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TOWAMENCIN >> Dock continues to land the knock-out punch with its first few swings.

And on Thursday, the Pioneers plated nine runs in their initial at-bat to go hustling towards 11-1.

“We stayed consistent. We had a big first inning and that was nice,” said Dock’s Zach Frederick, who knocked in four runs in his team’s clash with Bicentennial Athletic League rival Jenkintown. “Everybody was getting up there and putting the bat on the ball. It was good to see.”

Frederick had a pair of hits, including a two-run single that was part of that monster first inning, as Dock earned a 12-5 victory over the Drakes.

“I wasn’t finding a whole lot of barrels but I was getting to the gap. So it was good stuff,” Frederick said.

Dock will look to stay hot on Friday, when it hits the road for a battle with West Chester Rustin. Jenkintown (6-5), which got a pair of triples from Sam Schumm, is at Christian Academy Tuesday.

The Pioneers sent 15 batters to the plate in the first on Thursday, with Nate Lapp, Deven Ross, Frederick, Cooper Brannon and Sam Laux all contributing hits.

Dock was off and running.

“We were able to take advantage of some walks and we were swinging the bat. That was the beauty of the first inning – you end up jumping out,” said coach Erik Kratz. “We have (gotten off to fast starts) a lot. We’ve come out swinging it and it always puts you in a great spot to be ahead.”

Frederick and Zach Neff – the two Zachs – each drove in runs in the fifth to pad the lead to 12-3.

Brayden Kratz got the start for Dock, and he threw five solid innings to get the victory.

“For sure,” Kratz said. “Throwing strikes is the biggest thing. Some balls fell in and some things didn’t go our way. But (it’s important that you) throw strikes, field the balls in the infield, catch the balls in the outfield – it sounds very remedial, but it’s very important to do.”

Dock did just that.

“There’s a group of guys here that are really used to winning – in all of the sports that they play,” Kratz said. “Understanding how to win and understanding how to compete is a really, really big thing. And these guys wanna compete. They wanna win.”

Said Frederick: “We gotta lock in and keep doing what we’re doing.”

Dock Mennonite 12, Jenkintown 5 Jenkintown 012 002 0 – 5 10 2 Dock Mennonite 900 030 x – 12 13 1 WP: Brayden Kratz (5IP, 3R, 3ER, 8H, 1K, 2BB). LP: Milo Condran (1IP, 9R, 9ER, 6H, 0K, 4BB, 1HBP). 3B: J-Sam Schumm. Multiple hits: J-Schumm 2-for-2, BB, HBP, R, RBI; Will Gouveia 2-for-4, RBI; Tom Walsh 3-for-4, R; D-Nate Lapp 4-for-5, 2R, 2RBI; Sam Laux 2-for-4, BB, 2R, 2RBI; Deven Ross 2-for-2, 2BB, HBP, 2R, RBI; Zach Frederick 2-for-4, SAC, R, 4RBI.

Claire Camp, Broadway dancer, is teaching Jazz at Metropolitan! Fall Classes start the Week of September 11, 2023!

Claire Camp has danced on Broadway in “Frozen” and the revival of “Cats.” Touring companies include “A Chorus Line,” “Flashdance: The Musical,” and more. TV dance roles include “Fosse/Verdon” and “The Gilded Age.” Claire Camp will teach Broadway Jazz for ages 9 -18. Classes begin Sept. 11, 2023. Students can expand their dance horizons with these enjoyable classes and hear about what it's like to dance on the Broadway stage!

Another faculty addition, Christopher Ralph, will teach Contemporary classes, having been a popular Summer Intensive faculty member at Met for several years. Based in NYC, Ralph has performed with numerous contemporary dance companies and will be seen in the upcoming Hulu series “Up Here.” He currently teaches at the Peridance Center in NYC and has taught and created works at NYU, Princeton University, and others.

New Ballet faculty include:

Vitaly Verteric will teach classical ballet for Met’s more advanced students and inspire young men in Met’s all-male Boys’ Scholarship classes. Vitaly trained at the Kiev Ballet School and Moscow Academy of Arts and went on to become a Principal dancer with Moscow Chamber Ballet. A much sought-after ballet teacher, Vitaly also performed in “Riverdance” on Broadway.

Eva Szabo, an internationally renowned master teacher, who trained and danced professionally in her native Hungary, will teach intermediate and advanced classical ballet and pointe classes, as well as adult classes.

