Full steam ahead on veterans mission
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — The renaissance of Putnam’s mission to honor veterans is in high gear. April is crunch time with a goal of getting serious work done before Memorial Day.
The Court of Honor in Veterans Park has been expanded, ready for more veterans’ pavers to be installed shortly by the Masonry students from Harvard H. Ellis Tech. Robert Challinor, leader of the Veterans Park efforts and chairman of the town’s Veterans Advisory Committee (VAC), said about 140 additional veterans’ pavers will be installed around the flagpole. 
Those pavers have arrived and will be sealed by volunteers before the students install them.
Six of the panels of the white vinyl fence at the back of the park were removed to allow for “some groundwork and some work with the stone wall there,” according to Challinor. 
The bronze plaques with the names of local veterans from Putnam on the two large World War II monuments are due shortly. About 1,500 names will grace the plaques.
In addition, paver sales went so well there is extra money so the VAC plans to put veterans bricks on the graves of veterans buried in Putnam cemeteries. Challinor said the bricks are 4x8 and are gray, like the pavers in the park. They worked with the vendor to “make the logos work for us.”
He added the whole VAC group came up with this idea. 
He said the Albert Breault VFW Post 1523 traditionally puts flags on veterans’ graves and members saw that some veterans’ markers were buried or worse — not honored. “So we thought to acknowledge and honor them with bricks,” he said. Veterans from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War and more are buried in Putnam cemeteries. 
Challinor said a total of 1,196 are needed. The group will start, this year, with 596 which will cover the Aspinwall, Grove Street, Heights, Munyan and River Road cemeteries. The balance of the bricks will go into St. Mary’s next year.
April is “crunch time,” he said. The goal is to have this done by Memorial Day. “There’s so much to do, we’re getting started in the park, etc. now.”

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Bollards will go back in when the expanded Court of Honor is finished.

The left side of the Court of Honor, just about ready for veteran pavers.

Fence panels were removed to allow some groundwork.

