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FALLS VILLAGE — Girls lacrosse and softball both have an unusually large number of players this spring at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.
The spring sports season began on April 4.
There are 25 freshman girls playing a spring sport, a sharp increase from the 15 from a year prior.
“The classes that are coming in, both the sophomore and freshman class, have large numbers of female athletes. We saw this in basketball, we saw it in soccer,” said Region One Athletic Director Anne MacNeil. “It’s also thanks to the upperclassmen talking up the sports, which really makes a difference too, particularly with girls lacrosse.”
Over the past two years, the girls lacrosse team has had unpredictable seasons. In 2020, the season was canceled due to COVID-19, and in 2021, the team could only schedule five games due to more COVID-related complications.
This spring, with a normal season ahead, the girls lacrosse will have a roster of 26 players, the most the team has had in recent years and almost double the 15 athletes on the team last year.
“Just having [substitutions] is such a luxury. It’s going to allow the more experienced players to take breaks if they need to, and that’s a luxury we didn’t have last year,” said Head Coach Laura Bushey. “Also, the new players are incredibly skilled. It’s a really athletically skilled group.”
For lacrosse, there is a lack of “feeder programs” — youth leagues where athletes can learn and play the sport before entering high school.
Absent prior experience, the high school teams have to focus on the sport’s fundamentals before moving on to more specialized skills development.
With the arrival of a large group of underclass athletes — in this case 11 freshmen — the team will have a core group to develop over the coming years.
“I literally only have only two girls on the team that played when they were young. All the others started as freshmen or sophomores. That’s wonderful and also challenging because teams that we play against, like Watertown, have a huge feeder program,” said Bushey. “To me, that’s one thing I find so fun about [coaching,] watching them learn from the very very beginning, but it also makes it challenging.”
For softball, the total roster size grew from 27 members last year to 28 this year. However, like lacrosse, the majority of this year’s team is underclassmen — nine freshmen and six sophomores. Peter Foley, who can usually be found on the basketball and baseball benches as an assistant coach, took over this season while Head Coach Kaleigh Selino is on maternity leave.
“[With a large freshman and sophomore class] it’s good to have senior-led leadership show the girls how to act and how to play and how to get ready for games,” said Foley. “It’s good for the [underclassmen] to see, so in the future you know how to build.”
Both lacrosse and softball played on opening day, April 4. Lacrosse started its season on the road, playing Notre Dame Catholic High School in Fairfield. The team’s home opener comes on Friday, April 15, against Watertown High School.
The softball team opened the season at home against Thomaston High School.
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Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.