Latest news with #Carver
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
How Coco Gauff's grandmother made history in Palm Beach County
As Coco Gauff wows the tennis world and returns as doubles champ in the French Open and stirs pride in her Delray Beach hometown, it's fair to say she stands on the shoulders of her grandmother, who had a significant role in the town and the nation's history decades ago. At the same age Gauff turned pro, Yvonne Lee was breaking down the barriers of segregation. It was 1961. Lee was popular and smart, had been named to the upcoming homecoming court and looked forward to being captain of the basketball team at her all-Black Carver High. But then the 15-year-old was given a daunting assignment. Headed into the next fall, she was to be the first Black student to attend Delray Beach's all-white Seacrest High School. Gauff has talked about her grandmother, Yvonne Lee Odom, and her experience as the tennis star spoke out on issues such as Black Lives Matter. That first day Lee went to Seacrest — Sept. 25, 1961 — security was tight, for good reason. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional. In the wake of the ruling, the NAACP began seeking Black students who would be good candidates to attend all-white schools. By November of that year, the first, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, and her mother were met with crowds yelling viscious slurs as they were escorted by four federal marshals into a New Orleans elementary school. New Orleans required Black students to pass an exam. Ruby did. Norman Rockwell in 1964 would celebrate her courage with a painting titled "The Problem We All Live With." Lee's father, the late Rev. R.M. Lee, pastor of St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Boynton Beach, thought his daughter was a great candidate — she was gifted in academics as well as sports. "We were trying to get the top kids so they could not say we were dumb," he said. Lee had attended all-Black Carver High school her freshman year. (Carver and Seacrest would later merge to become Atlantic High School for the 1970-71 school year.) Lee was the first student to integrate a school in southern Palm Beach County. When her Carver classmates learned where she would be going, they encouraged her. "We need you to do this," they told her. While school integration was top news of the day, Lee downplayed the potential drama. "I was just going to school," she later told The Palm Beach Post. "I wasn't afraid. If they told me to integrate, I was going to integrate." She arrived at 10 a.m. when the other 1,000 students were already in class. Traffic had been blocked outside. She met her student "buddy," Paula Adams, who walked her to class hand-in-hand. Lee also spoke with principal Robert Fulton in the faculty lounge. He was a "nice man," she told the Boca News in 2002. Today, Fulton's name adorns the school district headquarters, the Fulton-Holland Educational Services Center. Sharing that billing with Fulton is Black attorney Bill Holland, who filed a lawsuit in 1956 when a West Palm Beach elementary school refused to let his son attend. Lee said aside from students gawking, her first day was uneventful. "They were polite but apprehensive. This was the unknown." At Carver, Lee had been chosen to lead the basketball team, by coach C. Spencer Pompey. But at Seacrest, she agreed not to play any sports or ride the school bus due to safety concerns — though her absence from sports didn't last. When Seacrest officials also directed her to use the bathroom in the faculty lounge, she refused. After school that day, she said, one student called her the n-word. By the time Lee graduated in 1964, she had four Black classmates. She would go on to earn a degree in elementary education from Florida Atlantic University and a master's in reading from Nova University. She taught math at Carver Middle School and married her high-school sweetheart from Carver High, Eddie Odom Jr. Several of her children also became teachers, including Coco Gauff's mom, Candi. Her son, Eddie Odom III, turned down a draft pick from the Seattle Mariners to pursue a college education. Yvonne Odom and her husband founded the Delray Beach American Little League to extend the sport to kids in mostly Black neighborhoods not covered by the other league. "I learned a lot about her stories," Gauff told the Miami Herald in 2020. Yvonne Lee Odom says she, too, learned from her own experience. "By attending Seacrest for three years, I found that people are people, no matter what. You've got the good, bad and ugly, regardless of the race." Holly Baltz is an editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hbaltz@ This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Coco Gauff's grandmother stepped into history in Delray Beach
USA Today
7 days ago
- Sport
- USA Today
Former UGA All-American accepts head coach role with Georgia high school
