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In The News This Week Feb.29, 2008 |
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 CCS Girls Overcome Superstitions To Win For First-Year Coach Niles By SARAH STEWART COOPERSTOWN This is Coach Mike Niles’ first year with the CCS girl’s varsity squad and the Lady Redskins are having one heck of a year. When the position came up last spring, after Frank Miosek stepped down, Coach Niles was asked but said no. He was happy coaching the boy’s JV basketball team and the girl’s JV soccer team. Athletic Director Mike Cring, girl’s JV basketball coach, asked him again. Cring told Niles that it was fine if he said no but that Cring would be back the next day to ask him again. Niles said he’d have to talk to his wife, sure she would say no. She said yes. Now, Coach Niles says, he wouldn’t trade it for anything. Here’s the funny thing. Coach Niles is a superstitious guy. So superstitious that he would only speak of those superstitions that had been proven to have no effect, shot down, so to speak, like his rule of never re-tying his tie. If his tie is off-kilter, a little long or a little short, he lives with it, otherwise the team would lose. He couldn’t risk the game for a fashion faux pas. Once, he did have to re-tie and all was well, but the team bought him a clip-on just in case. Coach packs his game clothes ahead of time, he doesn’t go home before games, and if he deviated from the selection the game would end in a loss. He was forced to change once; no repercussions. The girls bought him a stain-stick anyway, to ease his mind. And here’s the big one: Coach Niles made 30 copies of the stats sheets at the beginning of the season. That’s one for every possible game that they could play, up to and including these finals. There is no arrogance in this. Coach says he “didn’t want to go this far and not be prepared.” As you can imagine, the worst possible thing did happen at the worst possible time. At the Beaver River game, the sectional final, he discovered that the clipboard with the sheets was left behind, lost. He had no fresh stats sheet, his superstitious mind told him “no stats sheet, we can’t even go out there, what’s the point?” Well, of course, the girls went out with a used sheet, freshly erased, and beat Beaver River, 55-42, in the Section 3 finals Saturday, March 1, at Onondaga Community College, after only two days of rest. The third superstition shot down. We all have our idiosyncrasies and Coach Niles shares his, if not willingly, with a sense of humor and a quiet demeanor that belies his intensity. All of this is fun and he laughs at himself because he knows he thinks long and hard about his team, his program and how to make it the best it can be. The younger players are introduced to the varsity players. They will know who Jen Wehner and Lindsay Valentine are. They will remember the stars of this team and every team to come so that they have a real person to look up to, to emulate. The older players are involved in camps for the younger players. That way, when Sam Fox says to a young girl, “good job,” it means something. Coach Niles calls these “physical dividends,” real things kids can relate to. Coach Niles describes this team as real “cool cats.” They are relaxed and confident and treat each other well. He is a self-effacing, quiet man and is sometimes at their mercy. Before he could speak to the team prior to the Little Falls game, he had to wait until they had finished their dance party in the locker room, replete with sound system. It was OK. This team has all the moves. One last thing, if you go to the game, and you should go, notice that Coach Niles does not take a seat on the bench. He does not hang his coat on a chair. Superstition, maybe, more than likely he is just making sure that there is room for everyone else. He seems to be built that way.  Hits Dreams Park Hard By JIM KEVLIN HARTWICK An “impact statement” is en route to Dreams Park, telling owner Lou Presutti III the assessment on his Hartwick Seminary youth-baseball-tournament venue will go up more than five times. Given that valuations are only tripling townwide in the just-completed Town of Hartwick reassessment, the first in two decades, Presutti could see his property tax bill almost double. The land and buildings that comprise Dreams Park – 10 parcels – had been assessed at $3,229,546. The new valuation is $16,917,700. Last year’s tax rate was $9 per thousand, meaning Dreams Park – if all its economic-development exemptions had expired – would have paid about $29,000 in town taxes. The overall tripling of valuations would reduce that rate to $3. Applied to the new value, however, Dreams Park could expect to pay more than $50,000. The facility pays a similar bill to the county. The new Hartwick values were only posted on county Real Property Tax Services Web site at 2 a.m. Wednesday, March 5, so an in-depth analysis was hard to come by immediately. The town’s new assessor, Matt Lippitt, failed to return phone calls. George Cade, Cherry Valley, whose firm, Cade Appraisals, did