PINE PLAINS — While baseball is typically the starring sport of spring, the town of Pine Plains recently welcomed a new joint youth soccer program with the town of Stanford, dubbed the Stissing Mountain Football Club (SMFC). It kicked off on Monday, April 25, and will run through Saturday, June 18.
Primarily known for coaching the Stissing Mountain High School girls varsity soccer team, James Wylie said he was approached by Pine Plains Recreation Director Mike Cooper to see if he’d be interested in starting a recreational soccer league.
Noticing the absence of a youth soccer program in town, Wylie said, “I wanted to start it up so when kids get to high school, it’s not the first time they play soccer.”
Wylie explained the SMFC’s structure is very similar to the nearby town of Dover’s youth soccer league, Dover United Youth Soccer. Having worked for that league for five years, Wylie brought its blueprints with him to Pine Plains to help form the SMFC.
“The one thing that stands out is we’re making sure all our coaches are U.S. grass roots certified,” Wylie said, referring to the United States soccer initiative to teach soccer to young children and instill the values upheld at the professional level to the youth level early on.
Including Wylie, the SMFC currently has roughly nine coaches running the program.
Additionally, Wylie said many of his players from the high school girls varsity soccer team are assisting with the program. Wylie said his goal of blending young players with the varsity players is to create “this one unity of a team of players, because hopefully the players playing in this youth program will play for the school one day.”
Aside from the fundamentals, Wylie wants to instill teamwork, leadership and the rules of the game into those enrolled with the new soccer program. He also wants to teach the young athletes how to properly approach practicing and improve their game at both the individual and team levels.
By its first active week, the SMFC had 70 players enrolled — all from the Pine Plains Central School District, which includes nine towns in two counties.
Each age group has one practice and one game a week on the soccer fields behind Stissing Mountain Junior/Senior High School off Route 199 in Pine Plains.
Participants are required to bring their own shin guards and cleats, and having their own soccer ball is highly recommended.
Players ages 5 to 7 practice on Mondays while players ages 8 to 10 and ages 11 to 14 practice on Wednesdays.
Wylie said players ages 3 to 4 don’t have practice but have games early every Saturday morning.
Players ages 5 to 7 also compete against one another on Saturday mornings, followed by players ages 8 to 10 at 10 a.m. and players ages 11 to 14 later Saturday mornings.
Wylie said the teams on which the players compete rotate weekly “because we want to encourage that we’re one big program and you could be playing with any of these people at any time.”
Asked whether he foresees the Stissing Mountain Football Club becoming a yearly program in town, Wylie said “yes,” noting the intention is to offer eight-week sessions in the spring and fall for local children looking to learn the fundamentals of the sport.
Ideally it will become a town recreation program and, as it develops to the next level, a travel soccer program. Together, Wylie said he hopes there will ultimately be a town league and a travel league that will be able to play as one main club.
Practice and game schedules for the Stissing Mountain Football Club may be found online at www.stissingmtnfc.wixsite.com/stissingmtnfc.
NORTH EAST — Habitat for Humanity of Dutchess County will conduct a presentation on Thursday, May 9 on buying a three-bedroom affordable home to be built in the Town of North East.
The presentation will be held at the NorthEast-Millerton Library Annex at 5:30 p.m.
Any first-time home buyer interested should attend the information session.
The application for this pilot program home-buying opportunity must be made between May 1 and June 10.Minimum household income for the pilot program is $55,000 while maximum income is determined by family size.
Applications are available at the North East Town Hall.Habitat for Humanity describes itself as a nonprofit with global reach, working across the United States and in approximately 70 countries.
‘Migration Collage' by ransome
If you claim a single sobriquet as your artistic moniker, you’re already in a club with some big names, from Zendaya to Beyoncé to the mysterious Banksy. At Geary, the contemporary art gallery in Millerton founded by New Yorkers Jack Geary and Dolly Bross Geary, a new installation and painting exhibition titled “The Bitter and the Sweet” showcases the work of the artist known only as ransome — all lowercase, like the nom de plume of the late Black American social critic bell hooks.
Currently based in Rhinebeck, N.Y., ransome’s work looks farther South and farther back — to The Great Migration, when Jim Crow laws, racial segregation, and the public violence of lynching paved the way for over six million Black Americans to seek haven in northern cities, particularly New York urban areas, like Brooklyn and Baltimore. The Great Migration took place from the turn of the 20th century up through the 1970s, and ransome’s own life is a reflection of the final wave — born in North Carolina, he found a new home in his youth in New Jersey.
