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.

By MARY ANN BOURBEAU

Looking to form a pickup hoops or softball game, but don’t have enough friends? Try Joinagame, a new social network for pickup sports based right here on the Green.

Launching today, Joinagame was built by Corey Wagner of Rumson and Patrick Finan of Fair Haven to handle all the pesky details, such as finding and reserving an available field or court.

But it also addresses a bigger hurdle: not knowing enough people who might be game for a game.

“Once you leave college, you lose your sports network,” said Wagner.

Wagner and Finan work with the recreation directors in Fair Haven, Little Silver, Red Bank, Rumson, Sea Bright and Shrewsbury, as well as Atlantic Highlands and Oceanport, to monitor availability of facilities. Once a person registers at Joinagame, he or she can sign up to play a game already formed online or start their own.

Sports offered are basketball, flag football, kickball, soccer, softball, tennis, Ultimate Frisbee and volleyball.

Joinagame is free, though some towns offer players the option of reserving a field for $40, which all the players would split via online payments. Joinagame takes care of all the paperwork, insurance and payments, making it a win-win for the players and the municipalities. The site will soon offer referees for hire, too.

“It’s free to register and we hope to keep it that way, covering our costs with advertising from sports merchandise stores or bars,” said Wagner.

Finan, 22, earned a finance degree from Providence College in Rhode Island, where he played intramural tennis, soccer, hockey and softball.

“Sports are a huge passion of mine,” he said.

But Joinagame isn’t just for the freshly minted grads. “I’ve seen a lot of parents who bring their kids to practice and say they miss being out there themselves,” he said.

Wagner, a 25-year-old construction worker, and Finan, who is currently waiting tables, met four years ago when Wagner began dating Finan’s sister Jennifer. They’ve spent the last five months creating the site.

Wagner says Joinagame works as well for avid players as it does for those who can only squeeze in a game or two a season.

“A pickup game is nice, because you can show up once,” he said. “You don’t have to commit to a league, and if you don’t mesh with the guys, you can get a whole different group next time.”

The key challenge to their roll-out, they said, is getting enough players on board from the outset so that games have enough players to commence. They spent a full day last week putting up fliers in area coffee shops, salons and other high-traffic businesses, and were pleased to find a lot of interest.

“I was surprised how quickly people picked up on the concept,” said Wagner. “We’re starting local to see how it goes, but we would like to do it for every town in the area.”

It doesn’t look very red now, but the outlook for fans of Red Bank’s red clay courts is rosy. (Click to enlarge)

By DANIELLE TEPPER

A recent visit to Red Bank’s clay tennis courts in Marine Park found the riverfront facility deserted and unusually quiet. The courts, cracked and faded, looked more like a stretch of beige sand than a popular spot for athletes to brush up on their skills.

Not to worry though, for this is an annual lull. Over the next month or so, the only player working these courts will be court manager Rich Nicoletti, who’s been tending the facility, and its patrons, for decades.

“What you’re looking at here is the wear-and-tear of winter,” says Nicoletti. And its his job to bring the playing surface back to dusty-red glory, he said.

Each spring, the courts are stripped down to their bottom layer as Nicoletti and a team work their magic to revive one of America’s tennis rarities.

“It’s a long process,” Nicoletti said. “Repairing the damage, smoothing it out, laying the clay and the slate, nailing the lines.”

You read correctly: the court boundaries aren’t merely sprayed on. Long strips  of fabric are cut and, one by one, nailed to the court by hand.

It sounds like an arduous task, but the wait shouldn’t be too long.

“By mid-May, we hope to be just about finished,” said Nicoletti. “Then you can come back here and have your tennis match on our beautiful red clay.”

The courts are open to the public from May 26 to mid-October, seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to sundown. But they’re not free: court usage costs $28 per hour, though members get unlimited use. See the facility website for a schedule of fees for borough residents and non-residents.

For more information on the courts or lessons with “Coach Rich,” call (732) 530-2737 or email.

You can also check out redbankgreen’s 2007 article on the courts here.

By JOHN T. WARD

Sixteen months after the debut of an artificial-turf football field at Count Basie Fields, Red Bank officials are planning to ramp up the facility’s ongoing modernization this year.

A final vote by the borough council on a $1.6 million bond ordinance scheduled for next week is expected to clear the way for the $2.1 million project, which would add a synthetic-turf little league/softball field and a baseball field overlain with a multiuse field marked for lacrosse, field hockey and soccer play.

The fields, all under existing lights, would complement the $900,000 stadium football and soccer field that debuted in late 2010. Three grass fields for baseball at the facility’s southern end would remain as natural turf.

When completed, by the end of the year or early next year, “all the fields with lights will have artificial turf, to extend the hours they can be utilized,” borough Engineer Christine Ballard, of T&M Associates, tells redbankgreen.

Ballard said a $250,000 Monmouth County Open Spaces Grant and a $171,000 Community Development Block Grant have already been secured, the second primarily to cover the cost of a Americans With Disability-compliant path and a restrooms.

