On Thursday, Dec. 8, both the Silver Lake High School track teams, boys’ and girls’, started their seasons against the Duxbury Green Dragons at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston. Both teams showed encouraging results as the boys Lakers squad edged the Green Dragons, 51-49, and the girls Laker team fell in a close one, 54-40, to the Green Dragons.

Although they won, it might come as a surprise that the boys’ team did not sweep one single event. There was not one event where they finished in the top-3 spots.

In the 55-meter dash, Christian Moran (6.87 seconds) and Max LaFerrara (6.93 seconds) had a first and third place finish respectively.

For mid-distance events, Max Shirikjian (37.75 seconds) won the 300-meter dash and Willi D’Entremont (1:31.50) took first and Tristan Arendt (1:37.82) took third respectively in the 600-meter dash.

Logan Arendt (2:55.54) finished second in the 1000-meter dash, William Felix (4:53.15) came in second in the 1-mile run while Cameron Dwyer (5:09.95) finished third. Felix also took third in the 2-mile run (10:48.89).

John McCarthy (8.90) and Brian Sherry (9.57) had top-2 finishes in the 55-meter hurdles while Gabriel Roy (34 feet and 3 inches) and Jared Dwyer (33-11) came in second and third in shot put.

LaFerrera finished second in the high jump (5-03.00). Shirikjian (21-05 and Kevin Donahue (17-05 ½) took first and third respectively in the long jump.  The Laker boys won the 4×200 Relay (1:37.33).

On the girls’ side, Alison McDonough (7.87) won the 55-meter dash and Grace Gilmore (48.60) came in third in the 300-meter dash.

In long-distance events, Alison Gavigan had a strong performance in the 1-mile run (5:55.03) as she finished first in the event and Alexandra Tonsberg (13:27.40) came in second in the 2-mile run.

Jackie Damery (10.68) won the 55-meter hurdle and Nora Frizzell (11.37) came in third place in the event.

Eleanor Swanson (26-03) had the best shot put throw of the day and her teammate, Allison White, (24-10) came in third. 

The Lakers finished first (McDonough, 4-07) and second (Tonsberg, 4-01) in the high jump. Tess Lally (14-00) and McDonough (13-06) finished second and third respectively in the long jump. The girls’ 4×200 relay team (2:00.44) ousted the Green Dragons’ best run in the event.

This team looks a little different than it did in the past.

But despite losing a handful of players to graduation last year, the Silver Lake girls’ basketball team lives on. And Lakers head coach Bob Morgan notes his team has a little bit of everything this year.
“I think our biggest strength this year will be our speed and our balance throughout the roster,” he said. “We are not big so our ability to up-tempo and play strong defense will be crucial to any success we hope to achieve.”
On the younger side for a varsity team, the Lakers return just four varsity players, two of whom are seniors. Madi Gillen, a senior captain, worked her way into a starting role last season and Morgan said she has worked hard in the offseason. Senior Olivia Macomber missed all of last season with an injury and her return is critical for this young Lakers squad.
Juniors Sydney Kehoe and Alyssa Nelson are also varsity returners. And  Morgan said the two gained valuable experience throughout that year which should serve them well this year.
Senior Emily Critch, who was not on the team the past two seasons returns to the team. And her classmate Nina Whidden, who played well on JV last season, will likely see big minutes for the Lakers this season.
Morgan also said juniors Emily Hapgood, Annabelle Boudreau, Alex Bachelder and Brenna Welch, who are first-year varsity players, worked hard in the offseason to make it onto the team. 

As far as younger players, Stephanie Bennett, a sophomore who had a strong year on JV last year, will be a key asset in the paint. And Morgan said he likes what he sees in freshman Holly Reeder-Morning.

“She comes to us with tremendous amount of potential and we are looking forward to her being a very important part of our growth and success,” he said.

Through the first week of the season, Morgan has been happy with his team’s attitude and work ethic.
“To this point nothing has surprised me more than these girls’ willingness to do whatever it takes for each other and for the team to be successful,” he said. “Their energy and enthusiasm has been top notch in trying to prepare for the season.“
There are really no games in our schedule that are more important than others,” Morgan said.  “Being such a young team We will do our best to try and get off to a good start and hopefully gain some confidence as we go along.”