One of “seven local studios in America cultivating top talent” (Pointe magazine), Metropolitan is recognized by the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP), with school and director awards, and its students earn highest honors in competitions. But Met’s mission is broader: here, young people develop physical strength and make life-long friendships. Many students cite their dance training as a framework for achievement in college and careers. Met’s Pre-Professional Company performs exciting choreography, year-round.

Metropolitan Faculty also includes Natalya Lushina Zeiger (former soloist, Bolshoi Ballet); Daniel Mayo (Juilliard, BalletX); Denise D’Angelo (Pennsylvania Ballet), Sarah Mettin (contemporary choreographer and faculty), and Director, Lisa Collins Vidnovic (Pennsylvania Ballet) teaches all levels. Caroline Broullon, Elizabeth Seader, Magrielle Eisen and Sakie Hachiya, offer individualized attention in all levels of ballet classes. Strength & Conditioning classes with Julia Meloy will round-out the dance schedule.

Children, ages 3-4, and 5-6, are nurtured in Creative Movement classes, where fun and discovery are top priorities. The curriculum gradually expands into dance training and performance.

Register now for boys and girls ages 3 – 18. Adult classes for beginners and intermediate levels on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. www.metropolitanballetcompany.org or call 215.663.1665.

Metropolitan Ballet, 700 N. Cedar Rd, Jenkintown.

Jim Romano, the seasoned Jenkintown High School girls basketball coach, began a remarkably successful coaching career over four decades ago.

Since his inaugural season, Romano has overseen 10 Bicentennial League Constitution championships, 15 District District 1 Class A championships, a 2018 Class A state championship, an undefeated 2020 season (29-0), and 729 career wins to date.

His individual accolades include a 2017-2018 USA Today Womens’ National Coach of the Year Award and an induction into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame the same season. The Philadelphia Inquirer honored Coach Romano in 2013 after his 500th career victory.

He initiated a summer basketball program in 1982 at Cheltenham High School which is now known as Jenkintown Summer Basketball League. Romano’s main squeeze has always been the girls basketball team, though he has lent a helping hand to football and baseball teams as well.

According to current and former Jenkintown Lady Drakes, he has impacted the lives of countless up-and-comers and pushed a small school in a small town to be the best that it could be.

“He’s old school,” Phil Furse, a 1989 JHS grad who was coached by Romano, said.

According to Furse, a handful of parents in the district are asking for the discontinuation of his contract for the 2023-2024 season.

In response, former players and current parents in the district initiated a petition on July 13 in support of Romano’s rehiring. Dozens of signs, like the one pictured above, have been decorating the streets of Jenkintown ever since.

Furse and others plan to attend an August 21 (rescheduled from August 14) school board meeting to voice their opinions. The board has not disclosed when they’ll be voting on winter contracts and has long maintained a “no comment” policy regarding personnel matters, according to school board president Dr. Megan O’Brien.

“The school board will have a vote at some point, but there’s not a lot of information yet,” Furse said. “We plan on attending that meeting to voice our thoughts. My understanding is that they have a policy this year that opens coaching positions like his to everybody. This is about the incredibly positive influence he’s had over kids in the community over the years.”

According to Furse, the petition, which has garnered 801 signatures at the time of this writing, includes generational parents and players, former assistant coaches, former athletic directors, and teachers, among others.

“I was athletic but the worst player ever to play basketball at Jenkintown. We’re a very small school, so we needed bodies,” MaryAnn Boutcher Higgins, who played for Romano in the early 1980s, said. “Coach Romano was probably 26 or 27 at the time, recently married. I stayed with the team through my senior year because of the way he guided us. He was kind and understanding.”

Higgins reached out to the superintendent and the school board with her thoughts. An excerpt:

He made me want to be a better player and I tried to be one because I didn’t want to let him or my teammates down. Coach Romano is a once in a generation person who embodies the spirit of teamwork, fair play and discipline. His rules for the team were just that. They were for EVERY player. Whether you were a future JHS hall of famer or the kid on the bench. He didn’t expect you to be the best, but he expected the best effort from everyone. That lesson has stayed with me for 40 years.Over the years my friends and I have discussed the impact of playing for Coach and having the honor of being his first varsity team. Truly though, I wish we weren’t. I wish we had had him as a coach for four years, what we could have accomplished in that time. Hindsight is 20/20 and I’ve had 40 years to look back. It wasn’t always magical and it certainly wasn’t easy. It was the hardest thing I have ever done athletically and I am so grateful to Coach for working with me and helping me to stick with the program. I have told him before that he helped that scared and angry young girl and I don’t want to think about what may have happened without his guidance and support.