Town officials hope to hear this summer on two additional grants: a $558,000 one from the state Department of Environmental Protection, and a $60,000 grant from Baseball America, a private sector source.

By then, construction is expected to be underway.

Ballard said she was unsure if Red Bank Catholic, which contributed to the stadium field replacement as a long-term tenant for football practice and home games, was contributing to this phase of the project. Borough Administrator Stanley Sickels could not be reached for comment.

Here’s the bond ordinance: 2012-4

By JOHN T. WARD

For George Sheehan Classic organizer Phil Hinck, the annual Red Bank running event is really several races in one.

The foremost is the one in which hundreds of runners, walkers and wheelchair users strive to cross the finish line on Broad Street in as little time as possible.

But well before that race, there’s the pressure to prop up the number of runners, which has been in gradual decline since the event moved to the borough from Asbury Park in 1994.

And then there’s the race against the clock to break down the street barriers and timing equipment to get out of the way of downtown merchants opening for Saturday morning business.

Now, in the biggest change to the event in years, Hinck and the race committee have decided to shorten the main race to a five-kilometer event, from five miles, a move that they hope will juice attendance and expedite post-race clean-up.

Sheehan Classic organizer Phil Hinck in 2009. (Click to enlarge)

Hinck said that starting with the June 16 event, the race will no longer include the nearly two-mile stretch that took place in Fair Haven. Instead, it will follow its traditional course from downtown Red Bank into Little Silver. But instead of heading east on Harding Road into Fair Haven and back, it will turn west on Harding from Prospect Avenue, directly up the dreaded Tower Hill, and on to its customary finish.

“I know they’re happy about it in Fair Haven,” Hinck tells redbankgreen, adding that residents of the Alderbook community in Little Silver, with a single access point on Harding, will also no longer be “trapped” in their development by the road closure.

The race, named for longtime Rumson resident and Red Bank physician Dr. George Sheehan, who popularized the sport through books and newspaper columns, was launched in Asbury Park in 1981 and relocated to Red Bank in 1994, when it was shortened from a 6.2-miler to a 5-miler.

The latest curtailment, Hinck said, is a reflection of runner preferences for either short runs or longer one, such as marathons and half-marathons. Five-mile races have fallen out of popularity, he said, noting that Rumson’s traditional five-miler is going to a 5K this year. Summer heat and humidity are factors, too, he said.

“Last year, there were good conditions, but there were only 1,500 runners,” he said. “We used to get 3,000.”

Hinck said the edited course will mean cost savings in terms of police protection, but it’s unclear if it will translate into lower entry fees, which ranged as high as $35 for late arrivers.

“We’re still working on that,” he said. The decision will rest on the level of corporate sponsorships, he said.

The shorter course should also translate into earlier postrace breaktown time. Hinck said he still hears complaints from some merchants that the race disrupts their business, but “we really hustle to get the streets open by 9:30 or 9:45,” before most shops are open.

“Every year it’s gotten better,” and the quicker race can be expected to shave a large block of time off the earliest street reopening, he said.

The decision to shorten the race, though, was a tough one, Hinck said.

“The hardcore runners don’t want to see these distances go away,” he said.

Registration opens March 15.

According to the Philadelphia Daily News, the 6-foot-4, 225-pound junior defensive end

is ranked as the 50th-best player in the nation. As a senior at Red Bank Regional, he had 11 sacks and 76 total tackles.

“I strongly believe in the values Coach Paterno set forth,” Sickels told Blue White Illustrated. “Really winning games with great student-athletes, competing in all the different ways they do. I really love that and I love that coach O’Brien is going to keep that going.

“I really want to be a part of the new era of Penn State football.”

He joins Ohio athlete Ross Douglas and Virginia quarterback Christian Hackenberg as the three juniors who have committed to PSU.

Tony winning actor Chuck Cooper is in the house for IN THIS HOUSE, the musical that kicks off its world premiere engagement next week at Two River Theater.

By TOM CHESEK 

When last we looked in on Two River Theater Company, the folks over at Red Bank’s regional professional stage were keeping the motor (and the meter) running on an acclaimed production of August Wilson’s Jitney, a modern American classic set in the heart of a scarred but scrappy urban neighborhood.

When the lights come up this Sunday in the Two River Theater’s intimate “black box” performance space, they’ll beam down upon a now-vacant home in a quiet bit of country; a setting in which two sets of strangers – a troubled young couple who’ve lost their way, and an older pair who’ve returned to this place to find something they’ve been missing – are brought together by chance on a frosty New Year’s Eve, In This House.

At first glance, the two shows would appear to have little in common – but a closer look reveals the presence in both casts of Chuck Cooper, the Tony winning actor and singer (1996 Best Featured Actor in the musical The Life) who topped the cast of Jitney as Becker, the dour and disillusioned boss of the play’s gypsy cab depot.