Former UGA All-American accepts head coach role with Georgia high school The Georgia football program often brings back former players to its coaching staff, with Jarvis Jones, currently the assistant outside linebacker coach, being one such example. Jones has now accepted the head coach position for the Carver-Columbus High School football team which is his alma mater. Jones had been at Georgia under Kirby Smart for six seasons. Jones was apart of the 2009 recruiting class, is a former four-star recruit, and won his high school's first state championship in 2007. He began his college career at USC before transferring to the Georgia Bulldogs. In just two seasons in Athens, he accumulated an impressive 28 sacks, 47 tackles for loss, and 168 tackles. His outstanding performance earned him SEC Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2012, two-time consensus All-American status in both 2011 and 2012, and two selections to the First Team All-SEC. Jones was a first-round draft pick in the 2017 NFL draft. He spent the first four years of his NFL career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he accumulated 128 tackles and four sacks. Jones played on Carver's first state championship-winning team in 2007 and returns in trying to lead the program to a third state title after earning a second in 2024. He will look to try to become a back-to-back state champion in his first season as a head coach. What Jarvis Jones said to his new team Jones spoke to his new team days after Pierre Coffey, who was Carver's head coach last season, accepted a new job. "It's gonna be hard work,' Jones said. 'It's gonna be dedication. We're gonna get it done, man. We're gonna find ways to get it done." Jones has gained a lot of valuable experience from Kirby Smart and the rest of the Georgia coaching staff over the years. He's ready to take the next step with a talented Carver squad that has three of the top 100 recruits in Georgia. "Everybody looks at the physical side of football, but once you start improving the mental side, it leads to longevity,' added Jones. 'That's what I want to build. I want to build young men, athletes second."
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
For the first time since the Key Bridge collapse, oysters are being planted nearby
Frits de Goede, operations manager at Ports America Chesapeake, dumps oysters overboard to plant them in the Patapsco River, one of the first Chesapeake Bay Foundation plantings since the collapse of the Key Bridge. (Photo by Christine Condon/ Maryland Matters) Ben Carver, a boat captain for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, assumed the worst. When Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed — killing six construction workers and sending thousands of tons of concrete and steel hurtling into the Patapsco River — Carver feared that the foundation's nearby oyster reef would be smothered beneath the sediment and debris. 'I thought all of our little buddies out there would be dead,' said Carver, the foundation's Baltimore Harbor Environmental Education Program captain. He had last visited the reef, located beside historic Fort Carroll, the night before the tragedy, when he dredged up some oysters from the river bottom for a regular check-up. It would be about six months before he could return to inspect the reef, upon which 6 million oysters have been planted since 2008. What he found surprised him. Healthy oyster after healthy oyster. 'These are resilient little things,' Carver said. This month, the Bay Foundation began oyster planting at the fort for the first time since the bridge fell. In two boat trips to the site, schoolchildren and other volunteers have tossed an estimated 128,187 oysters overboard, to start their new lives in the Patapsco. The goal is to plant half a million oysters there this summer. Last year, with maritime traffic limited in the Patapsco River channel during the typical planting season. oysters grown in and around the Baltimore Harbor that would have gone to Fort Carroll were planted in the Magothy River instead. It was a hard decision, said Kellie Fiala, Maryland oyster restoration coordinator for the Bay Foundation. Staffers toyed with keeping the oysters in their dockside cages, and waiting to plant them at the fort, a manmade island fortress that never saw battle, but has become a sanctuary for cormorants, gulls and other seabirds. But keeping the oysters out of the reef during peak feeding season could have caused some to perish, Fiala said. 'People were very understanding, but we're very excited to get oysters back in Baltimore, in the Patapsco River, where people are growing them,' she said. Aboard the Snow Goose, the Bay Foundation's educational vessel, volunteers start by counting the number of oysters, which appear as small dots on the rough grey shells, on a selection of shells. From there, they estimate the total number of mollusks that will be planted. Once they reach Fort Carroll the process is simple: Volunteers grab a bright blue basket filled with oysters, and dump them over the side of the boat and into the murky depths. But getting each oyster ready for release day is a bit more complicated. It begins at the Bay Foundation's Oyster Restoration Center in Shady Side, where oyster larvae are placed in tanks with recycled oyster shells, their preferred substrate. The setup mimics a natural process, which has become more difficult for baby oysters as the Chesapeake Bay's oyster reefs dwindle. 