The Lakers open their season at home on Friday, Dec. 9, against Plymouth South at 5 p.m..

The Silver Lake High School football team had a chance to finish their season 8-3. They took advantage of that situation.

At home on Thanksgiving this year against their annual rival, the Pembroke Titans, the Lakers prevailed again this year with a 40-20 win. As a result, they finished the year 8-3.

It took awhile for the Lakers to get going. But once they did, their offensive attack was potent.

In the first quarter, they would not score. But midway through the second quarter, they struck. Driving downfield, Alec Snell took it in himself for a two-yard score. The two-point conversion attempt was no good.

As the first half expired, Snell connected with Drew Neal for a 14-yard touchdown pass. It put the Lakers up, 12-0, headed into the locker room as they continued playing stout defense. And then, it broke open in the second half.

Max LaFerrera started the third quarter just about as well as anyone could have hoped. He ran for a 65-yard touchdown to put the Lakers up, 18-0. But the Titans quickly countered and took their kick return to the end zone for a touchdown.

A few minutes later, the Lakers pieced together a quality drive. It ended with a 13-yard touchdown pass from Snell to Laferrera.

With 4:20 left in the third, the Titans scored again, on a quarterback run. Their extra point try was good, which put them within 11 — the closest they would come to a comeback. 

Snell had another touchdown pass to Neal late in the third quarter to give the Lakers some breathing room. The 29-yard TD pass along with a successful LaFerrera two-point conversion bumped the Lakers lead back up to 19 points.

With that kind of a deficit headed into the fourth quarter, the Titans were not able to orchestrate any sort of a comeback.

Last year, the Lakers came out with a 50-6 win over the Titans on Thanksgiving. But since it was a closer game this year and the Lakers are stronger this year than they were in the past, it implies the Titans have also grown.

This marks the third straight time the Lakers have topped the Titans on Thanksgiving. In the all-time series, the Lakers hold the edge, 8-3.

The 2016 football season also holds significance to the Lakers because it was the first time they had won a playoff game since 1980 — which was 36 years ago. They did so in the first round of the playoffs against Scituate, 28-26, on Oct. 28.

Gas prices in Massachusetts drifted further downward ahead of what’s expected to be the busiest Thanksgiving travel period in a decade. AAA Northeast on Monday reported that the average price of a gallon of self-serve, unleaded gasoline is $2.08, down 4 cents a gallon from last week. The group’s survey on Monday found prices ranged from $1.95 to $2.19 per gallon of self-serve regular unleaded. AAA estimated last week that close to 950,000 people from Massachusetts are expected to drive to Thanksgiving destinations, up 5.1 percent over 2015. – Michael Norton/ State House News Service

WHITMAN — Sometimes a muse finds their writer — and won’t let go until their story is told.

For retired Falmouth nurse Terri Arthur, British nurse Edith Cavell was one of these muses.

“Edith who?” one might ask.

Cavell’s work, dedication to humanity and determination to save the lives of about 200 British soldiers in German-occupied Belgium during World War I, led to her Oct. 12, 1915 execution by firing squad when the Germans caught up with her. The only woman so executed by the enemy during that war, Cavell’s death became an emotional recruiting tool for the British Army and launched a letter-writing campaign by American women’s groups to President Woodrow Wilson that is now recognized as a first step toward American involvement in WWI.

“Her death was [headlines] in every country all over the world,” Arthur said. “When they saw the headlines on Edith Cavell … [women’s groups] took her on as a cause celebré and they inundated Wilson with letters.”

In a way, Cavell’s stated life’s goal may have foreshadowed the circumstances of her death.

“Someday, somehow, I’m going to do something useful, something for people,” Cavell once wrote. “They are, most of them, so helpless, so hurt and so unhappy.”

But who was Edith Cavell?

That question took Arthur on a journey of coincidental events that led her to write “Fatal Destiny: Edith Cavell, World War I Nurse,” [2015, $19.95, HenschelHAUS Publishing], a book so well received in Britain that she was asked to adjust spelling and syntax for a British edition.

Arthur’s visit to the Whitman Public Library’s Local Author Series on Monday, Nov. 10 traced both Cavell’s story and how she came to write it. The Friends of the Whitman Public Library fund the series.

