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Fund-raising
Pastor Tom Meyer, left, and Charlie Leach in the steeple raising money in September 2010. Town Crier file photo.


Pastor Tom
retiring
By Linda Lemmon
Town Crier Editor
PUTNAM — Congregational Church of Putnam Pastor Tom Meyer, having just finished serving as student pastor in the cold reaches of Maine, never regretted putting in pastor of the Putnam church. He started Oct. 1, 1998.
Nearly 20 years later, he is retiring. His last service is June 16.
He had graduated from the Bangor Theological Seminary in Bangor, Maine, and applied to the Putnam church because his brother-in-law was from Putnam. Plus “Putnam was so much better than northern Maine” so close to the Canadian border.
“I sent in my profile (application) and the rest is history, a lot of history,” he said.
Asked what he considers his biggest accomplishment, what he is most proud of, he recounted the replacement of the church’s steeple. More than $150,000 was raised for that project and $14,000 of that came from the big kickoff: Pastor Tom, who is afraid of heights, staying in the steeple until the kick-off goal was hit. He stayed in the steeple most of the day. He joked that some people donated to help him get out of the steeple — and some donated to keep him up in the steeple. He recalls that people brought him more than funding. Many brought him food.
In addition to the successful steeple project, he said many internal changes were made, the reorganization of boards and committees. He said he believes that the streamlining puts the church and the boards in a better position for the future.
The most difficult time he recalls as pastor was the death of Shannon LaBonte from cancer about a year ago. “She had been a member of the church. It was a difficult time. There were two tough funerals that week.”
If he had to guess, he said he’d performed 100 to 150 funerals through the years — both for church and for community members. Not only has he done many baptisms, he’s now doing them for the children of people he married. “It doesn’t seem possible that much time passed,” he said. He thinks he’s done between 60 and 75 weddings.
When he’s fully retired he plans to return to his love of restoring old radios with another local gentleman.
He had been an electronic technician for 25 years after his uncle got him interested. Returning to repairing radios is a way to honor his uncle.
He joked that in his 40s, instead of a Corvette and an affair, he went to seminary. A local woman had told him she dreamed that he went to seminary and so he did. “Never regretted it.”
In Putnam Pastor Tom said he found a good joint relationship with the church and the community.
“All the years here I felt this to be my home,” he said.

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Honored
Woodstock Academy’s Brenden Ostaszewski was recently named the Connecticut High School Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year. Photo by Marc Allard.


Standing in the new strength room at The Woodstock Academy, strength and conditioning coach Brenden Ostaszewski was all smiles April 30.
Just the weekend before, he had learned he had been named the Connecticut High School Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year.
Both The Connecticut state director and the regional director of the National High School Strength Coaches Association had nominated him for the award. 
“It’s a great honor,” Ostazewski said. “I couldn’t be here without the help of the (Woodstock Academy) administration, the support that the donors have provided for us for the new strength and conditioning weight room, and the student athletes who come in here and work every day.”
Ostaszewski came aboard at The Academy in the fall of 2017 and has quickly raised the level of fitness for student-athletes from the freshman class through the prep basketball program.
Ostaszewski hails from Philadelphia. He played basketball for a year at Keystone College, a Division III school in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but realized his true calling was in athletic conditioning. He transferred to Temple University where he studied Exercise in Sports Science and Kinesiology.
He took a job at a Philadelphia Catholic School as a physical education teacher but continued to work with collegiate athletes at Temple and the University of Pennsylvania.
Ostaszewski, through his contacts at the colleges, met a friend of former Woodstock Academy prep basketball coach Tony Bergeron who told him about the need for a strength and conditioning coach at the school.
Ostaszewski packed his bags and came out to the countryside, much to the delight of his Woodstock Academy colleagues.
“He is a total professional,” said Woodstock Academy athletic director Sean Saucier. “He has greatly impacted the student-athletes at the school and it’s nice to see him get recognized. He works hard professionally and personally and it’s nice to see that hard work pay off.”
The National High School Strength Coaches Association hasn’t been in existence for long.
It came together in 2016 as more schools across the country began to realize the need for such training at the high school level.
“It wanted to create more opportunities for strength coaches in the high school setting. Strength coaches are very popular among the professional and collegiate ranks and (the Association) identified a need for them to serve the younger population especially among the high school-aged students,” Ostaszewski said.
Ostaszewski has since been joined by Jeff Higgins at The Academy and the two work with a growing number of student-athletes in the new training facility which opened in November.
“Coach Higgins has helped us a lot and has allowed us to reach more students. The new space is great. We can fit more student-athletes here,” Ostaszewski said.
He said there is always room for more.
He would like to see some of the training equipment offerings expanded because of the larger number of student-athletes utilizing it.
“We have some room for improvement in that area and we’re also researching some new ways with technology to access all the analytical data to track progress. Hopefully, we will be able to step into that realm and provide student-athletes with a better experience,” Ostaszewski said.
Marc Allard
Sports Information Director
The Woodstock Academy

