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Good morning!When Deerfield Academy headmaster Frank L. Boyden was in his 80s, a photographer spotted him picking up a crumpled piece of paper that had been dropped on the sidewalk. The iconic photo symbolized the nature of the man who’d transformed a small school with 15 students in 1902 into one of the country’s top prep schools.

It was a busy day at Greenfield High School, as Athol, Mahar and Pioneer competed in a track and field meet at GHS. Greenfield, who competed against Mohawk Trail the day before, was just hosting the meet and did not participate. 

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

TURNERS FALLS — After the Turners Falls baseball team beat Athol in the final regular season game of 2024 to win the Bi-County League North title, the Bears have been waiting to get their revenge against the Thunder. 

Old school coaching tells us to leave emotion out of sport.We’ve heard it all before – Toughen up! We need you! Get it together! Stop crying!

Good morning!The Marty and Martha Maroons of the world would have you believe that the 9,493-seat William D. Mullins Center was built for men’s basketball. Understandable, considering John Calipari’s team was 24-7 and ranked No.14 by the AP the year the building opened its doors. 

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

GREENFIELD — Riley Thayer made it official where she will continue her field hockey career on Thursday. 

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

Have a day, Hannah Gilbert. 

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

SOUTH DEERFIELD — When Turners Falls softball pitcher Madi Liimatainen eclipsed the 500 strikeout mark as a sophomore, a question emerged – just how many K’s could the ace rack up before her time with the Thunder came to a close?

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

SOUTH DEERFIELD – It was a seventh inning to remember for the Frontier softball team on Wednesday against Turners Falls. 

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

Franklin County tennis programs continue to make it to the MIAA Div. 4 state tournament.

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

Can this be the year the Athol boys volleyball team breaks through and reaches the MIAA Div. 2 state tournament for the first time since the new format was put in place?

Greenfield’s Savannah Thomas left the Knights of Columbus State Hoop Shoot with some hardware on Saturday. 

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

Frontier has dominated the Intercounty League the last few years.

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

When Gary Mullins took over the Turners Falls softball program in 1979, he was inheriting a team devoid of much success. 

Good morning!The UMass softball team shocked Boston College this week, 5-4, on the strength of senior catcher Lydia Castro’s go-ahead home run in the top of the seventh inning at Chestnut Hill. 

I rarely listen to podcasts, but “The Omnibus Project,” by musician John Roderick and “Jeopardy” host Ken Jennings caught my ear months ago. Besides the fact that a typical installment lasts about as long as one of my workouts on an exercise bicycle and weight machines, Roderick and Jennings are pretty funny, and they dig into some wonderfully obscure subjects. They found themselves in particularly obscure territory recently, when they chatted about pedestrianism, which, as you’ve correctly supposed, is a fancy word for walking.

By THOMAS JOHNSTON

The Pioneer and Greenfield baseball teams took different paths to the MIAA Division 5 semifinals last spring. 

Make it three wins in a row to open the season for the Frontier baseball team. 

There was a time when 18-year-old boys and girls joined a college athletic team and left four years later as 22-year-old men and women, confident, trained, and effective team members. Coaches had time to focus on long-term development, looking at the big picture rather than short-term gains. Coaches helped individuals identify their strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and worked to help them improve, enabling them to reach their potential. The successful coach had a basic philosophical understanding of the place of sport in the student’s life. Good coaches understood that their athletes were also students and that achievement in the classroom was paramount to success.

By STEVE MCKELVEY

As the 2025 baseball season opens, it will again reveal what is likely one of the strongest pipelines of any sport management program in the country. That pipeline, into what is one of the hardest segment of the sport industry to break into, leads to Major League Baseball’s 30 teams, and specifically into their “front office.” The McCormack Department of Sport Management will count 48 alums currently employed in the front office of MLB teams. You read that right: 48 alums.

Good morning!During the last two weeks I’ve been hopscotching between three spring training ballparks that are located off a 50-mile stretch of I-95 in South Florida.