Pictured: The foursome of (l-r) Adam James, Charlie Marshall, Jeremy Meyer and Jeff Horner won the  Eastern Shore Type 1 Diabetes Support Foundation golf tournament at the Eastern Shore Yacht & Country Club recently.

By Bill Sterling

Chad Muma, a linebacker for the Jacksonville Jaguars, is proof that a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes does not prevent you from leading an active life and accomplishing your goals.

The first raffle prize selected from a table full of some very nice donated items at a benefit golf tournament Friday at the Eastern Shore Yacht & Country Club was a football signed by Muma.

In all, 52 golfers turned out to raise funds for the Eastern Shore Type 1 Diabetes Support Foundation, based in Ocean City Md. and supporting youth with type 1 diabetes from the Bay Bridge in Annapolis to the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel in Kiptopeke.

Matt and Shannon Boggs of Onancock, parents of three, whose 10-year-old daughter Raelyn was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2022, staged the tournament with the help of the foundation. Shannon said hearing the news about their daughter “flipped our world.”

Corey and Katie Rimel, foundation board members who were on hand at the tournament helping in various ways, know the feeling of hearing that diagnosis. Their son, Eric, now 25, lives with type 1 diabetes.

“We’ve been in and out of way too many hospitals, said Katie.

“It’s a tough diagnosis for the parents and the child, but it’s manageable, and you can live an active life by paying attention to your body,” said Corey.

Type 1 diabetes, once known as juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, is a chronic condition. in which the pancreas makes little or no insulin. Insulin is a hormone the body uses to allow sugar (glucose) to enter cells to produce energy. Although type 1 diabetes can produce complications and affect major organs in the body, Mary Tyler Moore, one of the better known personalities with type 1 diabetes, lived an active life until she was 80.

The Eastern Shore Type 1 Diabetes Support Foundation holds fundraisers like the golf tournament to send youth with type 1 diabetes to Camp Possibilities in Darlington, Md. Camp Possibilities educates their campers through dedicated support sessions that are informative, encouraging and fun. Raelyn Boggs attended last year and will be returning to camp the last week of July.

Katie Rimel said over the years the foundation has raised $175,000 to fully fund the $875 fee for Eastern Shore youth to attend Camp Possibilities. The foundation also awards scholarships to graduating seniors with type 1 diabetes.

Winning the tournament was the foursome of Adam James, Jeff Horner, Jamie Nalls and Charlie Marshall with a 56. In second place with a 56 by virtue of a tiebreaker, was the team of Tyler Ames, Brian McCullough, Ruddy Rose and Ryan Horner. Finishing third with a 59 was Thomas Heath, Lee Robbins, Will Carstens and Nick Lewis.

Ruddy Rose had the longest drive, and Charlie Marshall was closest to the pin with a shot five feet from the hole.

The Los Angeles Angels called up top prospect Christian Moore for the first time, adding the second baseman in advance of a three-game road series against the Baltimore Orioles on Friday.

Outfielder Matthew Lugo already was optioned to Triple-A Salt Lake, while right-hander Shaun Anderson was designated for assignment Friday to open a 40-man roster spot. Right-hander Sam Bachman replaced Anderson on the active roster.

Moore, 22, was the eighth overall selection in last year’s draft out of Tennessee and was batting a combined .279 with five home runs and 32 RBIs in 54 games at Double- and Triple-A.

The Angels have been aggressive in calling up high college draft picks to the major leagues. Starting shortstop Zach Neto was drafted in the first round in 2022 and made his major league debut in April of 2023. Starting first baseman Nolan Schanuel was a first-round pick in 2023 and made his debut a month later.

Lugo, 24, made his debut May 9 and batted .238 with three home runs and six RBIs in 17 games.

Anderson, 30, had a 7.59 ERA in six relief appearances this season, while Bachman, 25, is up for the first time since 2023 when he went 1-2 with a 3.18 ERA in 11 relief appearances.

