By Kim J. Harmon

Well, it’s the New Year – as if you hadn’t noticed with your tongue still tasting like cotton and the tambourines still banging off the inside of your head – and it’s the time when all the certified psychotics (I mean, psychics) made their BOLD predictions.

Polar ice caps melt - world flooded!

Elvis comes back from the dead . . . again!

Martian spacecraft destroys White House!

Madonna stays married!

 

Okay, okay, I know that last one is sort of out of left field and all, but those are the sort of predictions these nutsos make. Not me. I usually can’t predict my way out of a paper bag (honestly, I can’t predict what I’m going to have for lunch today - but it’ll probably be pizza) so all I’m going to do is list a few of my HOPES for the year 2001.

So, wouldn’t it be nice if . . .

+ The Newtown High School girls’ basketball team won another South-West Conference championship and I was actually there to see it?

During the three biggest wins in the last seven years, I was somewhere else - I was in Boston receiving an award when the ‘Hawks beat Masuk for the first time in 10 years, I was down in Mississippi at my sister-in-law’s wedding when the ‘Hawks beat New Fairfield in the SWC finals last year, and I was at the office Christmas party when the ‘Hawks beat one of the top 30 teams in the nation, Norwalk, back in December.

 

+ I could go home and have my wife get it when I try to tell her how amazing the aforementioned girls’ basketball team is?

Of course, this is the same wife who couldn’t understand what was so great about Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez getting locked up in a 2-0 game (“nobody is scoring any runs, how boring is that?” she said) and the same wife who practically stood in front of the television when I was trying to watch Cal Ripken take his historic journey around the ballpark after breaking Lou Gehrig’s ironman streak.

 

+ The Newtown High School wrestling team could have as many as four champions at the South-West Conference tournament - to be held at Newtown - and that I could figure out a way to get a good picture of all of them under that weird (but classy) hanging lamp?

With the SWC tournament in Newtown for the first time last year, I was a bit perplexed when I saw the team not only laying down the mats but also rigging up this huge lamp that was going to hang over the mat. And with all the lights turned off in the gym – except for one – it provided a unique challenge which, unfortunately, I wasn’t much up to.

 

+  With the seven-year run of the Byrne sisters finally over on the softball diamond (Samantha from 1994 to 1997 and Cathy from 1998 to 2000), that head coach Paul LaFrancesca has somebody just as dominant to take over?

Local fans might have gotten a bit spoiled after Samantha and Cathy Byrne combined for more than 1,200 strikeouts and several no-hitters in the last seven years, but it’s time to start another era. Hopefully, it’s a successful one.

 

+ Matt McCarthy – aka The General – continues to impress the scouts and actually does get drafted into professional baseball sometime in June?

It sure does make for great discussions when a guy like The General has to choose between two things like college and professional baseball. I remember all the talk when Watertown High School’s Rico Brogna (now with the Boston Red Sox) was trying to choose between a four-year football scholarship to Clemson and minor league baseball in the Detroit Tigers’ farm system. That’s because everyone who talked about it imagined what THEY would do. It was a vicarious thrill.

 

+ We get a chance to see some more potential stars in the freshman class make impacts on their varsity teams?

Last fall, we had a chance to see freshman Chelsea Morin on the girls’ soccer team (I still remember the move she put on one defender, so quick I can’t even describe what happened, as she raced down the wing towards the goal) and this winter we are having a chance to see Kelley Haines on the girls’ basketball team and Andrew Fiscella on the boys’ basketball team. The Classes of 2004 and 2005 seem to be mighty good ones - who else are we going to discover?

 

+ Most of the teams at Newtown High School this school year - and on into the next - get into state tournament action so we can all take nice long road trips?

Me, I love a nice road trip - but Groton, where the football team played Fitch in the first round of the CIAC Class L playoffs last December, was about the furthest I’ve gone. But I’ve also been to places like Guilford, Madison, Simsbury, Somers, and South Windsor and as long as the weather is nice, I like it. I still remember a trip I had to take to Coginchaug High School for a soccer game, back when I was working in Watertown, and despite getting lost and it taking about 90 minutes for a 45 minute ride, it was a nice trip. Let’s take more.

 

+ I continue to be in the right place at the right time with my camera locked and loaded?

Sometimes I don’t even know what I’ve got until I’ve run my film through the developer, the fixxer, the wash and the dryer and then held it up to the light. Sometimes I even give out a little Marv Albert YESSSS! when I see pictures like the play at home plate in the 11-year-old All Star baseball tournament this past summer or The General going up for that tipped football against Stratford this past fall.