BOSTON — Former Whitman Hanson soccer star Kristie Mewis and the rest of the Boston Breakers made their home debut in their new stadium on the campus of Harvard University Sunday afternoon.

The Breakers christened Soldiers Field Soccer Stadium with a 3-2 victory over the Houston Dash in front of 2, 372 roaring fans, to move to 1-1 on the season. The Breakers made the move across campus as Harvard Stadium, the clubs former home, is undergoing major renovations.

Mewis grew up just a short 40-minute drive from Soldiers Field, donning the black and red for the Panthers in high school, and lacing up her cleats on the grass soccer fields in Hanson. In a storied high school career, which she finished with 74 goals and 34 assists.

Mewis had earned many honors as Panther, including being named a three-time NSCAA All-American, three-time All-New England and All-Massachusetts team honoree and a three-time Eastern Massachusetts Girls Soccer Association Div. 1 First-Team All-Star. In 2008, Mewis was named the NSCAA Youth Player of the Year and the U.S. Soccer Young Female Athlete of the Year. In 2009, she was named to the Parade All-America team. Mewis also played for the Region 1 Olympic Development Program (ODP) team from 2003–2007.

Kristie stayed close to home in college and attended Boston College on a full soccer scholarship from 2009 – 2012. In her time at The Heights Mewis became the Eagles all-time points’ leader, finishing her collegiate career with 39 goals, 38 assists, nine game-winning goals and 21 multiple-point games. She was also one of only two players in program history to register a goal in five straight games.

After a short three week stint with Canberra United FC in 2013 where she scored her first professional goal, Mewis was selected In January 2013, third overall in the 2013 NWSL College Draft to FC Kansas City for the inaugural season of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL.)

In November 2013, FC Kansas City traded Mewis to Seattle Reign FC for Amy Rodriguez. Days later on Nov. 18 Mewis was traded alongside Michelle Betos and two 2015 NWSL College Draft picks to the Boston Breakers for Sydney Leroux.

“My dream has always been to play professionally and the fact I can do that in my hometown is the best feeling in the world” said Mewis after the Breakers 3-2 victory. “It allows my friends and family to come to the games and for me to be able to play so close to home is extremely lucky.”

Mewis signed a three-month contract with Iga FC Kunoichi of the Japanese Nadeshiko League first division during the NWSL off-season. Wearing number 31 and playing as a forward, Mewis scored five goals in seven games. During matches in which Mewis played, Iga FC recorded a 6-1 record.

“I knew I needed a confidence builder because I had a rough season last year, as well as coming off an injury so I wanted to get away and try something new and get my confidence back. Being with a new team and playing in a new environment definitely helped me and it was a great experience.”

This upcoming weekend Kristie will face younger sister Sam Mewis, who is two games into her rookie campaign with the Western New York Flash. On Saturday, May 2 the former teammates will battle for Mewis household bragging rights until Sam makes her homecoming June 28 when the WNY Flash travel to Boston.

“I never played against Sam in college, and it’s been awhile since we played with each other, but we know each other’s tendencies’ and playing style” Mewis said about playing Sam this upcoming weekend in Rochester, New York. “We will probably exchange a laugh or two during the game but it’s going to be a fun experience and I am looking forward to seeing her.”

Be sure to follow Whitman-Hanson writer Brian McLoughlin on Twitter at @bmcloughlin22 for updates from Rochester, New York all weekend long as he covers the battle of the Mewis sisters.

 The following students have had their work selected for the VFW Patriotic Art Contest and Exhibition: First Place – Katryna Crowley, who went on to win second place in the state; second Place – Mimi Wang; third Place – Tyler Sansone and Honorable Mention – Stephanie Kariuki, Alexandria Bowden and Kristina Woodward. Also representing Whitman Hanson: Emily Gonzalez, Alex Tobin, Paisley Haskell, Jenna Kimball, Emma Kennelly, Leah Ricciarelli, Kevin Guerney, Kaitlyn Daly, Brie Holmes, Kristina Woodward, Angelina Guiducci, Jason Goveya, Kristen O’Leary, Lily Sullivan, Elana Wood.