CLARION, Pa. – The Clarion County YMCA is gearing up for a new season of Summer Soccer for youth. Kids from Clarion County and beyond are invited to join the program to build a solid foundation for team sports and learn soccer skills.

YMCA Summer Soccer is a participation-based program for boys and girls in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade (for the 2025-2026 school year)!

The YMCA program focuses on learning the fundamentals of soccer while fostering teamwork and sportsmanship. Volunteer coaches lead practices, and games are held every Saturday at the YMCA Sports Field on Mayfield Road.

The YMCA has revamped the program for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, ages 4 to 6,  with a YMCA staff-led clinic-style program! This new structure is designed to improve their skills and knowledge of the game through drills, objective-based games, and scrimmages.

The program is led by Clarion County YMCA Associate Director, Max Krepps.  Krepps has a background in Youth Sports, having served as the Youth Director at the Oil City YMCA for nine years.

Pre-K & K Division (Ages 4-6)

• Meet on Mondays from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. starting June 23rd

1st & 2nd Grade Division

• Practices during the week to be determined by the coaches
• Games at 9:00 a.m. on Saturdays, Starting July 12th

3rd, 4th & 5th Grade Division

• Practices during the week to be determined by the coaches
• Games at 10:30 a.m. on Saturdays, starting July 12th

Register for YMCA Summer Soccer by June 19th at 5:00 p.m. to guarantee a team t-shirt! Teams will be created on June 20th, and parents will receive an email with team information, practice times, and schedules.

Registration is available ONLINE or by calling 814-764-3400.

Parents can also stop by the YMCA, located at 499 Mayfield Road in Clarion, to enroll their children.

Extreme heat, flooding and lack of tree coverage have serious effects on the well-being of community members

Katarina Schmeiszer, Grace Sawin and Ada Spiwak

Nicole Flynt and Al Peeples talk about how enviornmental issues affect the community.

“Green” is not the word that comes to mind when walking down the Blue Hill Avenue corridor in lower Roxbury. Children play in parks with patchy grass and bathe in pools of rain and groundwater on a flooded street on a hot day in summer. This sea of tar and bare concrete isn’t a consequence of weather; it is a testament to the chronic lack of greenery in traditionally low-income and minority neighborhoods throughout Boston.

Environmental issues along Blue Hill Avenue

The area around Blue Hill Avenue, the main artery spanning Roxbury and Dorchester — what the City of Boston describes as “Boston’s central spine” — is an urban heat island, where a high concentration of concrete and a lack of green spaces can lead to local temperatures up to 7 F higher than surrounding areas. The area is historically home to Boston’s Black and immigrant communities.

Each neighborhood is part of Boston’s urban heat island and is hotter than the surrounding areas, but areas like Downtown Boston benefit from increased tree coverage, which Roxbury and Dorchester lack. Source: City of Boston

Aljemall Peebles grew up on Blue Hill Avenue and is now a youth project director for Project RIGHT (Rebuild and Improve Grove Hall Together), a collaborative organization that is working to address issues of housing, violence and economic development in Grove Hall.. He has seen how the community has reacted to environmental stressors and is concerned about how excessive heat leads to more violence.

Peebles’ experiences have led to his role as a youth activity worker for Project RIGHT, which he joined to run the youth basketball league. Growing up, Peebles loved to play sports but had no access to organized leagues. . The community has been able to expand these youth programs despite adequate resources, such as proper courts or buildings with air conditioners, being available. Last summer, during a pilot program in the new facilities, temperatures reached 95 F.

Aljemall Peebles grew up on Blue Hill Avenue and is now a youth project director for Project RIGHT (Rebuild and Improve Grove Hall Together), a collaborative organization that is working to address issues of housing, violence and economic development in Grove Hall.. He has seen how the community has reacted to environmental stressors and is concerned about how excessive heat leads to more violence.