Higgins has asked former players to email the school to tell their stories. Angela Funk, who served as a co-captain of Romano’s first Varsity team during the 1982-83 season, sent an email to the district superintendent and school board prior to June’s board meeting. An excerpt from her email:

I am writing today to share with you the impact that Coach Romano has had on my life. I grew up in a home with little structure and few rules. Neither of my parents earned a high school diploma. I joined the girls basketball team in high school and I am telling you, I would not have graduated had I not been a part of his team. As I look back on that time, I realize he was only in his twenties when he started coaching at JHS. He was growing his own family at the time; his wife Ginny was pregnant with their first child. He made it a point to learn about each of his player’s academics and home life. He wasn’t afraid to reach out to our parents if he had concerns. He was invested in us and our futures.

Barb (Damm) Riggs, a 1984 graduate and JHS Hall of Famer, played for Romano’s first-ever team in 1981. She went on to receive a basketball scholarship to the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science which appeared in the NCAA Division II Final Four in 1986.

Riggs emailed the school board in July. An excerpt:

Coach Romano is not only an amazing Basketball Coach, he is a Wonderful Man who truly cares about each and every person he coaches! Coach always treated each and every player the same and rules were rules, no matter what your talent was as a basketball player. As I have gotten older, over the years, I often think, “where would I be today if I didn’t have Coach Romano as my HS Basketball Coach” ? You see, it’s not all about the Game, it’s about Life. He teaches life lessons!!! Accountability, Honesty, Integrity, Being a Team Player…all of these things relate to life as we grow and have to get out in the real world. As we all know, it’s a different world today, compared to back in the 80’s! It is unfortunate that Coaches have to be careful in showing compassion and love to kids to help make a difference in their lives. Coach Jim Romano is not only a GREAT Basketball Coach, he is a GREAT Man who has made a huge difference in my Life, and I know for sure hundreds of others he has coached over the past 42 plus years!!!

“He’s beloved by the community. He manages to get the players out every year and buy into the system, and it works,” Boutcher Higgins said. “He was tough, but he checked up on all of us. Looking back on it, I think about how much we learned. He instilled a team spirit that we wanted to be a part of.”

Joanne Burmester, a 1989 alum, four-year protege of Romano and a former Jenkintown middle school coach, co-authored the petition.

“He’s an open book when it comes to coaching,” Burmester said. “I initially struggled in high school, and basketball really made me stick to school. He said, ‘Get your grades up or you can’t play.’ He was an important male role model for me. He gave me good advice, he was always there, more than happy to help, and that’s something that I treasure. He’s a genuinely good person and he’s dedicated so much of this time. Jenkintown is so fortunate to have 41 years with him.”

To access the petition, you can click here. For PAPrepLive’s 2021 coverage of Romano’s 700th win, you can click here.

For all the latest news, follow us on Facebook or sign up for Glenside Local’s “Daily Buzz” newsletter here.

Feature photo courtesy of Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame

When Melissa Hager and Mike O’Donnell went to name their new bar in Jenkintown, they decided against celebrating mead, the honeyed spirit they’re making.

“From a marketing perspective, it was just silly to make that the core focus,” O’Donnell said of the idea of calling the bar a meadery. “The first thing people [say is], ‘Oh, you’re a butcher? You’re a meatery? What kind of meats do you have?’”

That’s how Yorkway Place, Jenkintown’s most-charming pedestrian alley, came to be home to the Keep Easy, a cozy bar serving up dry, house-made mead plus Pennsylvania wine and cocktails. The former reading room’s interior maxes out at 20 people, but there’s seating for 30 on its front patio, set back from Route 611 traffic in a pre-war shopping arcade. It opened in July.

O’Donnell and Hager have lived in Jenkintown for more than eight years. The couple had a tea lounge called the Herb Shop at 747 Yorkway Place since March 2020 but decided to pivot to something more lucrative in the last year. They landed on making mead.

Mead is ancient and simple — made from honey and water — but outside the Renaissance Faire circuit, it’s almost stubbornly obscure. In an age that’s embraced fermentation of all kinds, more people are familiar with kombucha than mead.

