reservoir in 2009, the supply lake was closed to public access to protect the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism's (KDWPT) Milford Fish Hatchery. If zebra mussels infested the supply lake, they could easily clog hatchery waterlines and filters, and cause serious damage to hatchery facilities. KDWPT officials began planning hatchery enhancements that would prevent zebra mussels from entering if the supply lake was ever infested
Since the lake is a popular fishing spot, KDWPT worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop preventative procedures, so the lake could be reopened. The procedures included staffed entry gates, limited access and prohibiting boats and live bait other than worms. Beginning last March, KDWPT staffed the entrance gates and allowed public access from 7 a.m.-10 p.m., seven days a week. Gate staff informed anglers about the new restrictions and provided information on how to prevent the spread of zebra mussels and other aquatic nuisance species.
The measures have been effective, and zebra mussels have not been transferred to the supply lake. Hatchery staff will complete Phase 1 of water intake modifications this winter. Phase 2 of the hatchery project, including installation of filtration equipment that will exclude all life stages of zebra and quagga mussels, will be completed next year.
Staff will be present at the entrance gates during winter hours except for holidays and during inclement weather. The winter hours will be in effect through Feb. 28, 2013.


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Swimming Upstream
series: Joanne Weir's Cooking Confidence
air date: 7/27/13 1:30 PM
Most people, including Joanne, absolutely adore salmon. She begins by nestling salmon rillete in endive, and then, with her student Jerry, bakes salmon in the ultimate symbol of love, a paper heart. Recipes: Smoked Salmon Rillete/Endive, Salmon and Spring Vegetables Baked in Paper, and Lemon Tarragon Rice. Student: Jerry Feldman, International Business Development.
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Together the couple has raised three sons who are now happy and worldly young adults. Their eldest son is living in Stockholm and working on environmental issues. Their second son is an agro-forester in Costa Rica, where he's working on using breadfruit for poverty alleviation. Their youngest recently graduated from college and is currently leading wilderness treks in the U.S. and Canada.
"She wore far too much makeup," Garrett tells Out about the character of Holly, noting that her friends and family were entertained by her glamorous appearance on television: she'd arrive on the GL set straight from her cabin, clad in jeans and boots, and was completely made over. The daily transformation remained temporary, of course. "At the end of the day I almost always washed off the make-up, and with it, Holly's brand of crazy."
Garrett says she still approached GL's writers about creating a storyline for Holly that involved a same-sex love affair. The result? The network wouldn't touch it. That storyline would come several years later, in a plot involving Crystal Chappell and Jessica Leccia as Olivia and Natalia.
"I am very happy and fulfilled," Garrett says of her life today, "and the kids are all right."
Garrett's Holly along with Michael Zaslow's Roger were recently named to our 50 Greatest Soap Couples list.
- National Coming Out Day: The Best of Daytime Soap Operas
- FLASHBACK: Maureen Garrett 1977
- FLASHBACK: Maureen Garrett 1979
- CLASSIC CLIPS: Maureen Garrett
- 50 Greatest Soap Actresses: #18 Maureen Garrett
- 50 Greatest Soap Couples: #6 Roger & Holly From GUIDING LIGHT
- Kevin Spirtas Is Fully "Loaded": The WLS Interview


