LAKEVILLE — The swimming and diving season ended for the Berkshire League schools last weekend with league championships in diving on March 4 at Shepaug and in swimming on March 5 at the pool at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville. The Housatonic Valley Regional High School team, which has one of the smallest teams in the seven-school league, came in last (Shepaug won), but the meet reflected a significant improvement over the beginning of the season.“Everyone bettered their times at this meet. Some kids took 10 or 15 seconds off their times,” said Jacquie Rice, coach of the Housatonic swim team, with Rhonda Rinninsland. “Swimming isn’t about winning. It’s about improving your times.”Eight of the Housatonic team’s original 20 swimmers made the cut for the Berkshire League championships, which require swimmers to meet a specific time limit to qualify for an event. The competing schools were Housatonic, Shepaug, Gilbert, Wamogo, Northwestern, Lewis Mills and Litchfield.All of the swimmers participated in the 200-yard medley relay and the 200-yard freestyle relay. Boys team Captain Travis Derr participated in the 500-yard freestyle race and the 200-yard freestyle race; Connor Riley participated in the 50-yard freestyle race; Regan Carroll swam in the 200-yard individual medley race and the 100-yard breast stroke race. Girls team captain Megan Fisher swam the 100-yard backstroke race; Bailey Phelps swam in the 100-yard butterfly and the 100-yard backstroke race; and Eleni Hellmers, Nataly Lake-Ginouves and Molly Lovejoy participated in the relays. Bailey took fourth place in the 100-yard butterfly and 100-yard backstroke, Regan placed seventh in the 200-yard individual medley, and Travis placed eighth and ninth in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle races. Team spirit was high at the meet, as is normally the case. Students from the area schools decorated banners that they posted on the walls around the pool deck.Four boys from Northwestern Regional 7 (which has about 40 swimmers) shaved their heads and bodies, not only for a show of spirit but also because it makes them feel faster. Some of the swimmers also wear lightweight layers of extra clothing while warming up. “It’s like the rings on a baseball bat,” one swimmer said. “When you remove them, you feel like you’re faster and stronger.”Swimmers from Wamogo did a variation on the shaved head: They left a strip of hair on top, mohawk-style.Even the team coaches got into the swim of things. Coach Todd Dyer from Shepaug not only wore his team’s brightly colored T-shirt, which features a sheep and a hog (“Sheep, hog. Shepaug,” he explained), he also sported a summery straw hat.But the swimmers didn’t need clothing or accessories to complete their looks: Many of them drew slogans right on their skin.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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