The Montpelier community lost a leading light when Nathan Suter, 52, died of a heart attack on Tuesday, May 13. Suter wore many hats and touched many lives as a coach, equity and justice advocate, mentor, arts advocate, business founder, co-worker, and a friend. 

Born  Feb. 14, 1973 in the Panama Canal Zone where his father was stationed in the United States Air Force, Suter grew up in Indiana and Poughkeepsie, New York. He received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Haverford College and a master’s of fine arts in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. 

Suter’s CV is long and impressive. From 2006 to 2016, he was the executive director of the Helen Day Art Center, now The Current, in Stowe, where he initiated youth and adult education programs and created an internship and professional development program for emerging artists and cultural professionals. In 2016, he founded BUILD, a business consultancy focused on “Strategy, Leadership, Culture, and Change.”

Suter was also involved with justice-based and community-focused organizations, as a board member for Migrant Justice, treasurer for the Peace and Justice Center in Burlington, and as a commissioner for the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience. He also co-founded Roots Division, a visual arts nonprofit in San Francisco, for which he continued to serve as a board member. 

“Nathan was just a force,” said Ben Doyle, of the Montpelier Commission. “He was an integral part of the formation and success of the commission.” He was the “Jiminy Cricket” of the group, its conscience, Doyle said, keeping a focus on equity and justice and always considering “who is not at the table.” 

But perhaps Suter’s biggest community impact was as coach for the Montpelier Middle and High School Track and Field teams. Matt Link, athletic director of Montpelier High School, described Suter as one of the most dedicated coaches ever involved with Montpelier youth sports. 

“He coached everything,” Link said, adding that Suter even earned a certification to coach pole-vaulting so he could work with students who wanted to compete in that event. The track-and-field program, which, Link said, now boasts over 90 students, had nearly disappeared until Suter and other community members revitalized it. 

Asked about some of the biggest athletic achievements in which Suter played a role, Link said “the biggest accomplishment in terms of coaching for Nathan is not kids who had notable successes but the kids who would have never come out for a sport until he was here as a coach … We have pole vaulters, high jumpers, long jump, triple jump, relay teams full of kids who would have never been on a sports team let alone competing in a meet. He paved the paths of opportunity for these kids to run on.” 

“His lasting legacy on our programs will be felt for years, decades to come,” Link said. “He was an amazing guy who will be missed sorely.” 

Picture this: The largest hangar at Griffiss Business and Technology Park, known as Building 101, transformed into the second largest multi-purpose indoor sports and recreation facility for youth sports tournaments in the country, just part of a multi-purpose space with lodging, restaurants and maybe even a distillery or brewery.

ORANGE — The Orange Recreation Center is hosting the annual Youth Summer Sports Camp next week.

The camp starts May 27th and runs for five weeks from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm Tuesdays through Fridays until June 27th.

This staff-supervised camp is co-ed for ages 7-12 offers a new sport each week, including basketball, volleyball, soccer, and flag football!

Rec. center coordinator Bree Lister and Bliss Box owner Marwan Barbar talk about the camp and the 3 vs. 2 tournament happening June 14th.

Weekly Schedule:

Week 1 (May 27 – 30): Basketball

Week 2 (June 3 – 6): Flag Football

Week 3 (June 10 – 13): Soccer/Dodgeball

Week 4: (June 17 – 20): Volleyball/Track & Field

Week 5: (June 24 – 27): All Sports

Last Day (June 27): The Splash Finale

Participants can register for each week individually at $40 per week or for all five weeks at the discounted price of $180 total. Other discounts are available for families with multiple children in the same household attending the camp.

Pricing:

$40 per week, or $180 for all 5 weeks

Pricing per additional child for all 5 weeks:

o 2nd child: $126

o 3rd child: $108

o 4th child: $90

The recreation center is locate at 1405 W. Orange Avenue, Orange, TX 77630. Breakfast and lunch will be provided daily.

Fees for late pick-up will be applied. Spots are limited so contact the Orange Recreation Center at 409-883-1072 to sign up now.

The Orange Recreation Center also presents Bliss Box 3v3 Boys Basketball Blitz Saturday, June 14th at 10:00 am.