Peebles’ experiences have led to his role as a youth activity worker for Project RIGHT, which he joined to run the youth basketball league. Growing up, Peebles loved to play sports but had no access to organized leagues. . The community has been able to expand these youth programs despite adequate resources, such as proper courts or buildings with air conditioners, being available. Last summer, during a pilot program in the new facilities, temperatures reached 95 F.

Heat islands not only exacerbate the demands for technologies that emit large amounts of climate-warming carbon, like air conditioning, but they can also worsen air quality, contributing to respiratory issues and other pulmonary health effects. In 2023, according to data from the Boston Public Health Asthma Report Roxbury and Dorchester ranked the second highest in asthma rates.

In Boston, areas such as Roxbury, the South End and Dorchester, as well as Allston and Brighton, have elevated surface temperatures.

Community Impact

Residents of Blue Hill Avenue feel these impacts every day, and as the warmer seasons approach, community members brace for extreme heat.

According to a survey conducted by the city of Boston, the burden of heat exposure in residential homes “falls disproportionately on Black and Latinx communities.” Residents often feel too hot to stay home during warmer days, leading them to find refuge in community centers.

Al Peeples, youth program director for Project RIGHT, is working to address violence in his neighborhood, which is exacerbated by the disproportionately high heat Blue Hill Avenue experiences.

“We’re coming up on the summer, you will see how hot it is around here. And there’s only one cooling center… When you have a lack of cooling centers and nowhere for teenagers to go that creates a problem,” said Peeples.

Other than feeling excessive heat, residents surrounding Blue Hill Avenue also face adverse health effects because of increased dust and particulate matter in the air from pollution and mold from flooding.

“There are health implications of these issues. For example, asthma due to mold from flooding or due to air pollution,” said Moira Zellner, professor of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University and director/project lead of Project Common SENSES, a collaboration between Northeastern University, the communities in Roxbury and Dorchester and the City of Boston.

You said:

This is Boston, divided up by neighborhood and where Blue Hill Avenue runs in Boston. Blue Hill Avenue runs through Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan to the edges of the city.

Here are the asthma emergency department visits among 5 to 17 year olds in Boston per 10,000 residents age 5-17. Note: Dorchester is the average of two rates. From the most recent City of Boston Heat Resilliance Plan (2023), ED visit data from 2014-2015

Here is the change in tree coverage by Boston neighborhoods. In Roxbury and Dorchester, where Blue Hill Ave runs, tree coverage has either decreased (lightest green at -0.9) or remained constant (slightly darker at 0.0).

Residents said the biggest factor that made their neighborhood hotter than other places in Boston, the most common answer was “very few trees, according to a streets and corridors survey conducted by the city of Boston,

Mockup of what an area along Blue Hill Avenue could look like with more trees. This lot is located at 639 Warren Street which currently has a plan in development to add a large residential and commercial building.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, areas with more tree coverage can be up to 7 F cooler than areas without.

Community Action

Groups like Project RIGHT are working to achieve their goals through community engagement and activism.

“It’s an uphill battle, but what’s so amazing is the people. The community members that are constant. Constant, and steadfast, and resilient…they are here for the long run,” said Flynt.

Project RIGHT hopes to mitigate violence through community and youth involvement and create spaces that promote community building and currently has ongoing programs focusing on arts, civic engagement, public safety, sports, substance use, trauma and youth development.

Nicole Flynt is the Grove Hall Community Leader for both Project RIGHT and Project Common SENSES, two groups working to combat the environmental injustice on Blue Hill Avenue.

“When it comes to dense or moderate to low income, or even I dare say Black and brown neighborhoods…we’re overlooked a lot,” said Flynt. “And that’s not right at all. So we have to make a change.”

For community members like Flynt, these changes would improve their quality of life for generations to come.

“I have a grandson, he is 4 years old, I want him to live a good life. I want him to run in some grass, and feel the trees and breathe fresh air without having to leave the neighborhood. We always have to leave, why do we have to leave?” said Flynt.