By Sue Moore
Steve Fryling shared this information with me: “From time to time I have parents of former WAY program and Alternative High School students contact me and talk about how their sons or daughters are now doing in life. This one really blew me away!”
“Alysia Zimmerman graduated from what was then the WAY program several years ago and went on to Western Michigan University. Her mother (Sue Zimmerman Craft) shared that she is now a senior and CAPTAIN of the “Sun Seeker” solar-powered car team which is part of the engineering department at WMU. No one at the time had any doubt that Alysia had the academic chops to do whatever she wanted; we just hoped she would put them to use. Looks like she has. It looks as she has certainly done as well as most any Vicksburg student from either high school in terms of her work. I could not be more thrilled. This is a great story!”
B.J. Snow has Success at the Women’s World Cup
Women’s World Cup Soccer has come home to Vicksburg in an unusual way. B.J. Snow, an assistant coach for the team that won the championship, grew up kicking a soccer ball around the extensive lawn of his parents’ home each summer at their cottage on East Indian Lake Drive. His mom and dad, Jeanne and David Snow, lived in Portage and summered here from the time he was a baby. He played his high school soccer at Portage Central, then Indiana University, where the team took two national championships.
Snow came back to Portage as a volunteer coach for his alma mater – his future wife, Lindsay Tarpley played on the team. He took it a step higher when he volunteered as an assistant coach at UCLA with head coach Jill Ellis, the current World Cup head coach. Snow became head coach of the UCLA program, following Ellis in 2011, and then became her assistant in 2015 for the World Cup. Between that championship and the one in July of this year, he became the Under 17 and then Under 23 national coach and now is head of future player identification for our national teams, literally the head scout for future talent.
He and Tarpley have two children, ages 7 and 4, and live in Madison, Wisconsin. His mom, Jeanne, still resides at Indian Lake in the summer. She started coaching B.J. in soccer when he was five years old and is justifiably proud of his accomplishments.
Jeanne has her own parents to thank for her interest in sports. Evy and Moyle Ferris opened the doors of what later became the Beacon Club in 1947 as Char-Co-Chick-Inn near the airport. Jeanne waited tables and learned the business from the ground up. She became a nurse and taught at KVCC with Mary Scott from Vicksburg at the time. Jeanne played softball on Bob Harper’s city league team that was appropriately called the Mother Breeders because Harper Farms, south of Vicksburg, raised pigs.
Camera on Top of Community Center
Channel 3 morning weather broadcast uses what it calls live eye cameras which seem to alternate between Bangor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peC1JD9gEKc and South Haven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi8CRvcXAos. Andy DeVries mounted a Vicksburg camera at the corner of Main and Prairie streets in July. The hope was to get Channel 3 to add Vicksburg to the list of rotating weather shots so they mention the village and show a live weather shot, perhaps during an event like the Car Show or Taste of Vicksburg, attracting more interest to the Vicksburg events downtown. The Vicksburg Live camera can be found on YouTube by searching “Vicksburg Michigan Live” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_M1rEjTls4