The artwork  will be on display from May 19-May 21 during the Art in Bloom exhibit in the WHRHS Library. The top five finishers will also be displayed at Mutual Bank in Whitman center.

The work of the first place winner was sent to compete with other first place winners from around the state to represent Massachusetts at the national level.

W-H extended special thanks to Rachel Eaton and the Whitman VFW Ladies Auxiliary for years of commitment to the program.

Tyler Sansone’s work reflects on the poppies of Flanders Field and won third place locally. Courtesy photo

Mimi Wang won second place in the local competition for her depiction of the joy of welcoming a soldier home. Courtesy photo

Local VFW Patriotic Art Contest winner Katryna Crowley’s drawing (above) of a soldier comforting a child won second place in the state competition. Courtesy photo

Flooded in history

BOSTON — Almost 100 years later a nagging question remains how did the Great Molasses Flood happen?

A group of about 20 people taking part in the Whitman Reads project centering on Stephen Puleo’s book, “Dark Tide: The Great Molasses Flood of 1919,” travelled to Boston Friday, April 24 to hear a presentation on the latest theory and visit the site of the disaster. The community reading program concludes tonight with a second visit by Puleo at 6 p.m., in the Whitman Library.

Ronald Mayville, a senior structural and metallurgical engineer with the Waltham firm of Simpson, Gumperts & Heger, outlined his research — which is pointing to metal stress on a low-manganese type of steel used in the tank, as well as design flaws.

The type of steel, which becomes brittle in cold conditions, used in the molasses tank that collapsed on Jan. 15, 1919 was also used in building the Titanic, which sank in the icy north Atlantic April 14-15, 1912.

Puleo points to court documents from the prolonged post-molasses flood litigation which also blame design flaws for the disaster.

“When I moved to this area nearly 30 years ago, one of the first things I thought of was, ‘This is Boston. This is where the molasses tank failure occurred,” Mayville said during his luncheon talk at La Famiglia Giorgio restaurant in the North End where the disaster claimed 21 lives and caused extensive damage.

Busman’s holiday

At the time he took his wife and some friends all over the North End waterfront, unable to find the site now graced with an historic marker.

“I’m an engineer and I work in the area of failure,” he said. “This has been something of interest to me for a long time.”

He said the molasses tank failure is a common subject of study in college courses dealing with the strength of materials.

Like Puleo, Mayville uses the 25,000 pages of court testimony in his research. As a project done in his spare time, Mayville is about 8,000 pages through.

Archival material left to Lehigh University, once owned by a consultant who was among experts testifying at the trial, has also been valuable, Mayville said.

“You can have your own molasses tank already broken,” he said of online directions available for building a model. “I have one. We keep it on our fireplace mantel.”

Mayville’s interest is in using modern research techniques, such as finite element analysis, to learn why the tank failed — he believes progress is being made.

He is currently working on a computer animation of how he believes the tank collapsed, which in effect presents a graphic illustration of Puleos’s desciption of observances reported by Suffolk County Medical Examiner Dr. George Burgess Meredith in the days following the disaster:

“Steel plates from the tank’s wall lay broken and partially submerged in molasses,” Puleo wrote. “But McGrath saw that the tank’s large circular roof lay right-side-up atop the concrete foundation, in sharp contrast to the violence and destruction on the waterfront. It was as if the molasses had spewed out in all directions from under the roof, carrying the tank’s walls in all directions, but the roof had settled gently onto the ground below.”

Molasses is 1.5 times heavier than water, which also played a role, according to Mayville. While the tank had been filled to capacity several times before, at least once to a higher level than on Jan. 15, 1919, that also contributed to the ultimate failure.