'Imagine being fertilized, being born, and then having two weeks to find your forever home,' Fiala said. 'That's what they have to do.' Once the baby oysters adhere to a shell, they're known as spat. Afterwards, the spat-on-shell bound for Fort Carroll are moved to submerged cages around the Baltimore Harbor, where they are minded by volunteer 'oyster gardeners' for their first year of life. The cages help shelter the vulnerable young oysters, and keep them from sinking into the mud, serving the function of oyster reefs, which once rose above the surface of the Chesapeake in some places, snarling passing ships. Domino Sugars in downtown Baltimore is a longtime 'gardener,' and contributed tens of thousands of oysters to a planting this week, the second since the Key Bridge fell. Others came from the Seagirt Marine Terminal in Dundalk and Vane Brothers in South Baltimore, which are newer participants. Frits de Goede, operations manager for Ports America Chesapeake, which operates Seagirt, said the group wants to up its game next year, in hopes of inching closer to Domino's oyster number. Ports America grew 5,580 oysters this year, compared to Domino's 21,060. 'We're trying to work up to that,' de Goede said. Gardeners periodically pull up the cages attached to their docks, and clean off any algae or debris, to ensure that the oysters get plenty of water flow. Oysters are filter feeders, which means that they pull nutrients from the water column in order to survive and grow. Therein lies their value to the Chesapeake Bay, which is beset by excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, runoff from farm field fertilizer and sewage treatment plant discharges, among other sources. The excess nutrients spur the growth of algae, which essentially suck oxygen from the water as they die, creating hazardous anoxic conditions — 'dead zones' — for crabs and fish. But adding more oysters in the Chesapeake means more nutrients will be filtered out, strengthening ecosystems and further growing the natural oyster population. Decimated by disease, harvesting and habitat loss, the bay's oyster population has plummeted since the 1800s. While it once took Chesapeake oysters an estimated three days to a week to filter all the water in the bay, it now takes more than a year, Fiala said. 'We also couple that with the fact that there's more people in the bay watershed than ever before having an impact. So, we need more oysters in the water than we have ever had,' Fiala said. The strategy could be working. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources released a summary this week of its latest stock assessment for oysters in Maryland portions of the bay, which found that the population increased from 2.4 billion adult oysters in 2005 to 7.6 billion in 2024. Back then, Maryland's oyster population was just starting to recover from devastating bouts of disease, such as MSX and Dermo. Mike Wilberg, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science who led the assessment, pointed to three reasons for the increasing trend in a news release from the department. 'The first one is that we have had some good spatsets,' he said. 'The second one is that natural mortality rates, or particularly disease, hasn't been as bad as it was in the 1980s and 1990s. And then the last one is that the department has maintained restrictions on harvesting that have allowed the oysters that are in some of these areas to continue to survive and reproduce.' The stock assessment doesn't include oyster sanctuaries like the ones at Fort Carroll, focusing instead on oyster bars that are open to harvesting. But large-scale restoration sites, planted by DNR and partner organizations, make up substantial portions of several harvest regions — and they're likely strengthening the oyster harvest in their areas, Wilberg said in the news release. 'The three major restoration sanctuaries that are pretty much finished have all been really strong successes,' Wilberg said. But the Bay Foundation believes there's more to be done. In a 2024 report entitled 'Hope on the Half Shell,' the foundation pushed for Maryland and Virginia to establish sanctuaries in an additional 20 tributaries, ensure that 11 existing tributaries are maintained, and bolster the aquaculture industry, which grows oysters for consumption, by leasing more areas to proprietors. There are two small sanctuaries on either side of Fort Carroll, Fiala said: a 2-acre plot and a 1-acre plot. In part to protect those two areas, the Bay Foundation is keeping a close eye on the effort to demolish the remainder of the Key Bridge and build its successor, said Gussie Maguire, Maryland staff scientist at the foundation. 