Team hopes
to defend 
state title
A repeat performance. Everyone wants one after the lofty heights the Woodstock Academy baseball team achieved a year ago.
But easy it will not be. The Centaurs are coming into the 2025 season as the defending Class L state champion and finished with the second overall ranking in the state after a 26-2 season.
Repeat those numbers?
“I understand as a first-year coach last year that the season could not have gone any better,” coach Connor Elliott said. “So, the understanding has to be that it is not going to go as well this year; we need to accept that from the start. Our job is to be playing our best baseball come tournament time. We have 20-plus games to figure out what that looks like. It may not be 26-2 like last year, it could be 13-7 or 12-8 but that’s OK as long as we’re playing our best baseball at the end of the year.”
And while wins and losses are important, other things can also help make a season.
What Elliott said he was most proud of — aside obviously, from the state title last season — was the fact that the Centaurs received the Sportsmanship Award from the Eastern Connecticut Board of Umpires.
“If we’re doing that, it shows the character of our team and the young men that we have, that compete but play the game the right way. They respect each other, their opponents, the umpires, the fans, everything. You want to talk goals and expectations, that is my goal and expectation — win the Sportsmanship Award. That shows me that my program is doing the right thing,” Elliott said.
To start the season, Elliott had one last discussion about winning a state title and the pride he had in the program.
“It was definitely a great accomplishment. We worked so hard last year. We had a good relationship as a team, made it to the end, did what we came to do and were successful, said senior catcher Tanner Graham.
Then, it was time to move on.
“(Elliott) told us that we’re back to square one. We are not last year’s team. We have a lot of returning guys but we can’t take anything for granted. We have to get back to work and make sure we’re getting better than we ended last year so we can be the best baseball team that we can be,” senior Brady Ericson said.
On the field, the Centaurs will not be bereft of talent. The big guy, both literally and figuratively, Ericson, is back.
Next year, he will be in a UConn uniform at this time, but he has one more campaign in a Woodstock Academy jersey.
He was the Shohei Ohtani of the Class L state tournament last year, pitching and hitting the Centaurs past the likes of Branford, Berlin, Guilford, East Lyme and finally, RHAM, in the state championship game.
Ericson finished with a .305 batting average with two doubles, two triples and three home runs and he drove in 24 runs.
On the mound, he finished with a 9-0 record, allowing just 24 hits in 57 1/3 innings and striking out 92 while only walking 19 with an incredible 0.73 earned run average.
He will be the focal point for opponents.
“I had a conversation with him about teams coming at him in a certain way. Everybody knows his name across the state, a UConn commit, he’s going to hear it just like we are if we have a bad game, a bad at-bat or whatever. Brady is a microcosm of our team in that way and we have to understand that and embrace it,” Elliott said.
Ericson will not have the supporting cast that he did last year as Eric Mathewson (.407 batting average, 11 doubles, 19 RBIs and a 9-0 record with a 1.52 earned run average on the mound); Maxx Corradi (.385, 14 RBIs, 10 doubles); Keon Lamarche (.320, 26 RBIs, 3 HR’s) and Riley O’Brien (.253, 15 RBIs, and a 4-2 record on the mound with a 2.01 earned run average) have all moved on.
Ericson, the 6-foot, 6-inch lefty, will again anchor the pitching staff.
 “We definitely lost some big arms, Eric and Riley were big losses; however, we had some juniors last year who didn’t get as much time on the mound and this year, they’re going to be stepping up. Logan Coutu has a strong arm and returns from last year. I think we’re going to fill out our pitching staff very well,” Graham said.
Bradley Blair, Will Bushey, Hayden Maloney and Collin Gaudette will be counted on, in addition to Coutu, to throw some effective innings.
The bigger question mark may be the offense.
“From what I’ve seen so far, we will be pretty successful as long as everyone is working and doing their job. It’s another big point of emphasis that not everyone is going to hit home runs. If we can just string together some singles, steal a lot of bases, do the little things right. If we do that, I think the offense will be perfectly fine,” Ericson said.
Senior Matt Hernandez (.273, 16 RBIs), by last year’s numbers, is the top returning hitter aside from Ericson. Blair and Caleb Simoneau will also be counted upon to provide some offense.
“I’m sure it’s at the forefront of the minds of many in the state and (ECC) that ‘Maybe we can just get around Ericson, keep him stranded on first or second base’ and that’s how they will protect themselves. That’s smart. We might do the same if roles were reversed. The thing that people forget is that players take jumps. Baseball is a sport to be played every day and a lot of these kids have been playing through the summer and fall and have been working all winter. We’re seeing guys, like Will Bushey and Bradley Blair, who played key roles for us last year, but were they ready to be pencil-in starters? They’re kind of looking that way just by how they’re swinging it,” Elliott said.
Elliott, Ericson and Graham all realize that every opponent they play will be fired up and ready.
It’s how they respond. “As a team, I think we can come to an agreement that we would just like to repeat our success from last year. We just want to be able to, at the end of the season, say that we gave it all we had and there is nothing to regret,” Ericson said.

Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy  
IMG 1264: Woodstock Academy senior lefty Brady Ericson got warmed up for the long baseball season ahead by pitching in a scrimmage vs. Shepherd Hill Regional.

IMG 1249: Senior catcher Tanner Graham takes a throw from the outfield prior to a Woodstock Academy baseball scrimmage against Shepherd Hill Regional. Photos by Marc Allard/Woodstock Academy.

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Meeting ‘zoom bombed’ with porn and racist phrases
   Police, FBI  investigating
PUTNAM — From Mayor Barney Seney: “There was a “Zoom bombing” incident during the Town of Putnam Mayor’s and Board of Selectmen Meeting held on March 17. 
"As with all Town of Putnam public meetings, the meeting is hybrid, meaning held in person and via Zoom, including that both in-person attendance and virtual attendance is allowed. 
About 30 minutes into the normal meeting, there were several individuals that joined the meeting virtually. 
"These individuals unmuted their audio and started their video, playing music and recordings of racist phrases, along with showing pornographic videos. 
The Town’s recording secretary removed such individuals via the Zoom preferences, and based on having to mute and block multiple individuals, selected “End Meeting for All”. 
"The length of the video and audio interruptions was less than 1 minute in duration. 
"We have notified the Putnam Police Department, who shared the information with the FBI. 
"The Putnam Police have started an active investigation and no further comment from the Town will be made on this matter at this time. 
We regret that our staff and members of the public were subjected to such unseemly activity. 
"We thank our staff and the affected public for their ability to remain calm and professional during this unfortunate interruption.”

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