Kate Chenery Tweedy and Leeanne Ladin will be signing copies of their new book, Secretariat’s Meadow — The Land, the Family, the Legend, from 12:30 to 2:30pm on November 7 at Barnes and Noble in the Barracks Road Shopping Center.

Secretariat’s Meadow – The Land, The Family, The Legend by Kate Chenery Tweedy, daughter of Penny Chenery (Tweedy) and granddaughter of Christopher Chenery, who founded the racing stable. Co-authored with Leeanne Ladin, this pictorial history tells not only Secretariat’s story, but the story of an enduring piece of land where an “empire built on broodmares” eventually produced an immortal son.

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An architect’s rendering of the controversial dug-outs at the new Woodbrook Elementary School t-ball field, built in honor of the late Carson Raymond (inset), a Woodbrook student who died last year after contracting swine flu.
PHOTOS COURTESY JOHN RAYMOND

The shock from the year-ago death of third-grader Carson Raymond moved many in the community, particularly with his parents’ ability— just days after their son’s death from swine flu complications atop a pre-existing heart condition— to comfort others by urging calm and assuring that other children were not at risk.

Today, that combination of outreach and generosity remain evident as the parents keep their son’s memory alive through the Carson Raymond Foundation, which has introduced dozens of students to t-ball through clinics and equipment scholarships and built a t-ball field at Woodbrook Elementary, which the 9-year-old attended at the time of his October 10, 2009 death.

“The Foundation is accomplishing what I was hoping it would do— getting kids out to play,” says John Raymond, citing a four-week t-ball clinic the Foundation sponsored last school year for Woodbrook kindergartners.

“The interaction with the kids, their big smiles, bright eyes when they got their certificate of accomplishment. They were jumping on us,” he recalls. “That was nice.”

Less enjoyable was the pre-construction dispute with some residents of the Woodbrook neighborhood, who expressed (more)

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The two new courts on August 30, a few days after the sand was poured.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Been by UVA’s Snyder Tennis Center lately? There are two new courts in the making, but they aren’t tennis courts. They’re volleyball courts, of the sand variety. And the coach of the women’s volleyball team thinks they’ll propel his program to new heights— even when his ladies aren’t leaping for a spike.

“We’re big proponents of sand volleyball because of all the positive effects it will have on indoor athletes,” says Head Coach Lee Maes. “It gives the varsity team a chance to cross-train.”

But there’s another reason for the courts, located along busy University Avenue: visibility. UVA’s been fielding a team in the Olympic sport of indoor volleyball since 1979, but Coach Maes says that not everybody seems to know that.

So last spring, this coach, who was hired in 2008, received a marketing report from some students in UVA’s undergraduate business school. A hitherto underutilized corner of Nameless Field was chosen, and after some “generous donations” including $40,000 just for the sand (a blend called “the Fort Myers mix”), the courts should be ready for play by this weekend, says Coach Maes. He says that lighting, audio, a scoreboard, and even an outdoor shower will be installed during the coming weeks.

“We want the community— the students and faculty— to use it,” says Coach Maes. “If you build it, they will come.” Meanwhile, his team, which suffered a losing season last year, has started (more)

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“I hope more people get to know how much fun ice skating and hockey are, and will participate in the sports,” says Roberta Williamson, left, with new owner Mark Brown, his daughters, Annabel and Caroline, and Bruce Williamson.
PHOTO BY TOM DALY

Local ice skaters, meet your unlikely hero: 29-year-old businessman Mark Brown. On Friday, July 16, he purchased the struggling Charlottesville Ice Park to end months of fear and speculation that the massive building, widely seen as a Downtown nexus, might— like the controversy-stained shell of a hotel nearby— stand empty for years.

The purchase comes two weeks after skating stopped and at a price of $3 million, more than a million less than the asking price and about a million below the 1996 development price.

“I hadn’t really thought about it when the sale was announced in February,” admits Brown, a Kentucky native and 2002 UVA grad who grew concerned when, weeks after the owners announced the June 30 closure in April, no buyers had come forward. Part of the problem, then Ice Park co-owner Roberta Williamson said, was in the ice rink’s bank statements: she estimated the business she and her ex-husband Bruce Williamson and two other investors purchased for $3.1 million in 2003 had been losing as much as $70,000 per year, a deficit she said they simply could not sustain. (The Williamsons bought out their partners sometime after the sale.)

Although Brown, a father of two, had never (more)

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Photographer Andrew Shurtleff captures the action along the first base line at Davenport Field.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Daily Progress photography director and freelancer extraordinaire Andrew Shurtleff captures the action at Davenport Field on Sunday. Shurtleff captured this great shot of Virginia teammates Dan Grovatt and Kevin Arico for the DP after the devastating loss on Monday night.

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The Lane League’s opening day was marred by County budget cuts, but local businesses have since stepped in to help.
PHOTO BY JEREMY VESTAL

The Lane Babe Ruth League’s opening day this year was a grim one, as League President Shannon Wilder told the crowd that Albemarle County had decided to stop funding the $5,300 yearly electric bill for the field’s lights on McIntire Road. The cut was part of an effort to trim the County’s $294 million budget, but while it only represented a fraction of the County’s expenditures, the $5,300 figure represented 10 percent of the Lane League’s annual budget.

Following the Hook’s April story about the Lane lights, several local businesses stepped up to the plate with sponsorships for the League, but recently one well-known business stepped up and knocked one out of the park.

“We read the article in the Hook and decided we were in a position to help,” says ACAC’s vice president of development Chris Craytor. “So we will be sponsoring the lights for the next 18 months.”

That came as welcome news to Wilder and the League.

“We were thunderstruck by ACAC’s offer,” says Wilder. “We never expected that we would find this level of support in the community and are thrilled that there is this much support for what we have to offer.”

The league holds evening practices and games from early March through the end of October. Without lights, Wilder says, the number of practices and games would have been cut by more than half.

“ACAC is happy to help. The Lane Babe Ruth League fulfills a real need in our community,” says Phil Wendel, owner of ACAC. “It is a small price to pay for keeping kids in the game.”

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With two outs in the eighth, the Cavs had a chance to rally, but it wasn’t to be.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Cavs DH John Barr gets a lead off first base after hitting a single up the middle in the top of the eighth inning, while Cavs slugger Phil Gosselin, who homered in the sixth, waits for the pitch. Despite a gritty at bat, Gosselin would fly out to right field to end the inning. Oklahoma would go on to win 10-7, forcing a do or die game for both teams tonight.

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