the reassessment, was reluctant to say too much before individual property owners are notified of the outcomes. He said he planned to send out one third of the impact statements Thursday, March 6, a third on Friday, and the final third on Monday, March 10. However, he said the impact on, not just Dreams Park, but the whole Route 28 corridor – it has seen major commercial development in the past two decades – will be “big.” If property owners have questions about their new assessments, they should call the assessor’s office at 293-8320. Informal reviews are planned the weeks of March 10 and of March 17. Grievance Day will be Tuesday, May 27. HoF Game Panel COOPERSTOWN State Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, has announced he plans to create a panel to develop muscular alternatives to the Hall of Fame Game that Major League Baseball is cancelling after this year. “I’ve just heard from MLB Commissioner Bud Selig that the plan to cancel the annual Hall of Fame game is irrevocable. I’m very disappointed, but we won’t lie down and quit,” said Seward. The panel will include Mayor Carol B. Waller, County Board Chairman Jim Powers, and representatives of the HoF and tourist industry, he said. Letters of invitation will go out in the next week. “We’ve got to start planning how we can turn around a tough break and make sure we have a significant annual baseball event that continues to be a tourist destination, builds on our baseball history, and is an economic asset for our area,” Seward said. After the news of the cancellation broke, the Otsego County senator wrote President George W. Bush, who he had hosted locally in 1987 and 1999, asking him to intervene. By JIM KEVLIN COOPERSTOWN It’s shaping up as old vs. new, although the four candidates for two village trustee vacancies in the Tuesday, March 18, elections are decrying that development. Of the Republicans, Doug Walker is a native who has lived here most of his life, and Neil Weiller has lived here full time for 17 years, summered here 10 years before that, and has historic family ties. Of the Democrats, incumbent trustee Jeff Katz, a downstate native, moved his family to town from Chicago five years ago; Jim Vrooman, inspired by the “Bob Newhart Show,” moved his family here three years ago and bought a B&B. With the village elections less than a dozen days away, the four were honing their messages, devising strategies for the final push, and preparing for the one Meet the Candidates’ Night of the campaign – at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 6, at 22 Main, sponsored by the League of Women Voters. In interviews in the past several days, all four expressed more–or–less wait–and–see attitudes toward paid parking. A pilot project, using two pay–and–display machines, will be rolled out in the Doubleday Field parking lot this summer. All of them expressed optimism about the county Board of Representatives changing tone toward Cooperstown: That the baseball mecca that generates the lion’s share of county sales tax revenues needs help with the burden created by 400,000 annual visitors. Each, however, had different emphases. Walker, a former downtown merchant who operates the 2 Chestnut B&B, said long–time residents feel frozen out. “Thank goodness we’re going to have a voice again,” he said people are telling him. Weiller, Muskrat Hill proprietor and a trained accountant, is intrigued by how to build community consensus, and has been researching master plans back to the 1960s. He sees Cooperstown’s potential as “America’s First 21st Century Village, where we honor our traditions and bring them forward.” Katz, a stock trader on the floor of the Chicago Exchange, now a published baseball writer, emphasized if the village trustees can determine the correct policies and follow them with consistency, problems will be solved. “It’s important not to make decisions based on personal matters,” he said. Vrooman, who spent 18 years as a manager in the printing industry in New England, said things should be structured to make tourists contributors to local solutions; if that can be accomplished, perhaps the arrival of tourists won’t be as widely decried. His goal: creation of “a viable economic community.” In a related development, Weiller reported he has created the “Cooperstown United Party,” emphasizing national parties are irrelevant to much that happens locally. His name will appear on the ballot on two lines.  Hi, I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that The Freeman's Journal is sponsoring: "Save Hall of Fame Game" http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savehofgame/ The National Baseball Hall of Fame announced Tuesday, Jan. 29, that Major League Baseball has unilaterally cancelled The Hall of Fame game, a revered 70-year tradition. Please help the Cooperstown sports' community in petitioning MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to change his mind. And, please, forward the petition to anyone you know who may be sympathetic to the cause. 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