'There are certain practices that can be put in place — and that we're advocating for — to minimize the impacts of disturbing the sediment with the explosives and all that,' Maguire said. 'Silt curtains on land, turbidity curtains in the water.' In a September 2024 letter to the Maryland Department of the Environment, which is in charge of permitting for the new bridge site, the Bay Foundation highlighted the importance of the reefs. While testing found the reefs in 'relatively good' shape after the collapse and the subsequent salvage effort, 'more extensive disturbances' could 'impact these nearby reefs in the absence of proper precautions,' wrote Allison Colden, the Bay Foundation's Maryland executive director. 'Nearly every weekday during the spring and fall school season, students sample the reefs at Fort Carroll to learn about the importance of oysters for water quality, habitat, and biodiversity,' Colden wrote. 'The protection of these areas from disturbance and damage associated with bridge reconstruction will be critical.' The Bay Foundation is also pushing for the rebuilt bridge to include new features such as upgraded filtration for stormwater, reducing the amount of rainwater that washes off the bridge's roadway and directly into the Patapsco, carrying pollutants with it. That could include the addition of a piping system with filters included, but it could also include the installation of rain gardens, known as bioswales, on either end of the new bridge, like at the Aurora Bridge in Washington State, the Bay Foundation said. Or the new bridge could host floating wetlands that could filter pollutants, like the ones installed at Baltimore's National Aquarium nearby. The new bridge will be wider than its predecessor, potentially increasing the discharge of pollutants 'including trash, oil and grease residues, salt and brine during winter weather, and tire dust and other sediments,' and increasing the necessity of adequate stormwater treatment, Colden said. In the meantime, the return of oyster plantings mere feet from the Key Bridge wreckage is a welcome symbol of the city's toughness, Fiala said. 'Baltimore has a lot more behind it — a lot more resilience — than I think people give it credit for,' Fiala said.
Glasgow Times
24-05-2025
- Sport
- Glasgow Times
Carver pens new Lechia Gdansk deal as Scotland coach set for dual role
Steve Clark's assistant manager performed miracles to keep Lechia safe from relegation after arriving in December with the club seemingly certain to be relegated. Carver kept them up with two games to spare after eight wins from 16 games and the club successfully appealed against a ban from the Polish FA about a licence to play in the league because of financial irregularities. Read more: And the former Newcastle coach has decided to stay in Polish football after signing a new bumper three-year deal. He said: "I agreed to a new, three-year contract. I won't go into details, but all the people who worked behind the scenes were very helpful. "When I found myself in Lechia in December, my goal was to keep the team in the top league. That was my focus and that was the beginning of this adventure. Now we've taken the next step. "I saw what the players and my staff gave me. That was the main reason I decided to get involved in this club. I also want the staff to stay, because they are fantastic and very important people to me. "Of course, our wonderful fans also had an influence on this. This is another step in our joint adventure. "And anyway, the players have been asking all week what's next for me. Now they know where they stand."
The National
24-05-2025
- Sport
- The National
Carver pens new Lechia Gdansk deal as Scotland coach set for dual role
Steve Clark's assistant manager performed miracles to keep Lechia safe from relegation after arriving in December with the club seemingly certain to be relegated. Carver kept them up with two games to spare after eight wins from 16 games and the club successfully appealed against a ban from the Polish FA about a licence to play in the league because of financial irregularities. Read more: And the former Newcastle coach has decided to stay in Polish football after signing a new bumper three-year deal. He said: "I agreed to a new, three-year contract. I won't go into details, but all the people who worked behind the scenes were very helpful. "When I found myself in Lechia in December, my goal was to keep the team in the top league. That was my focus and that was the beginning of this adventure. Now we've taken the next step. "I saw what the players and my staff gave me. That was the main reason I decided to get involved in this club. I also want the staff to stay, because they are fantastic and very important people to me. "Of course, our wonderful fans also had an influence on this. This is another step in our joint adventure. "And anyway, the players have been asking all week what's next for me. Now they know where they stand."