“You know the famous paper clip [example], if you bend the paper clip back and fourth enough times it will break, that’s known as fatigue,” he said. “I believe something like that was happening as well.”

What purpose?

Another of his hypotheses is that the reputable firm that built the tank may have designed it for water.

“That’s a big mystery to me, how they could have made such a big mistake,” he said.

Welding, which was known at the time, was not widely used. The tank, again like the Titanic, was assembled with riveted joints.

“Today I would say bolts and welding is stronger,” he said. “But [rivets] was the technology of the day.”

Rivets reinforcing the outside of the manhole on the tank roof were insufficient, Mayville argues. He points to “herringbone” marks in the steel that indicate where a fracture started — in this case the manhole.

“The way they made the rivet holes in those days was to actually punch through the metal,” he said. “If you didn’t do it carefully, and sometimes if you did, it tended to damage the  material around the edge of the hole — sometimes even leaving cracks.”

WHITMAN — It all started with a simple question.

As 8-year-old Conley Elementary School second-grader Grace Hughes watched television news coverage of Boston Marathon preparations — and the trial of marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — she asked herself what she could do to help the bombing victims.

“I felt really bad for the people that got hurt that day,” Grace said.

A fan of making loom bracelets, she opted to make some to sell for $1 each at her school.

“She wanted to donate clothing or something like that,” her mom Danielle Hughes said. “I said ‘They don’t really need that right now, what they need is money to help them get back on their feet.’ She said she could raise money by making bracelets and I thought that was a great idea.”

“And she got tons of money … and I helped,” piped in her little brother Nick, 5. He helped Grace make some of the 95 bracelets she turned out. With her class helping, her goal was 100 bracelets.

“I’m pretty sure we’re going to get past that many,” Grace said.

They had raised $250 prior to the school sale through purchases made be friends and family.

“I had posted on Facebook how excited and proud of her I was,” Danielle said. “We were very surprised it was something Grace wanted to do.”

Where the money would go was an important consideration. One Fund Boston was no longer accepting donations, so they looked at other options and found The Martin Richard Charitable Foundation, which honors the 8-year-old bombing victim’s message of peace by investing in education, athletics and community.

Grace felt kinship with the boy who was her age in 2013.

The next step was getting permission from the school to conduct the sale. Since Principal Karen Downey’s sister in-law runs the marathon, it wasn’t a hard sell.

“I tried to look for her on the news, but I didn’t see her,” Danielle said.

On Friday, April 17, Grace gave a presentation on her project in front of the entire class on what she was planning.

“The day before I was nervous, but that day I wasn’t,” she said with a giggle. “My class decided to help me out making the bracelets.”

Danielle said they were excited to see how many bracelets they end up with.

Grace’s teacher Kerri Doherty has been an enthusiastic booster of the project.

“She’s really been quite an inspiration to all of us,” Doherty said Monday. “She had shared with the class during our morning meeting what she was going to do and they all immediately wanted to know how they could help.”

One student alone made more than 100 bracelets over April vacation, Doherty said, adding that other teachers at Conley have told her they have students who want to help, too.

“It’s really exciting — she’s really a special girl,” Doherty said.

HANSON — The Board of Selectmen Tuesday night voted 4-1 to approve a policy under which access to the town’s law firm — Blatman, Bobrowski & Mead LLC — by individual selectmen requires approval only by the Board of Selectmen’s chairman or vice chairman.

The town administrator would be notified of such requests, but will not have the power to approve or deny them.

Selectman Don Howard dissented, saying he has never had a problem going through a town administrator, and he has worked with three in his seven years on the board.

“I don’t see why we need a policy,” Howard said, noting that is why taxpayers fund the town administrator’s position.

“We never had a firm, written policy on access to town counsel,” Selectmen Chairman Bruce Young said, explaining a new request for legal services form he had drafted. “At least there’s a record that this happened because now we can get into the billing process.”