“It’s time to resurrect Edith,” Arthur said. “She has a message for us today. She showed courage and strength at a time when it was very difficult to do.”

Arthur began her talk with an anecdote of how DNA left in bloody fingerprints by ancient native peoples who constructed New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon settlements helped answer some questions about possible connections to other Anasazi dwellings in the region.

“The person I’m going to talk about today also left her fingerprints in history, but she’s been basically forgotten, like those builders were forgotten,” Arthur said. “It’s time to bring Edith back.”

The centennial of Cavell’s execution was observed last year and the centennial of WWI is ongoing through Nov. 11, 2018.

For Arthur, the journey began with one of those nursing-related gifts many nurses receive and are never sure what to do with: a book titled “Postcards of Nursing” by Michael Zwerdling. She finally leafed through it on a stormy night and ran across postcards depicting Edith Cavell, some of which depicted her death and images of the Grim Reaper. She read an outline about Cavell in the back of the book and was “blown away.”

“How is it that I, as a nurse, had never heard about this nurse?” she said.

It launched her on a search for information, which led her to others whose response was “Edith who?” Even during a trip to the UK, where she made a special trip to the memorial statue to Cavell in Trafalgar Square, Arthur was unable to find anyone staffing tourist gift shops nearby who had heard of Cavell, either.

Arthur then made a side trip to Cavell’s burial site in  Norwich where, as fate would have it, the city’s cathedral was holding a 90th anniversary service for Cavell the next day — Oct. 12, 2005.

A BBC reporter caught the sound of Arthur’s American accent and asked what brought her to the event.

“I said, ‘Well, I’m a nurse and I believe that what Edith Cavell did really represents nurses in every country,’” Arthur said, adding the next thing she new, she was being interviewed for BBC-TV news.

Arthur was hooked.

“I don’t know who got who first,” Arthur said. “I don’t know if I got Edith Cavell first or if she got me first, but after that, I was hooked.”

Arthur’s research took her from the Imperial War Museum, where she was able to purchase copies of Cavell’s letters, to Belgium, the Royal London and the Brussels Hospital named in honor of Cavell as well as the Tir National Prison where Cavell was executed.

Before she began writing, however, Arthur also had take classes in creative writing techniques such as finding the voice of a narrative and setting the pace.

The eldest daughter of an Anglican minister, Cavell studied nursing at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel about the time of the Jack the Ripper murders, because that section of London was where she felt she was needed. She worked there until she was asked to begin a nursing school in Brussels in 1907. She had worked in Belgium before as a governess.

When WWI broke out in August 1914, Cavell was visiting her family in England but felt it was her duty to return to Belgium. The Germans occupied Belgium, reaching Brussels by Aug. 20, 1915. Since September 1914, Cavell had been helping smuggle British soldiers into the Netherlands after initially caring for two wounded British soldiers who had sought her out. She took them in despite signs posted by the Germans all over Belgium warning of the fatal consequences of helping allied soldiers escape.

She was arrested with 33 others on Oct. 5, 1915 after a German spy had infiltrated the underground, was tried for treason by a German court martial on Oct. 7 and executed on Oct. 12, 1915.

After the war, she was exhumed by the British and returned to England for a state funeral in Westminster Abbey [a rare film clip of which may be viewed at iwm.org.uk] and reburied at Norwich Cathedral. Her pallbearers included soldiers she had saved.

Since writing her book, Arthur has been the only American invited to participate in anniversary ceremonies for Cavell in both Norwich and London.

Regardless of what happened, neither team was going to win the Patriot League Keenan Division Championship, nor would either be eliminated from playoff contention. Perhaps the biggest takeaway was playoff seeding.

And if playoff seeding was the most important aspect of the game, then consider the Silver Lake high school football team (6-1, 4-1 Patriot League Keenan Division) winners — twice.

On Friday, the Lakers task was to try to defeat the Whitman-Hanson Panthers (4-3, 2-3 Patriot League Keenan Division). In that, they were successful. They came away with an 18-7 win at home. But seeing how they entered the weekend projected as the No. 3 seed in the Division 2A South Sectional tournament, the real win for them might have been securing a home playoff game.

