Lucas Sileno, 8, played catch with his dad, Phil, below, as Red Bank fifth- and sixth-graders faced off in an opening-day game Saturday. (Photos by Danielle Tepper. Click to enlarge)

By DANIELLE TEPPER

Red Bank’s Parks and Recreation department held its second annual baseball/softball day at Count Basie Fields Saturday to promote the town’s sports programs and to entice kids to sign up.

After several years of rebuilding, the department was able to field a seventh- and eighth-grade boys team for the first time in decade, parks & rec director Memone Crystian tells redbankgreen.

“Our objective is to get Red Bank kids playing through to the high school level,” she said, to the background sounds of hardballs landing in leather mitts. “To do that, we need to get them interested, which is why we’re having a day like today.”

Next challenge: getting girls out on the diamond.

Crystian said the day, which doubled as a season opener and showcase for other sports, was organized in part to say “thank you to the players and to the families who believe in the rec programs. We hope to grow this bigger and bigger every year as our program grows.”

All around Count Basie Park, kids in different grades participated in either sanctioned or exhibition games while almost 200 people wandered the fields and sidelines.

“We have football sign-ups on one end, soccer tryouts on another,” said Crystian. “There’s free food and festivities, beautiful weather. It’s a great day to try to get kids to want to play outside.”

Crystian and Councilwoman Juanita Lewis both noted, however, that the program has seen one significant loss over recent years: female athletes.

“We’re losing our girls,” said Crystian. “They’re just not turning to sports for some reason, so for this upcoming year, that’s our focus. We’re going door-to-door, sending emails, doing whatever we can to get them to come out for softball.”

Crystian said this is not just a concern for Red Bank recreation, but is an epidemic spreading across neighboring towns as well. “Shrewsbury, Little Silver and Rumson have all cut their female teams completely because they had no one. We don’t want to do that. Girl athletes rock. We’re committed to making sure this program is there for the girls, too.”

Lewis says one possible reason is that girls just lose interest, and “we need to find some other ways to reach them, new ways to get them engaged.

“Recreation is very important. It unites the town and gives opportunities to our kids,” said Lewis. “We have a great director. She believes in Red Bank kids and does amazing things. She’s making more out of less because budget constraints are always looming, but she’ll go the extra mile.”

Information on Red Bank sports programs can be found here.

Thirty members of the Teen Outreach Program at Red Bank Regional High completed a two-day Out of the Darkness track walk in the school gym Wednesday morning to promote awareness of suicide prevention as part of Children’s Mental Health Week. 

The idea for the walk came primarily from two proactive freshmen, Grace Rumph and Adam Canterbury, above, each of whom has lost a friend to suicide within the past two years.

“This is affecting our generation and there’s so much a person can do to help, but maybe they feel afraid to reach out,” said Rumph. “People need to know how important it is.” (Photos by Danielle Tepper. Click to enlarge)

The Broad Street salon gave 50 $7 children’s haircuts in four hours to raise funds for the medical care of Duwayne Powell, a 9-year-old Red Bank Primary School student suffering from a heart ailment. (Photo by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge)

Tickets are $20 each, and the raffle will be held at the store at 4 p.m. on May 20.  (Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

Kathie Panepinto was leading a tour of the Red Bank Primary School property and lamenting the heavy growth that hides an adjoining pond Monday when groundhog that had been sunning itself in the grass scooted across her path and into the brush.

“Oh, look at that,” she said said excitedly, noting that up-close sightings of deer and other wildlife are common at the school, which sits on landfill in a former wetlands abutting the Swimming River.

It was the kind of moment that for decades has inspired talk of the school’s potential as natural sciences learning center. And it underscored the value of ongoing efforts by Panepinto and other volunteers in their most ambitious effort to date: creating a permanent physical link between the school and the inaccessible pond.

A concept plan shows a walkway out into the pond that the foundation hopes to win funding for. (Click to enlarge)

Since its revival from dormancy four years ago, the nonprofit Red Bank Borough Education Foundation has focused its efforts on small-bore projects: leading cleanups of the 17-acre primary school property, lending a hand and a few dollars to installations such as a butterfly garden, a small greenhouse and a human sundial clock.

Now, though, the all-volunteer group is raising its sights with a proposal to build an outdoor classroom in the form of a pier and observation deck on the pond. The structure would enable students at the K-3 school to see land and aquatic habitats up close, and “to do wet and muddy samplings,” said RBBEF member and Councilman Ed Zipprich.

“Most folks don’t even know there’s a pond back there,” said member Susan Berke.

“The idea is to make access to the pond not just for science, but for reading, writing, art,” said Panepinto, an RBBEF officer.

No cost estimate for the project has yet been worked up, and foundation members don’t even know if they would need and might obtain permits from the state Department of Environmental Protection for the structure, which may be subject to limitations on building in coastal areas.

Still, they’ve begun the process of trying to win a grant for as much as $460,000 from the National Science Foundation, said foundation president Doug Winning, an architect. “We’re going for the full enchilada,” he said.

Meantime, the organization has raised about $10,000 in each of the past two years through art auctions held at the Atrium at Navesink Harbor. This year, no such event is planned, though members hope to put together an Antiques Roadshow-type event for 2013.

Meantime, the group has produced a reusable canvas shopping tote featuring Red Bank student art that will soon be available around town for $5. For $10, residents get the tote and membership in the RBBEF.

“We’re still taking baby steps at this point, but we’ve got momentum going, and that’s the important thing,” said Zipprich.