And that’s partly why Hager and O’Donnell chose it. They considered making beer or spirits, but the brewery market felt oversaturated and the overhead on a distillery seemed out of reach. Mead, by contrast, requires relatively little equipment. Plus, “not a lot of people know about this,” O’Donnell said.

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“It’s basically the same fermentation process as wine, but instead of fruit, we’re using honey,” he explained.

He and Hager buy 20-gallon batches of honey from a Lancaster farm, haul that home, and dilute it with water, and add yeast. It can take six months to a year for the yeast to fully consume the sugars in the mixture; from there, the meadmaker can age the spirit further to let the flavors mellow and meld. O’Donnell declined to say how long they age their mead but said they ferment out all the sugar they can.

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That means, despite some first-time customers’ expectations, the Keep Easy’s mead is not sweet. “It’s actually very dry,” O’Donnell said. “Depending on the yeast I use, it’s somewhere between a wine and a Champagne.” For customers who’d like a sweeter beverage, he offers to mix in a little agave.

The couple began making mead together in 2022 and got a Pennsylvania winery license (allowing them to serve any Pennsylvania-made booze) earlier this spring. The menu features their own mead served neat, hot, over ice, or by the flight (other flavors include turmeric, hibiscus, and yerba mate — inspired by their tea-shop past). They also mix up a number of carefully calibrated mead cocktails, including a surprisingly dry meadtini, a frothy mead sour, and a muddled mead old-fashioned.

The Keep Easy also has an extensive traditional cocktail list, from a gin fizz to the dark & stormy, all made from scratch. They’re sourcing from several Pennsylvania distilleries — Bluecoat, New Liberty, Resurgent, Thistle Finch, Dad’s Hat, Manatawny Still Works, Bluebird, Jacquin’s, and more — giving them a deep arsenal to shake or stir up whatever drink you might want. The bee’s knees and a pineapple mint julep are the best-sellers so far.

Food offerings are limited by the small space’s kitchen, but there’s tinned fish and snack boards, cheese and crackers, chips and salsa, and cake.

Hours are noon to 11 p.m. Thursday and Sunday, noon to midnight on Friday and Saturday.

The Keep Easy joins a growing number of more modern spots in Jenkintown, including Human Robot, Newbolds, Pizza Wheel, and Via 417 as well as standbys like Buckets and the Drake Tavern, where Hager and O’Donnell met 10 years ago. (He’s from Exton, she’s from the Northeast.)

“Jenkintown’s just awesome,” O’Donnell said. “It could be a Doylestown, it could be a New Hope once more businesses come in ... We wanted to be a part of that, too.”

Original founder re-acquires the company which was sold in 2018.

JENKINTOWN, Pa., March 31, 2023 (Newswire.com) - Ustayev Management, Inc. ("UMI"), a privately owned firm, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of SarahCare of Jenkintown ("SarahCare of Jenkintown" or "the Company"), a home and community-based services and adult day care company. Financial terms of the private transaction were not disclosed.

Located in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, SarahCare, founded in 2008, provides home and community-based services, including Adult Day Care center and Home Care services. SarahCare offers companions, nutrition and medication assistance, shopping, nursing, transportation, therapeutic activities and other services.

Arsen Ustayev was the original founder of the Company, but sold it to a Private Equity firm in 2018. Today, Arsen is happy to announce that the company has been purchased back. Arsen Ustayev will resume his role as the company President and Chief Executive Officer.

"I am pleased to announce that today I am acquiring my old company back and am returning to the operations helm. I strongly believe in the mission of SarahCare and I know with the help of our wonderful team, we can continue the post-pandemic growth of the company.

SarahCare of Jenkintown is located at 261 Old York Rd. Suite A51. Jenkintown, PA 19046. Web address: www.sarahpa.com. Phone number: 215-999-1200.

SarahCare Philosophy

SarahCare keeps families together at home by providing health-related services for those in need of assistance. Founded in 1985, SarahCare is one of the nation's leading providers of home and community-based services. Throughout the years, the company has earned its reputation as a recognized leader in providing qualified professionals to deliver family centered care that helps keep people remain at home and away from institutional facilities.

About Ustayev Management, Inc.

Ustayev Management, Inc. is a privately owned venture capital firm that invests in healthcare, real estate and various other companies in different states. The main focus of the company is quality operations and fast organic growth. Over the past 5 years, the company has had multiple successful acquisitions and mergers as the company continues to grow and expand its operations.

Source: Ustayev Management, Inc.