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Centaurs top
ECC Div. I
The Woodstock Academy Centaurs were coming off, arguably, their biggest win in program history over East Lyme the Saturday before.
The after effects of that were in evidence April 30.
The Centaurs girls’ lacrosse team quickly fell behind Waterford.
“We just needed to get our heads in the game and pick up the intensity. We were coming off a giant win over East Lyme. It’s hard coming off such a big game,” said Woodstock Academy junior Emma Redfield.
The Centaurs got their act together by the end of the first half and pulled away from the Lancers in the second half for a 14-8 win.
It began what was another successful week for the Centaurs who avenged a tough loss at home against Fitch with a 17-9 win in Groton May 2.
The win kept the Centaurs atop the ECC Division I standings with a 3-1 mark.
East Lyme is in second with a 1-1 league mark while Fitch is tied with the Vikings at 2-2.
The Centaurs finished off the week with their seventh straight win, a 15-6 decision, in a non-league game at Ellington May 3.
The Centaurs came into this week with an 11-2 record with three games to play.
Woodstock Academy did strike first against Waterford. Ivy Gelhaus went from one side of the field to the other and beat Lancers keeper Courtney Dishaw 4 minutes, 7 seconds into the game. But just 45 seconds later, the Lancers tied the game when junior attack Gabbi Stack scored off a feed from Ashley Brandt.
The Lancers took the lead when Alle Folino scored off another assist from Brandt. Olivia Gianakos followed with a pair of goals within eight seconds of each other for Waterford. Gianakos scored her first with 12:44 left in the first half on a free position shot and then won the ensuing faceoff and took it right back to the Woodstock Academy cage, putting it past Kileigh Gagnon for a 4-1 Waterford lead.
It wasn’t easy against Dishaw who made 12 saves in the game.
After the two teams exchanged goals to make it 5-2, Gelhaus brought the Centaurs back within two with a free position goal with 2:50 left in the half.
Emma Ciquera scored her second goal of the game off another free position 56 seconds later and tied the game just 1:23 before the half off a pass from Julia Schad.
Gelhaus scored just 58 seconds into the second half, but the goalies were dominant for the next 13 minutes until Gianakos (four goals) tied the game at six with 11:18 to play.
But the goal may not have worked in the Lancers’ favor.
It created a faceoff and the Centaurs began to dominate that aspect of the game.
Ciquera scored the fourth of her half-dozen in the game to break the tie with 10:12 left.
The Centaurs added seven more over the next eight minutes, including three within 30 seconds of one another, which allowed them to breathe easy over the final seven minutes of the game. Gelhaus finished with five goals.
The senior tandem of Gelhaus and Ciquera were at it again against the Falcons.
Woodstock Academy well remembered the fiasco that occurred when the team’s first played. The Centaurs jumped out to a 12-5 lead only to see Fitch tie the game late in the second half and go on to a 15-14 overtime win.
There was to be no extra period May 2.
Ciquera and Gelhaus both scored six goals, Redfield added three and Arielle Johnson had two goals and two assists in the win.
Woodstock Academy was back on it on a wet May 3 and didn’t let a little rain bother them in the win over Ellington.
Gelhaus scored five goals, giving her 48 on the season, and Ciquera equaled her teammates’ season total with two of her own in the victory.
Arielle Johnson had three goals and two assists while Peyton Saracina added a pair of tallies for the Centaurs.
Marc Allard
Sports Information Director
The Woodstock Academy

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