Vaccari is head coach at Simmons

BOSTON, Mass. — Winsted native Alesia Vaccari has been named head coach of the Simmons College volleyball team, Director of Athletics Ali Kantor announced recently. Vaccari will be joining the Simmons Sharks for the fall 2011 season as a full-time member of the athletics department.Vaccari joins the Sharks after two years as the assistant coach for the Clarkson University volleyball program. In 2009, Vaccari helped lead the Golden Knights to their first Liberty League Championship and NCAA Tournament appearance as Clarkson went 28-7, the top winning percentage in program history.“I am so thrilled to have Alesia on staff,” said Kantor. “I truly believe she has the skills, enthusiasm and the commitment to the Simmons mission that will take our volleyball program to the next level.”“I see so much potential for these athletes to grow on and off the court,” said Vaccari. “I am looking forward to getting to work building the Simmons volleyball program.”Vaccari, a 2006 graduate of Springfield College with a degree in athletic training, was a two-time All-American for the Springfield Pride in 2003 and 2004, two seasons in which her team reached the NCAA Tournament. The 2004 NEWMAC Player of the Year as well, Vaccari is Springfield’s all-time leader in assists (5,196) and aces (321) while ranking eighth at the school in digs (1,196). Springfield went 109-31 in her four seasons (.779 winning percentage) and she played in all 140 matches over that four-year span.In addition to being a three-year captain for Springfield, Vaccari also was named the 2001 Connecticut High School Player of the Year while a student at The Gilbert School and was a Junior Olympic volleyball athlete.

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