‘Square Quilting painting' by ransomeAlexander Wilburn
Map fragments of North Carolina feature heavily in a large collection of eight-by-eight collage and acrylic paintings, sold individually but together mounted on Geary’s wall resembling the stitched patterns on quilts, like the quilts by the late Black American artist Arlonzia Pettway. Along with artists like Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph, Pettway was a renowned artist associated with the quilts of Gee’s Bend, generations of women in the town of Gee’s Bend, Alabama who preserved African American culture in beautiful and vibrant textile art with bold combinations of stripes, textures and colors. The influence is also wonderfully clear in ransome large-scale collages and acrylic paintings like “Square Quilt painting” on display at Geary. It’s a powerful symbol of Gee’s Bend’s legacy continuing on, even under a new artistic medium.
In the smaller works, called “Migration Collages,” painted portraits are combined with pieces of floral and pastel paper, evocative of the tradition of “Sunday Best” splendor worn in Black churches in the South. “The women elders at my Baptist church often greeted each other that way on Sunday mornings when one hat was more elaborate, colorful, or wider brimmed than another,” New York Times veteran Lena Williams wrote in her 1996 essay, “In Defense of the Church Hat.” “It was traditional to put on one’s newest finery for church, and in many historically black churches, the wearing of fancy hats by women carried both spiritual and cultural significance.”
“The Bitter and the Sweet” is on view at Geary through Sunday, June 2.
Hospitality, ease of living and just plain fun are rolled into one for those who are intrigued by the leisure-time Caravana experience at the family-owned Four Brothers Drive-in in Amenia. Tom Stefanopoulos, pictured above, highlights fun possibilities offered by Hotel Caravana.
The month-long process of unwrapping and preparing the various features at the Four Brothers Drive-In is nearing completion, and the imaginative recreational destination will be ready to open for the season on Friday, May 10.
The drive-in theater is already open, as is the Snack Shack, and the rest of the recreational features are activating one by one, soon to be offering maximum fun for the whole family.
Tom Stefanopoulos, the second generation helping to guide the Stefanopoulos family’s recreational complex, brings a deep understanding of hospitality and business sense in support of the multi-faceted enterprise, begun in the 1970s, that is now a mainstay of the town of Amenia, located on a corner in the heart of the commercial district. He paused for an interview on Friday, April 26.
Two luxury camping trailers, each with an attached wooden deck and fire pit, make up Hotel Caravana, and each offers a different fun vibe, Stefanopoulos explained. The larger of the two, offers a California lifestyle, retro to 1967, although its modern where it should be. It can sleep four.
The smaller Caravana sleeps two and offers a lifestyle of the future dating to about 2041. It’s a brand-new Airstream, Stefanopoulos noted. It also has an attached deck with firepit.
“We get a lot of New York City people,” Stefanopoulos said when asked what sorts of people are apt to be attracted to Hotel Caravana. “They want to experience the upstate life,” he added. The idea of sitting out on the deck while watching an actual drive-in movie appeals to them, as does room service offered by the restaurant.
The lobster rolls prepared by the Snack Shack, are served on brioche hot dog rolls, either Maine-style or Connecticut-style, and the lobster can be topped with caviar. Four Brothers version is praised by customers for the generous portion of lobster in each, and the price is competitive.
Caravana guests may book for a single night, or maybe two, or even longer, taking advantage of the bicycles to pedal along the nearby rail trail, a local amenity, Stefanopoulos noted.
“We make our guests feel like movie stars,” Stefanopoulos said of the hospitality. And, if they like miniature golf, it is just a few steps away from their Caravana deck.
Asked how and why the Caravana idea began, Stefanopoulos recalled that as the drive-in theater grew in popularity, people were traveling from greater distances away. The last film of the night might start at midnight, he said, so the idea grew that Four Brothers might be able to offer an accommodation to stay the night.
In addition to Caravana, Four Brothers offers an alternative of two or three tent camping sites.
Future plans may include a third Caravana, Stefanopoulos said. Also, there is a giant mastodon skeleton, presently in storage, that should be on display, he said.
“It’s pretty big,” Stefanopoulos added.
The playground might be enlarged in the coming seasons, and perhaps an old-fashioned arcade added for retro amusement.
The community that surrounds Four Brothers remains important to the Stefanopoulos family as they offer substantial summer employment opportunity. Stefanopoulos said that a goal is to contract locally for business needs, such as musical entertainment and advertising. The drive-in also schedules occasion fundraisers to benefit local organizations, including the Amenia Fire Company and area schools.
