Swinging for the green

PINE PLAINS — If the girls on the school’s golf team are going to do anything, they’re determined to have fun. That’s the attitude for Pine Plains this year, and it’s been working well.

Bombers golf is split between boys and girls, and with the boys playing in the fall, the girls have free roam of the Red Hook Golf Club, where they practice and host home matches. This is coach George Baker’s first year with the girls, but he has been the boys coach for the last eight.

Due to the district’s budgetary constraints, 18 proposed matches for the girls season turned into nine (many of the cut matches required long travel time). The team so far has chalked up three wins, and Baker said he’s been very proud of the seven girls who have played throughout the season.

Five girls on the team are seniors, and Baker said many of them have only been playing since high school.

Carley Rosato and Kyleigh Cummings are seniors who joined the team together when the soccer program was moved to the fall. It was their first foray into the sport, and while Rosato said it can be a bit nerve-wracking, there are shots that make the whole thing worth it.

“Everyone was trying to hit the ball across this body of water,� she remembered, “and was having a lot of trouble. I hit mine, and it ended up rolling across this little bridge on to the other side. That was pretty cool.�

“They’ve done a nice job,� Baker said. “They’ve had a great attitude and they work hard.�

Golf is a lifelong sport, Baker explained, and he believed many of them will stay with it. Rosato and Cummings said they definitely would.

“It’s very different coaching girls than boys,� Baker added. “Girls are just very receptive to trying new things, and they’re a bit more lighthearted. It’s fun and a social thing for them, which is great.�

The golf programs used to play at the Carvel Country Club, which let the teams play for free, but because of proposed development the Bombers now practice and play at Red Hook.

“They’re very gracious to us,� Baker said. “Even though there is a fee, I really can’t thank the district enough, as well as Red Hook and the district’s taxpayers.�

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less