Ages: 6th – 8th Grade Boys

Registration Fee: $20 per team

Awards sponsored by Bliss Box

1st Place team members head to the Houston Rockets Youth Skills Camp*

Tournament MVP wins a signed NBA jersey

Top 3 teams take home medals

All players get a $20 Bliss Box gift card

*All members of the 1st Place team will attend the Houston Rockets Youth Skills Camp at The Den

Sports Facility from July 28th – August 1st and will receive a $350 voucher for lodging, provided by the

tournament sponsor, Bliss Box.

Registration is open now, so sign up today at the Rec Center, and bring your A-game!

For more information, call the Rec at 409-883-1072 or visit our website at https://orangetexas.gov/499/Upcoming-Event.

When the Scheels IcePlex opened more than a decade ago at the Sanford Sports Complex, everything in the building was a must-have because of budget constraints.

Largely funded privately, the ice center “had no nice-to-haves or creature comforts,” said Joe Zueger, who led the effort to build the rink that opened in late 2014 and now serves as a director.

“Demand has been steadily increasing, and now we’re at that point where year to year the utilization is pretty consistent and reliable.”

Regular users of the facility’s three sheets of ice include the Sioux Falls Youth Hockey Association, Sioux Falls Figure Skating Club and Sioux Falls Power Hockey, along with Sioux Falls Curling Club, SD Selects Hockey and various adult leagues.

The positive activity and growth in ice sports participation has allowed for some of the amenities that didn’t make the cut a decade ago to move forward now.

An estimated $3.5 million two-story expansion is starting construction, bringing varsity locker rooms for boys’ and girls’ Sioux Falls Youth Hockey players, along with office space, storage and conference rooms, plus a dedicated space to sell spirit wear.

An upper-level open space will be used for everything from an open gym for stretching and yoga to an area for larger meetings.

A synthetic ice area will serve as a space for practicing puck skills, stick handling, passing and shooting.

The upper level of the new addition will lead to a viewing area overlooking the north rink.

Participation in youth hockey has grown from about 400 participants when the IcePlex opened to more than 800 today.

“Friends got friends involved, and it seems like more hockey people are moving to town from Minnesota or other areas,” said Derek Berg, who just finished his second term on the Sioux Falls Youth Hockey Association board of directors, where he served as director of development. He has a 14-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter who play hockey.

Parents who played hockey now see “their second generation are still playing hockey, and a lot of coaches are former Flyers players,” he said. “We average 4 to 5 percent increase every year.”

The city’s hockey scene has grown steadily, he said, pointing to milestones such as the Sioux Falls Stampede coming to town in 1999, the Scheels IcePlex opening and Augustana University bringing Division I men’s hockey to the Midco Arena.

But while the hockey association has grown, “we don’t have a space to call our own,” Berg said. “This will give us a home.”

The locker rooms, two for boys and one for girls, will give varsity players an amenity to aspire to — a space where they can leave their gear in a dedicated locker — along with access to showers to clean up after they skate.

“Leaving your gear at the rink would be the ultimate,” Berg said, adding that the new workout area and shooting lanes help keep more of the program in-house at the rink.

“A lot of our development has happened off campus, and we can actually become more of what we call rink rats even in the summer,” he said. “Right now, my kid spends three or four hours at the rink and has two hours of downtime between sessions, so this is a place to go and train and hang out and really build the team aspect.”

Conference rooms also can double as spaces for birthday parties.

“We got rewarded for keeping our debt load low 10 years, and we’re in a position to be able to do some expansion and add these non-ice amenities,” Zueger said.

The expansion is funded as a partnership between the Ice Sports Association and Sioux Falls Youth Hockey Association. The youth association is closing in on its $1.5 million share, with about $350,000 left to go.

“For the first time in the 50-year history of youth hockey, they went out and raised over $1 million on their own,” Zueger said. “They organized themselves, they put a committee together and really appealed to members and the business community. To their credit, they put the project on their back.”

There is still a sponsorship available for naming rights on the front of the building as well as sponsorships for part of the gym and each locker stall.

The new addition “will totally change the curb appeal” of the building “while adding very useful amenities,” he added.

Participants in the youth hockey program are excited for it, Berg said.

“We’re just trying to take it to the next level, where we have potentially DI athletes coming out of it and moving on to other AAA programs,” he said. “It’s happening already, but this will push it to the next step, and for the kids that want that, we will have facilities for them to use.”