By JOHN T. WARD

An intensive manhunt for two suspected burglars in Little Silver ended early Wednesday afternoon with no evidence of a crime or suspects, police Chief Dan Shaffery tells redbankgreen.

Having swarmed the area with cops and search dogs from half a dozen jurisdictions, police called off the search at 12:50 p.m., less than two hours after a nearby resident reported a suspicious male in a neighbor’s backyard, Shaffery said.

Shaffery said the incident began with an  11 a.m. call to police by a resident of Queens Drive South, who reported seeing a man in dark clothes and a hooded sweatshirt in the rear yard of a neighboring property fronting on Prospect Avenue.

“He called it in, and rightfully so,” said Shaffery, who has been trumpeting the importance of residents reporting suspicious activities in the wake of a recent string of burglaries.

Police officers, who arrived on the scene within four minutes, found no suspects, but in canvasing the area, came upon a contractor who reported the possible presence of two suspicious males, Shaffery said.

That set off the hunt, which brought in help from Red Bank, Shrewsbury, Fair Haven, Long Branch and the Monmouth County Sheriff’s office, the last two of which loaned search dogs for the effort.

Because the homes in the area abut swamp and woodlands, police dove into the thicket, hoping to find the man or men. Two Little Silver officers in particular ended up “full of mud” from the effort, Shaffery said.

Police also checked nearby homes and ran every license plate of unexplained vehicles parked in the area, he said.

But the police and dogs found no evidence of a getaway or of a crime, he said.

“I’m sure there was somebody there,” Shaffery said of the initial report, “but we haven’t been unable to uncover any evidence of criminal activity.”

Shaffery said residents should not take the result to mean they should not call in on suspicions.

“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “I would never discourage anyone from calling.”

Sophie Shea, center, and Kristina Taylor, right working their roadside bake sale with friend Willow Nicolaides on Saturday. (Click to enlarge)

By STEPHANIE SCHROEPFER

What began as a curbside nickel-and-dime lemonade stand turned into a fundraising phenomenon in Rumson this past weekend.

Decorated in red, white and blue, homemade goodies sold on Ward Avenue in Rumson Saturday and Sunday raised more than $2,000 for the Great American Bake Sale, a national anti-childhood hunger campaign.

Leading the effort were Kristina Taylor, 12, and Sophie Shea, 11. And they had their families baking all weekend.

Kristina’s a foodie who wants to be a chef and “watches the Food Network all the time,” according to her mother, Kathryn Taylor.

A lemonade stand Kristina and Sophie ran outside the Taylor family’s windmill on Ward Avenue was a neighborhood staple that eked out a small profit, “but we never really came up with a cause,” said Kristina.

When she saw the Great American Bake Sale promoted on the Food Network, she enlisted Sophie to help.

On their first day of selling lemonade for the effort, they grossed $30. The next day sales went up to $60. After that, the pair felt they could handle a bigger challenge, so they upped their goal and broke out the secret family recipes of pinwheels, hot fudge, lemon bars, chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies.

They promoted their effort online, which enabled friends, family and fans to donate without attending the bake sale. They also placed some posters around town, told their lemonade stand customers and notified local news sources, but they were still surprised to start selling out within the first hour of selling on Saturday.

Online donations caused them to repeatedly increase their goal: $300 went to $600; $600 went to $1000. By the close of the weekend, they’d made $2,002.65.

“I can’t believe our goal was $300, and we raised over $2000,” Kristina said, as her mom was inside the house making a fresh batch of caramel. “I feel happy and proud.”

Some 40 teens from Rumson and Fair Haven, and a pair of Rumson homeowners, are facing charges following a police raid on a house party Saturday night, Rumson police said Monday.

The raid followed a police officer’s discovery of an “extremely intoxicated” female juvenile in the area of Bellevue Avenue and Rumson Road at 9:54 p.m., said Chief Richard Tobias.

Further investigation led police to a house at 60 Bellevue, where underage consumption of alcohol was occurring, Tobias said.

The homeowners were present, and were charged with maintaining a nuisance, a disorderly person’s offense, and were scheduled to appear in municipal court on May 9, he said.

Tobias, and a press release he issued, did not identify the homeowners. But Mayor John Ekdahl confirmed that the couple identified in property records as owning the home, Adam and Roslyn Bryan, were charged.

With help from Fair Haven police, “approximately 40″ juveniles were taken into custody and released to their parents, with possible charges pending, Tobias said.

Among those already charged is the teen who was alleged to have been drunk in the street. She faces a disorderly persons charge. Lieutenant Scott Paterson, who made the initial arrest, is determining which other juveniles to charge, Tobias said.

Ekdahl said the arrests come just as Fair Haven and Rumson are ramping up an anti-drug, anti-alcohol abuse alliance at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High.

The program, in development for several months and called the Municipal Alliance to Prevent Alcohol and Drug Abuse, is scheduled to put a program officer in the school on a part-time basis to educate students and parents about the dangers of substance abuse.

The program came about, Ekdahl said, after an anonymous survey of R-FH students found that more than 50 percent of all students had used illegal drugs or alcohol, and more than 90 percent of seniors had.

The results suggested that an in-school Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program aimed at students as young as fifth-graders “is not having a great impact,” Ekdahl said.

Now, it’s time for the two towns to “crack down hard” on parents who allow kids to drink, Ekdahl said.

Such parties, said Tobias, “happen on occasion, and the town is reacting to that.”