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On Saturday, East Athens Little League (EALL) commemorated its past and present during opening ceremonies at Satterfield Park.
As reported in the Athens Banner-Herald, EALL celebrated its 50th anniversary by featuring current players, coaches and sponsors and longtime supporters of the program, which was once known as Athens International Little League for several years. Presently, EALL has nearly 300 players, from ages 4 to 16, and teams from the softball, T-ball, Minor, Major and Challenger leagues flooded the field before the ceremonial first pitch, which was thrown out by Hardy Edwards IV on behalf of his father, Hardy Edwards III, who played in the first game at Satterfield Park in 1969. “Back in the beginning of time – 1969 – I was the size of these 8 years old,” said the older Hardy, whose company Alpha D3 sponsors his son’s team. “There were three leagues in town – National, American, and when this started, International League. This field here was the most developed, the Major League field, but the Senior League field didn’t have an outfield fence, so if you hit a line drive, it would go all the way to the skating rink.” Having thrown out the first pitch 50 years ago, Larry Day has been involved at Satterfield Park for much of his life. “I played here, I coached here for 12 or 13 years and I’ve umpired here for the last 18 years, so I’ve been around here a little bit,” said Day. “I love it. East Athens needs more good things to happen.” Tom Phillippo, who has been around EALL for almost four decades reflected on the changes the league has experienced in that time. “It’s been almost 40 years since I came out here for the first time and things have changed just a little bit,” he said. “When I started, we had three fields, field maintenance was done by the parents and practice was wherever you could find a field.” “We now have five fields and practices at several of the schools. We’ve got softball back again and I’m really glad to see that. When I started out here, you had to be 8 years old to play. Now it’s 4 – the earlier we get them started the longer we’re going to keep them. I’ll be here another year or two, the Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.” Throughout the 80-year history of Little League, several communities with ball parks as their centers have organically arisen, providing support and encouragement to young people who may not receive much of that in other areas of their lives. “This place was somewhat of a safe haven for me,” said Erek Scoville, who has played and coached at EALL for 20 years. “I was able to find a lot of male role models that affected my life greatly and I am very grateful for this place.” The history of EALL is revealed in the stories shared by longtime veterans and that history provides the foundation for the continued success of the league. “It’s exciting to hear the stories from the people within the community,” said league president Courtney Redmond. “Tommy Epps was introduced to me and he’s never been a public sponsor of a team, but he’s been a private sponsor for players who might need a little extra help, which is fantastic, because he knows the difference you can make in a child’s life by supporting them and giving them confidence and building a family around the ballpark” Pat Cuneo started coaching at EALL when his oldest son Ben was 6. Now 16-year-old Ben is his dad’s assistant coach on the Rookie League Vipers, 6-year-old Henry Cuneo’s team. “We’ve had good, consistent participation over the years and it’s great environment,” said Cuneo the elder. “We’ve got kids from all different schools and all different parts of Clarke County coming together. With our team, everybody knew each other’s names and were forming friendships by the end of the first practice.” At the end of the opening ceremonies, another year of baseball began in earnest at Satterfield Park. Call Pachuta Insurance Today @ 706-769-2262.
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This Monday The State Botanical Garden of Georgia hosted several happy children as University of Georgia and Botanical Garden officials dedicated the new Alice H. Richards Children’s Garden.
As reported in the Athens Banner-Herald, more than 100 people attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony including Friends of the Garden, UGA administrators, garden employees, donors, and people who had worked on the garden. Most attendees brought their children or grandchildren, who excitedly ran in to do all the things there are to do in the new garden after the adults got through with their ceremony. Designer Cameron Berglund of Koons Environmental Design took his three children through the 2.5-acre garden featuring fun and instructive things from the steel arch at the entrance to the stone map of Georgia and its major cities and rivers, slides and things to climb on, and a big button you can push to start a river. That button sends water flowing down a funnel on a wall showing the elevations of Georgia places and cities as the water flows down from high to low on the wall and the state along with some places in between such as Atlanta (1,050 feet above sea level) and Athens (636). There’s also huge mushrooms, a replica of a famous cave, and a wall where actual fossils from millions of years ago are embedded. “It was such a joy working on these things,” Berglund said. The children’s garden will be open to the public Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the university expects a huge turnout. Aside from parking areas within the garden, UGA plans to run shuttles on South Milledge Avenue from the nearby women’s soccer and softball fields and from a UGA equestrian facility. Garden director Jenny Cruse-Sanders, UGA President Jere Morehead and Jim Richardson, representing the Richards family, briefly spoke before the children rushed from place to place. “Imagine what Saturdays are going to be like,” Morehead said as he spoke. Fundraising for the children’s garden began with a $1 million gift from Alice H. Richards’ family. Other contributors, including the entire Botanical Garden Staff and its entire advisory board, added an additional $4 million. Jim Richards, one of Alice Richards’ seven children, spoke for the family, describing his mother’s passion for gardening. As a member of the State Botanical Garden’s first board of advisors 50 years ago, his mother always had garden scissors near to hand, sometimes on her person, he recollected. “She told me once of the importance of garden clubs as a fraternity for women,” he said. His mother would love the new garden, a playground “which is really an outdoor classroom for children,” he said. “She would be amazed and delighted.” The children’s garden will be open during the State Botanical Garden’s normal working hours, but garden educational specialists will also plan regular programs. Larger festivals are also planned, including this Saturday’s grand opening, which will include food trucks and special children’s activities along with musicians, aerialists and other performers. Call Pachuta Insurance Today @ 706-769-2262. UGA’s junior faculty has a lot to be proud of as they have reached milestones to be celebrated early in their careers in academia.
