NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – The New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL) Friday night announced that its board of directors, comprised of executives from its 13 member teams and officers, has voted to cancel the 2020 summer collegiate baseball season.
This decision was reached after a careful and thoughtful review of the guidance from federal, state and local officials, the leadership of our host communities, and recommendations from the CDC and medical community, the league said in a news release. The conclusion was that canceling the 2020 season was necessary for the health, safety and well-being of our players, coaches, umpires, volunteers, fans and host families.
"We understand that this decision will result in hardship and disappointment to our student-athletes who have already lost their college spring baseball season," the release continued. "For this reason, it breaks our hearts and runs counter to our competitive instincts and spirit. However, our first priority and obligation must always be the health and well-being of our players and our community. We promise to use this time out, and all of our resources, to make our 2021 season something truly special for our players, coaches and fans.
"We are part of the communities that host our member teams. We encourage our teams, as organizations, individually and working with their volunteers, to support community first responders and their local business sponsors, many of whom are restaurants that are going through difficult financial times. To show our appreciation to our host communities and supporters, we will dedicate Opening Day 2021 in each of our venues to thank, honor and support community organizations and first responders who serve on the front lines of combating COVID-19."
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Optimal Healing in North Adams Expanding Services
By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Optimal Healing was opened in 2019 by Ashley Benson, who wanted to help people receive quality mental health care with access to other wellness and healing services.
"I realized there was a real need and market for something beyond typical mental health like the sterile environment of going into therapy and working with kids and families," Benson said. "The need for that to me was just an absolute necessary and the environment that I wanted to create for my clients."
Benson is a licensed social worker and therapist who works primarily with children. She has more than 20 years experience in therapy and consulting and holds postgraduate degrees in clinical social work and advanced practice with children and adolescents.
A few years ago, she purchased the former carriage barn of the Sanford Blackinton Mansion on East Main Street, bringing a number of other wellness practitioners under the Optimal Healing umbrella.
Optimal Healing provides different types of mental health support for people, a goal Benson said she wanted to bring to the community so that they could have services easily accessible. That was important to her own healing journey, she said.
"That combination of wellness and healing and doing talk therapy but also getting to the yoga class and getting inside my body and learning how to breathe were all imperative to my own journey and healing. So that parallel process, along with my practice, just brought to light that real need for people to be able connect those things, and our communities are difficult due to geography, to different silos in the community, and so bringing that under one roof was important to me just to give people access," Benson said.
"Talk therapy is not for everybody but a yoga class might be and so putting that all in one place — you don't have to do all the things, you can just pick one or you can do several, maybe eventually you start with one and it grows into something more."
A few years ago, she purchased the former carriage barn of the Cutting Mansion on East Main Street, bringing a number of other wellness practitioners under the Optimal Healing umbrella.
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School choice students had made up about 25 percent of the student body at one time; that's now down to 17 percent and will fall off rapidly in the next few years.
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