A pair of youngsters work on their art projects at the Visual and Performing Arts summer art camp. Photo by David Brinson
By David Brinson
news@thepaperofwabash.com
The Honeywell Foundation’s Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) summer art camp has officially wrapped up another year. The results can best be seen in the pieces of work the children take home with them.
“One day, the kids had easels set up in the (Charley Creek) Gardens and you had to paint just what you see. So, we have 21 images of the same thing,” Teresa Galley, Honeywell’s Director of Education and Outreach, said. “But they are 21 totally different pictures.”
The VPA summer art program is a two-week course at the beginning of each summer which allows children, kindergarten to 12th grade, from across Wabash County, to meet one another and express themselves in creative ways.
Northfield senior Matt Coe connects for an RBI triple during the Saturday, June 9 Class A baseball semistate against Daileville at Kokomo Municipal Stadium. Photo by Josh Sigler
By Josh Sigler
jsigler@thepaperofwabash.com
KOKOMO – During its tournament run, Northfield’s baseball squad had made a living on superb pitching and defense, while scratching out enough runs to survive and advance.
The Norse manufactured a couple runs early in the Saturday, June 9, Class A Semistate against Daleville, but their pitching and defense were not as sharp as it had been this postseason in an 8-2 loss to the Broncos at Kokomo Municipal Stadium.
The loss for Northfield (16-15) snapped a five-game winning streak.
“I’m so proud of these guys for what they’ve overcome in the last month,” Northfield coach Clint Davis said. “From where we were a month ago to where we are now, competing, I can’t say enough about the kids.”
The Norse managed just five hits, including just one after the third inning.
Matt Coe put Northfield on the board in the top of the first with an RBI triple over the center fielder’s head, plating Blake Harner, who had reached on a two-out single.
Jared Vigar led off the second with a triple over the left fielder’s head and came home on an RBI sacrifice flyout from Braden Ripplinger.
That was all the offense the Norse would muster.
“That kid on the mound for them is good, and we scratched a couple runs across early, but we never had multiple hits,” Davis said. “We could never get it going up and down the lineup like we wanted to. We’ve been just barely scratching enough across. Unfortunately, those couple runs early weren’t enough to hang on today. … At some point you’re going to have to score more than one or two runs to get out of one of these things, and we just couldn’t do that today.”
Harner drew the start on the hill and wasn’t as sharp as he had been during Northfield’s postseason run.
He allowed six hits in 4 1/3 innings of work, walking six and hitting three more batters.
He allowed seven runs, but was the victim of four Norse errors.
Harner exited in favor of Nate Drancik in the fifth inning, where Daleville (21-9) pushed across five runs to break open a close game, taking an 8-2 lead.
“You get to this point and you’re thinking ‘he has five days off and will have a lot of rust,’” Davis said. “We don’t have five days off at any point in time during the course of the season up until this point. He was a little rusty. We tried to keep him as sharp as could be. But, he just didn’t have it, and that’s going to happen. He’s pitched his rear end off for us for a month now. He struggled with his command a little bit and got behind hitters. When you get to the semistate and get behind hitters, that’s going to be tough on you. We’re not here without him.”
Harner went 2-for-3 at the plate to lead Northfield offensively. He was the only Norse hitter to collect multiple hits.
Clayton Tomlinson had a base hit for Northfield, while Vigar and Coe each added triples to the Norse cause.
Northfield will say goodbye to four seniors, Vigar, Coe, Harner and Hunter Cox.
Davis said there was a sharp change in his team’s competitive spirit midway through the season, a change sparked by his seniors’ unwillingness to let the season end on a negative note.
“Our seniors are an interesting group of individuals,” Davis said. “They’ve been huge for us. We don’t get here without them. The leadership, the culture change in our dugout we saw about midway through the season, they were responsible for that. They saw the finish line and they didn’t want to cross it. When you get to this point in the season, you have two types of seniors; seniors that are ready to move on with their life, and seniors that aren’t quite ready and want to live in the moment. We got that from those guys from the last month on. They battled their tails off to get to this point. I can’t say enough about the way they changed the culture in the dugout and made it a point that we expect to come out here and compete. That might not have been the case a month ago.”
By David Brinson
news@thepaperofwabash.com
During the first weeks of June, Wabash County students (first through 12th grade) rehearse three separate musicals simultaneously throughout the Honeywell Center. It’s noisy. It’s frantic. It’s just a little messy. But ask any of the show’s directors, and they’ll admit that theater is often all those things.
The Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) Summer Theatre Camp lasts multiple weeks of practice and ends with the children putting on a big show in front of their family. With nearly 120 participants, the program takes up every available corner of the Honeywell Center. Educating and entertaining the community since 1984, VPA had been struggling to stay afloat until the Honeywell Foundation recently took the helm.
A look at one of the dressing rooms at the Rustic Barn at Hopewell. Photo by Joseph Slacian
By Joseph Slacian
jslacian@thepaperofwabash.com
Deb Conner has a lot of memories from her childhood about her grandparents’ dairy barn.
Today, she’s trying to help others create memories, not of watching the dairy cows be milked. Rather, the memories she’s helping to create are of the most important day in a couple’s life.
Conner and her husband, Steve, have converted the barn into a reception hall named the Rustic Barn at Hopewell.
Work began last summer and as of Saturday, June 16, two wedding receptions have taken place there. Many more are planned later this year, with nearly every weekend in September and October already booked.
Conner said she and a variety of work crews, the majority of which were local, put in hundreds of hours of work to get the barn in the condition it is in now.
By The Paper staff
Flagstar Bancorp, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 52 Wells Fargo Bank branches in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, including the Wabash branch.
The sale will provide Flagstar Bank with approximately $2.3 billion in deposits and $130 million in loans, along with certain related assets. Flagstar will pay an effective deposit premium of approximately 7 percent based on balances as of Dec. 31, 2017. Management expects the transaction will be moderately accretive to 2019 earnings per share.