Gil Haugan Construction is beginning work on the 12,000-square-foot project. It’s expected to take seven to eight months to complete.

Every Sunday, Cal Poly’s Mustang Strength Complex becomes a training hub for local middle school athletes. Here, students are learning the fundamentals of weightlifting, with a focus on safety and technique.

The program, now known as the Stampede Performance Lab, began as a strength-building initiative for a youth football team. It has since expanded into a community program open to students from all athletic backgrounds. Anna Grexton, a kinesiology senior and a Cal Poly Track and Field athlete, is leading the charge. 

Grexton has spent nearly four years working in Cal Poly’s athletic training room. Now, she structures each youth training cycle to last three weeks, with one-hour sessions that combine foundational lifts like squats and deadlifts with accessory work aimed at joint health and long-term athletic performance.

“Those are often very big lifts that sports will have people do, but it’s also easy to get hurt if you don’t know what you’re doing,” Grexton said. 

A portion of the program’s monthly earnings now supports the university’s weight training and conditioning program, funding equipment repairs and updates, Grexton said. 

Additionally, the Stampede Performance Lab recently received permission to begin working with high school students. They are now reaching out to local high school coaches to build partnerships, Grexton explained.

The idea for the program came last fall from Cal Poly track and field coach Les Courtemanche, who co-owns the Stampede Performance Lab and coaches the Pacific Coast Youth Football League. His athletes’ parents wanted to continue training beyond football season, especially to prepare their kids for high school athletics, Courtmanche explained.

To bring the concept to life, Courtemanche reached out to Grexton in August. At the time, she had been working toward getting her strength and conditioning license.

“It was a great opportunity to give back to my own student-athlete and give her a chance to gain experience as a strength coach,” Courtemanche said.

For Grexton, this experience holds personal significance. Following a severe injury last year, she became deeply focused on injury prevention and rehabilitation.

“I broke my ankle pretty badly last year, and the athletic training room, especially, was instrumental in keeping me healthy,” she said. “They were the ones that got me to walk again.”

Grexton said the community aspect of sports continues to draw her in. 

“I just love sports and the energy around them, it brings people together. There’s such a community around it,” she said.

Courtemanche, who observes Grexton during sessions, said he is impressed by her growth as a coach.

“She communicates and she’s very detailed with her instruction, which is super important for youngsters that are starting to really get a feel and understanding of their body,” Courtemanche said.

Grexton has seen improvement in her students. 

“One of the dads came in today, and he said his son’s squat form is so much better,” she said. “He goes home and practices it, and it looks so much better than it did before.” 

Participant TJ Ferrari said the program has taught him not just how to build strength for his athletics, but also how to use proper technique. 

“I’ve learned a lot of things about strength,” Ferrari said. “I just want to get stronger, get better and I want to be able to win the football games,” Ferrari said.

For Grexton, that’s exactly the point — providing her students with the tools to succeed athletically and stay healthy physically. 

“I don’t want them to go through all these injuries that I’ve seen, like all my teammates have,” Grexton said. “I want these kids to go into high school and college with a really strong base so that they’re able to stay healthy and get to the top of their game.”

Youth sports aren’t just about scoring points, they’re about building confidence, social skills, and lifelong habits. This May, National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, is a great time to focus on how sports help kids thrive.

Observed since 1983, National Physical Fitness and Sports Month is an initiative created by the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition. This annual event promotes physical activity and sports participation. Sports offer kids the chance to explore movement, learn teamwork, and burn off energy in a positive way. Whether it’s soccer practice or a game of catch, these moments help kids grow stronger, physically and emotionally.

The National Youth Sports Strategy supports programs that help all kids get in the game, no matter their background or skill level. At Rutgers University, the Youth Sports Research Council develops information about the impact of physical activity and sports on children’s development. YSRC partners with organizations such as the New Jersey Recreation and Park Association to provide training and resources for coaches and parents. Programs, including the SAFETY Clinic Course (Sports Awareness for Educating Today’s Youth) help volunteer coaches create safe and positive sports environments for youth. 

So this May, let’s support this next generation of winners, on and off the field. Whether it’s volunteering to coach, enrolling your child in a new sport, or advocating for inclusive youth programs in your community, your involvement can make a difference.

More Health Info