Early on in, it was the Lakers who had momentum. In the first quarter, they had a pair of scores. Driving down field, the Lakers scored first — on a 10-yard touchdown pass from senior quarterback Alec Snell. He threw it to his twin brother, Carson, a wide receiver, for the score. The 2-point conversion attempt was no good.

As the quarter progressed, the Lakers found themselves on another scoring drive. And this scoring drive was capped off by senior running back Josh Chapman. He ran it six yards into the end zone, putting the Lakers up, 12-0, late in the first quarter. The conversion attempt was no good.

Defensively, the Lakers did what they had to do and made stops when needed. Regardless, they allowed Panthers quarterback Ethan Phelps to throw for over 100 yards and run for over 100 yards. In all, the Lakers allowed over 200 rushing yards. That might sound like a team struggling on defense but for every big play they allowed, there was a big stop preventing the Panthers from scoring later in the drive.

The Lakers let up a touchdown in the second quarter, despite not scoring one themselves. Phelps reached the end zone on a 15-yard run. The extra point attempt was good. But the Lakers still led, 12-7.

While the Lakers held momentum in the first half, it really came on their side in the second. They shut the Panthers out in those two quarters and while their offense did not score, Chapman returned the second-half opening kickoff for a 90-yard touchdown. And the Lakers 2-point conversion attempt was unsuccessful.

The Halifax Fire Department would like to graciously thank the Halifax Walmart for their generous donation of $2000.

Every year the fire department applies for local, state and federal grants and puts the money to good use in purchasing state of the art equipment, protective gear and training.

Like anything else the purchase of advanced equipment and gear weighs heavily on department budgets and we rely on the grant process to supplement our capital and operating budgets.

This money will be used in purchasing a new SCBA mask with a built-in Thermal Imager camera.  The SCBA mask (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus) is what we use to enter hostile and hazardous environments.  The Thermal Imaging component of it further enhances our operational capability by giving us the ability to see radiant heat signatures in a smoke filled environment.

These heat signatures are used to detect other people or firefighters who may be in danger or in need of a rescue.  This mask will be put to use right away on our front line piece of apparatus and will help give us another cutting edge that we need to effectively do our jobs.

Captain Jeffrey Cuozzo, Halifax Fire Department

Most people don’t use drones for spying.

In fact, many who fly them competitively prefer the term multirotor because of the negative connotation attached to the word “drone”. And in Halifax, the Wingbusters Rotor Racers, are establishing themselves as a go-to spot for competitive “drone racing”, as some may call it.

They are members of the MultiGP (Grand Prix) and they keep standings on a points system dependent on how many laps one finishes in any given meet. They wrapped up their regular season this past Sunday at their home field off River Street in Halifax.

Originally though, the group started out with remote control airplanes. But when the opportunity for a first-person experience came about, they could not pass it up.

“I would say the biggest appeal of what we’re doing now is it feels like you’re sitting in the aircraft flying around,” race coordinator Adam Proulx said.

“You put the goggles on your face and it seals off the outside world. Some of the drones even have microphones; you could even have the sounds of it. It’s a completely immersive experience. It’s about as close to flying an aerobatic aircraft as you can get.”

Their average event this year had around 15 to 20 competitors. But an event to qualify for regionals had 27. And the top four finishers from the event advanced.

While the racers tend to be local, not all of them hail from the South Shore.

“Pilots come from all over,” Proulx said. “We get a guy who comes from Uxbridge. Pretty much from Western Mass, up north and down to the Cape. We even get guys from Connecticut coming in.”Proulx said they have even had people join who had no experience flying remote control aircrafts.

“They see these things flying around on YouTube, on ESPN even and they want to do it,” he said. “And they can start doing it. There’s a lot of resources to help people get started.”

“It’s still in its infancy right now,” Proulx added of multirotor racing.

“But it’s growing very quickly. And I’m very excited to see where it goes. I mean, ESPN has picked this stuff up. Who knows who else will come on board.

“They’ve got some big sponsors like Mountain Dew and Red Bull,” he added. “It’s a real rush when you’re going back and forth with somebody. It’s a lot of fun.”

For more information on the Wingbusters including upcoming events, contact information and event locations, visit Wingbusters.org.

Page 1 photo credit: Steve Grenon