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Sentinel Morning Update: Teams ready for first day of official practice
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Monday’s mantra was conditioning and fundamentals are the foundation on which successful sports teams are built.
Student athletes from across the area took part in the first day of fall sports practices of the 2008-2009 academic year Monday.
Devon Collier is the field hockey head coach at Carlisle Area School District. She constructs her practices to incorporate conditioning into all drills. Her student athletes run “about a mile” in wind sprints during a practice that lasts three hours in the evening and two hours in the evening.
“We’re working on fundamentals,” Collier said, “ball control skills, stick skills and some basic passing drills.”
As well as teaching the basics Collier also uses these sessions to access ability and “introduce some new skills.”
To minimize the chance of injuries she encourages her players to stretch, keep hydrated and run.
“We try to encourage the girls to come into the season in shape,” Collier said. “If you come into the season in shape there’s less chance of injury.”
Along with the rest of this story from Sentinel reporter Jeremy Grad, here's what else to look for in today’s print and on-line editions:
Perry County joins state-wide notification system
Knowing a prisoner’s status can be the difference between restful and sleepless nights, between a daily routine and serious action.
The Perry County prison is now part of the program making that peace of mind possible, the Pennsylvania Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification system.
With the new program, anyone can register to get phone calls or e-mails when an offender escapes or is released or transferred to another facility.
Counties that are not in the network are still required by state law to offer some type of victim notification such as letters or phone calls from victim services or prison employees, said Andrea Warner of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association.
The difference, she said, is that human callers could be called away to other tasks, but the automated system can keep calling until the message is received.
Perry County is 35th in the state’s county-by-county implementation of the program, which is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. Cumberland County joined in January.
Pennsylvania is one of 34 states across the country working to implement the program state-wide.
New Kingston group takes to the streets
For most people, picking up street debris would be a chore, or maybe a respite from a prison cell, but certainly not a voluntary pastime.
But in New Kingstown a group of ordinary residents are making a habit of it out of their commitment to preserving the close-knit atmosphere of their community.
“I was a little disappointed with the way our village was starting to turn out as far as people not having as much pride in their property,” said Kathi Pifer, a founding member of the New Kingstown Vision.
Her work for the group started when she began writing letters to the Silver Spring Township supervisors about the deteriorating quality of New Kingstown.
Not only did the effort get her a response from the supervisors, it attracted the attention of like-minded community members like Nate Spade.
Pifer said Spade, supervisor Nancy Konhaus Griffie and others have made the group possible through their efforts and advice.
The New Kingstown Voice formed in no small part because of the dirt and debris Route 11 brings through the village. Building a bypass to move the road out of town is a top priority for the Vision.
But recently group members hit a new hurdle in the form of a shaky economy.
With the price of gas raising the price of everything else, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation lately announced delays to the bypass and other state work.
PennDOT has been pushing back the date for that project since the late 1980s, Pifer said.
Ground broken in prison expansion
When Cumberland County opened its prison on Claremont Road in May 1985, there were 210 beds for 112 inmates.
At the end of a three-phase expansion project, the Middlesex Township facility, which has taken on 188 additional beds over the years without construction, will be able to accommodate 708 prisoners.
“The finished product will serve Cumberland County for another 25 years,” Warden Earl Reitz said Monday morning before prison board members dug their shovels into the west lawn of the prison during a groundbreaking ceremony.
Cumberland County Prison currently houses 389 inmates, a number it has been running at or near for quite some time, the warden said.
“The prison has exceeded expectations,” Reitz added.
In June, commissioners awarded approximately $11.5 million in bids to contractors on the project’s first phase, which includes a new 160-bed male housing unit and construction of a new central booking station.
“It’s kind of a relief to move the project forward,” said Commissioner Gary Eichelberger. “We made the commitment to do this. It’s time to go forward.”
Morning Update
The Sentinel Morning Update runs every weekday by 8 a.m. to take a look at what we have planned for our newspaper and Web site. Feel free to offer any suggestions, questions or feedback to jpratt@cumberlink.com