He said the request form represents an internal control system key to a well-run accounting system.

Town Administrator Ron San Angelo countered that the form stems from a disagreement between him and Young on the wording of the Town Administrator Act, and sought joint approval from the chairman and administrator on the forms.

“This is an interpretation kind of issue,” San Angelo said. “Like all good pieces of legislation, it’s debatable.”

He argued that his job is to act as liaison between town counsel, the Board of Selectmen and affected town departments or officials,’ other than selectmen’s, requests.

“I don’t believe the chairman, nor any single member of the Board of Selectmen, has the direct power to go to town counsel,” he said. “That has to be done in conjunction with the town administrator. … The power to go to a town attorney rests with the entire Board of Selectmen, not any individual selectman.”

San Angelo said he has never refused any selectman’s request to refer to the town attorney if there is a need for it and if there was a concern over need he would work with the chairman to solve it.

“I’m supposed to be the coordinator of that and to know what legal funds are being spent,” he said.

Selectman James McGahan said San Angelo’s reliance on the phrase  “I believe” regarding the issue required an opinion from Town Counsel Jason Talerman, who attended the meeting.

“I really don’t care how you get to me or how a board of selectmen wants to access me,” he said. “I care that it’s clear and that everyone is informed.”

Talerman has worked with more than 100 of the state’s 351 cities and towns and there are “just as many” policies on how to contact town counsel.

While he thinks San Angelo is a liaison to town counsel, he doesn’t see a prohibition of contact by the selectmen chairman. For individual selectmen to consult him, he said there does need to be a policy.

“You just make a policy on that — I’ll follow the policy,” he said. “When I’m contacted by a single member I have to think to myself, ‘Is that reflective of the entire board, or what at least a majority, says?’”

Two residents also weighed in on the issue.

“The town administrator reports to this board,” Richard Hickey, 43 Morton St. said. “He’s asking for full authority. He’s not an elected person in this town. …He does not need to cosign on anything. He works for you folks. He will be in the electronic loop.”

Mark Vess, 303 High St., agreed.

“I’ve never understood it that the Board of Selectmen could not go directly to legal counsel to address any concerns that they had,” said Vess, who served as a selectmen in the past.  “I heard what you are trying to do tonight and I could not agree with you more.”

In other business, the board voted 5-0 to approve appointment of Jared M. Meegan to the Hanson Police Department. The appointment of Meegan, now a member of the Wellfleet Police Department is effective Monday, May 18, but he may start later if his services are required in Wellfleet over Memorial Day weekend.

The hiring process began last August when more than 40 people applied for the position, according to Police Chief Michael Miksch.

Meegan has been a part-time officer in Wellfleet since 2009, becoming full time in 2013. He is a 2013 graduate of the Plymouth Police Academy and is state certified as a full-time police officer and passed an extensive background check.

“His chief was rather upset that he was going to lose him,” Miksch said. “He describes officer Meegan to be very responsible, motivated, dedicated and loyal. His chief further informed me he that he could see Jared as one of the next leaders in their department and is sad to see him leave.”

W-H celebrates the team’s 5-3 Opening Day win over Rockland April 14. A 13-2 rout over the same team Monday gave the Lady Panthers a 3-0 record. Photo by Sue Moss

W-H defeated Rockland 13-2 on 17 total hits and RBIs from eight Panthers on Monday to remain undefeated on the season. Senior Captain Ally Webster went 4-5 (2 2B) with an RBI and three runs scored. Junior Maxine Vincent went 3-5 with an RBI and two runs scored. Sophomore Emily Cook earned the win for the Panthers (7 IP, 2 ER, 5 hits).

The Panthers defeated Duxbury 3-0 on Thursday, April 16. Captain Gabby DeLeon earned the win with a complete game shut-out and 10 Ks. Vincent (1-3) Kristin Arthur (1-2 2B) and Kelly Burke (1-1) each had an RBI. Senior Captain Caitlin Hughes went 2-3 with a run scored.