As reported in The Red & Black, three assistant professors have recently received awards and honors in recognition of their early career work at the university. Assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Katie Ehrlich, is one of eight recipients of the Association for Psychological Science Janet Taylor Spence Award, which recognizes researchers early in their careers who cross traditional sub-disciplinary lines in psychological sciences. Ehrlich’s work explores new methods to attain health outcomes in children including seeing how kids are responding to vaccines and if this response is connected to other stressors going on in their lives. Emphasizing the value of mentorship in academia, Ehrlich said she was nominated for this award by a graduate school mentor. She also had advice to share for young scientists and graduate students. “You never know what projects are going to work out and which things are going to be a dud,” Ehrlich said. “Persevering through some of those challenges is important. So you really can’t get discouraged by those.” There was also two UGA assistant professors who won an award, which was the 2019 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. This fellowship is awarded to researchers as recognition for distinguished performance and a potential to make major contributions to their field, according to the Sloan Foundation. Rachel Roberts-Galbraith is an assistant professor at the Department of Cellular Biology and the first UGA faculty member to win this prestigious award in the field of neuroscience. “It’s really exciting as a junior faculty because this really shows that people are valuing the work that we’re trying to do,” Roberts-Galbraith said. Roberts-Galbraith’s lab studies flatworms with regenerative abilities. She wishes to understand how this regeneration works in nature will improve treatments for neurological diseases in the future. The other UGA recipient of the Sloan Fellowship was Elizabeth Harvey, an assistant professor at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah. Harvey said she hopes this fellowship would bring positive things to UGA as she mentioned the importance of the university’s support to her research. “I’ve … felt supported all along the way in doing my research and I hope it encourages other people to apply for fellowships like this,” Harvey said. Harvey studies how a single-celled plant called phytoplankton dies in the ocean. Harvey said phytoplankton are important because they act as the base of the marine food web, and they contribute to almost half the oxygen humans breathe. Call Pachuta Insurance Today @ 706-769-2262. University of Georgia President Jere Morehead recruited another Michigan resident to take over UGA’s no. 2 administrative position.
As reported in The Athens Banner-Herald, the university recently announced that Jack Hu, the University of Michigan’s vice president for research, will become UGA’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. He is scheduled to begin July 1. Hu is replacing Pamela Whitten, who came to UGA from Michigan State University to take over for Morehead as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Whitten left her position last July to become president of Kennesaw State University. Libby Morris, director of the UGA Institute of Higher Education, has been interim provost since Whitten’s departure. Hu has the experience “to continue elevating our national prominence in research, innovation and graduate education while building on our superior undergraduate learning environment,” Morehead said in a prepared statement. Hu, whose academic background is in mechanical engineering and manufacturing, also holds an endowed faculty chair in manufacturing at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering and was also associate dean for academic affairs and associate dean for research and graduate education in Michigan’s engineering college. In recent years, UGA’s new engineering school has been UGA’s fastest-growing college, and UGA administrators have targeted it in initiatives designed to develop more research revenue. The University of Michigan spent about $1.5 billion on research and development in the 2017 fiscal year, the second-highest total of any U.S. university, according to National Science Foundation statistics. Hu was one of four finalists chosen by a 24-member search committee chaired by Denise Spangler, dean of the UGA College of Education, and Benjamin Ayers, dean of the Terry College of Business. Each finalist gave presentations last month at the UGA campus. Call Pachuta Insurance Today @ 706-769-2262. |
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1031 Village Drive, Suite A
Watkinsville, Georgia 30677
johnny@pachutainsurance.com
(706) 769-2262 (Office)
(888) 769-2262 (Toll Free)
(706) 769-2282 (Fax)
(706) 201-1901 (Mobile)