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Michael Pierce Joins BVU Board of Trustees
Michael Pierce Joins BVU Board of Trustees
Buena Vista University has announced that Michael K. Pierce of Houston, Texas, has been elected to the Board of Trustees.
Pierce is a partner at Thompson & Knight, LLP and has worked at the firm his entire legal career. He has served on the firm's management committee and is currently head of their corporate and securities practice group. Since 2003, he has been listed in Best Lawyers of America in the areas of corporate and natural resources law and listed in Texas Super Lawyers in the areas of securities and corporate finance and in mergers and acquisitions.
"Michael Pierce is a first-class professional who has received the highest accolades in the practice of law. He brings a keen intellect to his new responsibilities. In addition, Mike's election to the Board of Trustees represents yet another important step in strengthening the already legendary partnership between the Pierce family and BVU," says BVU President Fred Moore.
Pierce, a native of Storm Lake, attended Storm Lake High School. He earned his bachelor's degree in business administration from Drake in 1976 and went on to earn his Juris Doctorate from SMU Dedman School of Law in 1979. He graduated Order of the Coif and was the managing editor of the Southwestern Law Journal.
"My family has had a long affiliation with BVU. As a native of Storm Lake, I understand the importance of BVU to the educational, economic and cultural well-being of the community. In being elected to the Board, I am honored to follow in the footsteps of my grandfather, uncle and brother and am grateful for this opportunity to serve the University," says Pierce.
His wife, Margaret, earned her bachelor's degree in education from the University of Texas in 1976 and went on to earn her master's degree in business administration and finance in 1979 from the University of Houston.
Pierce and his wife have two children: Kathryn, a junior at Lewis & Clark College; and Tim, a freshman at Vanderbilt University.
Among his civic activities, Pierce has served on the Board of Directors for Small Steps Nurturing Center since 2009. Small Steps is a non-profit Christian organization that provides early childhood education to economically at-risk children residing in Houston's inner city.


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NAPERVILLE – Neuqua Valley girls basketball coach Mike Williams retrieved a crutch from a hobbled fan late in Friday's game against Geneva.
His intent was to help free a ball stuck between the backboard and the side of the rim.
As referees waved off the gesture moments later at the sight of a quicker solution, the full-circle symbolism had been etched. Play resumed, and Geneva capped a 54-46 victory in the Upstate Eight Conference championship crossover, coming unshackled just more than two months after the Wildcats blew them out.
In late November, these same teams met in Geneva, with the Vikings two days removed from losing point guard Michaela Loebel to a season-ending ACL injury and also without standout center Sami Pawlak.
"At the beginning of the season, we were an entirely different team from when we played them," Vikings senior forward Kelly Gordon said. "We were still shell-shocked from Michaela, but tonight we knew we had to come back with composure and fight 'til the end."
UEC River champion Geneva (17-10) flipped the script against its Valley counterpart largely by following the same protocol it has since a 45-22 loss to the Wildcats (24-3).
Stay patient. Talk. Maybe even slow it down.
After committing an early barrage of turnovers that fed the Wildcats' attack, Geneva adjusted after halftime and turned a two-point deficit at the break into a six-point edge entering the final quarter.
Junior guard Morgan Seberger, who paced the Vikings with 13 points, swished what coach Sarah Meadows called two "absolutely huge" 3-pointers in the first 30-plus seconds of the third quarter. The only times Geneva looked back after seizing a 28-24 lead were when Meadows barked instructions during stoppages in play.
"This was a huge confidence boost going into the playoffs next week," said Geneva junior Sidney Santos, who grabbed nine rebounds in the team's fifth straight victory. "We wanted to take control, and after getting that first half out of our system, we did."
Santos and the Vikings essentially played a completely different style than in the teams' first meeting. Santos served as primary ballhandler – as she has since early December – while fellow 6-footer Abby Novak often defended the Wildcats' backcourt. That combination, along with steady play from Pawlak, helped Geneva finish 10-2 in the River and win its final seven league games.
Although Valley Player of the Year Allison Hedrick dented Geneva for 15 points and eight rebounds, the Vikings' commitment and discipline in their 2-3 zone kept any of her teammates from breaking through.
Neuqua Valley, which shot 1 for 19 from long range, finished 5 for 17 from the foul line compared to Geneva's 20 of 27 effort.
Geneva's ability to locate and impede the Wildcats' motion offense after the break was also key.
"Just basically communicating with each other," Gordon said. "We were talking a lot more, being aware of where the cutters were, letting each other know that they were coming and bumping the cutters."
In her first action since tweaking her ankle about a week ago, Gordon had 11 points. Pawlak (10 points, nine rebounds) also scored in double figures for the Vikings.
"Hey, they're a good team. We're going to be fine. It's not the end of the world right now," Williams said.
Sounds like a credo the Vikings adopted not too long ago.