On Tuesday, April 14 W-H won their opener 5-3 against Rockland after overcoming a 2-0 deficit in the fifth. Webster went 2-3 with two RBIs and a two runs scored. Vincent went 1-3 with a pair of RBIs. DeLeon had 6 Ks and 0 ERs to earn the win for the Panthers.

First baseman Mike Josselyn readies for the pickoff throw. Photo by Sue Moss.

The Whitman-Hanson Panthers baseball team had a tough loss with a final score of 8-6 at Duxbury on Thursday, April 16 to even their record at 2-2. Nick Haley continues to have a hot bat for W-H with a lead off single and a homerun.

Solid win

Senior Matt Donovan (4.1, 2 hits 3K’s) along with Juniors Jared Pendrak (1.0, 1-2-3 seventh with a strikeout) and Jason Keenan (1.2) held North Quincy to two runs with some solid defensive plays by the Panthers. Whitman-Hanson had timely hitting late in the game by Junior Ricky Sherlock (2-3 with 3 RBI) and Haley (2-3 double, triple and RBI) to seal the 7-2 win for the home team.

Junior Brenndan Rogers fired 4 1/3 innings of two-hit shutout ball with five strikeouts, but East Bridgewater rallied for three seventh-inning runs to beat the Panthers, 3-0.

Taming the Green Wave

Jake Long takes a shot on goal in the 17-6 loss to Hanover April 16. Photo by Sue Moss.

The W-H boys’ lacrosse team avenged their opening game loss to Abington Monday, April 20, with an 11-4 victory. The Panthers took a 10-2 lead into the half and held on for the win. Freshman Jake Long notched four goals. Sophmore Bret Conors returned to action today with a pair of goals. Junior Kyle Bina also had two goals. Junior Captain Dylan Thomas, Junior Joe Arico and Sophmore Ryan Kennedy all added goals. Junior Goalie Jack Molito came up huge in the second half stopping a number of close in shots. With the win the Panthers move to 4-3 on the season.
The Panthers had lost to Hanover 17-6 in Patriot league action on April 16. Hanover jumper to an 8-0 lead and never looked back. Junior Colin Downing recorded three goals to lead the Panthers.

On April 13, a clogged waste pipe was reported at Hanson Middle School. Students were moved from the affected areas, picked up their materials for the day, and were dismissed from the auditorium, according to school officials.

“Facilities staff were on site as soon as the incident was reported.” said Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ruth Gilbert-Whitner. “They contained the water, placed cones in areas to avoid having students walk in contaminated areas, and cleaned areas as the source of the problem was being investigated.”

A build up of improperly disposed feminine hygiene products was determined to be the cause.

“After investigation, a blockage was removed from the pipe with a “roto-rooter” system,” Principal William Tranter told parents in an email blast April 14. “After the blockage was removed, Service Master came to HMS yesterday afternoon to address areas impacted by the overflow. SJ Services employees also assisted with cleaning floors.”

American Environmental has performed air quality testing and will continue to do so as long as needed. Acting Hanson health inspector Vincent Flaherty visited Hanson Middle School and indicated that the response to the waste pipe issue was appropriate.

“I am satisfied with the immediate and corrective action taken by the school,” Flaherty wrote in his inspection report dated Wednesday, April 15.

“We are awaiting the official air quality report from American Environmental; their preliminary report indicates that there was no contamination in the swabs collected at HMS,” Gilbert-Whitner said. “During the vacation week, affected carpet and tiles are being replaced and all four bathrooms are being completely sanitized.”

The lockers were removed to allow the area behind them to dry out, according to Tranter. Students in one of the classrooms were moved to another area of HMS until moisture issues are addressed and Paramount Rug evaluated the carpeted areas.

“In the past, when there have been flooding issues at HMS (a bubbler leaked several years ago), carpets are replaced with floor tiles,” Tranter said.