In the “chamber musical” that’s being staged for the first time anywhere – one of two world premieres in TRTC artistic director John Dias‘s 2011-2012 season (the other was last October’s Seven Homeless Mammoths…) – Cooper co-stars with Brenda Pressley (Broadway’s original cast of Dreamgirls) as the older couple Henry and Luisa. Jeff Kready (Broadway’s Billy Elliott) and Margo Seibert (TRTC’s Orestes) appear as younger couple Johnny and Annie under the direction of May Adrales.

And, as if the production didn’t already have enough to distinguish it, it may just be the only musical you’ll see this season that boasts a score by a former NFL defensive tackle.

IN THIS HOUSE composer Mike Reid as he appeared during his pro football career in the 1970s, and at the keyboard in a recent Nashville concert.

While the notion of a pro footballer who writes musicals is not entirely unheard of – refer to Middletown’s own Michael Attardi – the work of Nashville-based Mike Reid and his songwriting partner Sarah Schlesinger is hardly a novelty. The two have penned several theatrical works together (their Ballad of Little Jo was also in the running as a possible TRTC offering), and Reid has spent years as one of Music City’s most successful songsmiths, with a slew of hits for Ronnie Milsap (the Grammy winning “Stranger in My House” and several number one singles), Kenny Rogers, The Judds, Shelby Lynne, Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw and more. The 1970s era All-Pro lineman for the Cincinnati Bengals also topped the Country charts with his own recording of “Walk On Faith” in 1991.

For In This House, a work that TRTC first presented in 2011 as a staged reading with a different cast and director, Reid and Schlesinger (who were “in the house” to fine-tune the show as it developed) collaborated on the book with Jonathan Bernstein. Music director James Sampliner leads a four-piece, piano-strings-reeds chamber ensemble.

The Drama Desk at redbankgreen spoke to the very busy Chuck Cooper, making his home at Two River in between his final round of performances in Jitney, and tech-week rehearsals for In This House.

redbankgreen: Between your commitment to JITNEY and rehearsals for IN THIS HOUSE, you must be getting pretty familiar with Red Bank, New Jersey. Have you been commuting back and forth to the city, or staying locally these past couple of months?

CHUCK COOPER: I’ve been put up at the Shrewsbury Manor, which has just been wonderful; very comfortable, luxurious accommodations with a view of the water.

I’m always amazed at how actors are able to juggle two major projects simultaneously,  given what you need to summon for every performance… 

Well, you could think of it as watching two movies that are playing in the same theater at the same time – you walk in on one, then you go across the hall and walk in on the other.

You make it sound a whole lot easier than I know it is in real life. What makes it especially amazing is that IN THIS HOUSE is a musical where you’re one of just four actors, and JITNEY is a drama with some heavy stuff going on and a lot of actors moving on and off the stage.

They are two very different shows, different experiences, but I find it refreshing in a way. I do enjoy the contrast. I enjoy flexing those very different muscles between doing a play and doing a musical.

When you think about it, there are some similarities between the characters you play in each show. Do you find yourself zeroing in on some of those factors in common; drawing from that a little bit?

The two characters are similar in that they’re both fathers and men who have experienced tragedy. They’ve both lost people in their lives, whether it was a loss that they couldn’t prevent or, in Becker’s case, the rejection of his son.

You’ve done a good deal of musicals on Broadway and elsewhere, but IN THIS HOUSE, which Two River presented in a rough earlier form, is something a little different from the norm: a little quieter and more contemplative than a traditional Broadway-style production packed with showstopper production numbers.

Well, there have always been some very dramatic musicals – going back to West Side Story and certainly a lot more in the years since then. I enjoy musicals that are a little weighty in their subject matter. I think that musicals are a great way to embody and address some large issues. They present the big picture in a way that the audience can respond to on an emotional level.

Is it difficult to just switch off being a singer when you’re doing straight drama? Your Mr. Becker seemed like a very serious guy who would never exactly break into song for any reason…but, as (Jitney director) Ruben Santiago-Hudson told us, there is a rhythm to the words of August Wilson, and he sought out actors like yourself who had an understanding of that.

There are abstract similarities between musical drama and August Wilson’s writing, which is very musical. In fact, Ruben told us at the start of rehearsals that we should work as if we were musicians, playing a piece of music together.

Well, you and the whole cast of JITNEY hit all the notes, in a show that created a lot of advance buzz. Compare and contrast with IN THIS HOUSE, a show that’s an unknown quantity for just about everyone who comes to see it – but one that’s being nurtured here with a lot of love.

Everyone involved has been working hard to get everything just right. We’re working with a very evocative, beautiful set design, and with a four piece ensemble — it’s a  wonderful little show that works as both a play and as a musical. I’m very fortunate to be a part of it.

In This House presents the first in an extended run of previews on Sunday, March 4 (3 pm) and Tuesday, March 6 (8 pm); official opening night is Saturday, March 17 (that performance is SOLD OUT), and the show continues with a schedule of evening and matinee performances, Wednesdays through Sundays until April 8. Tickets are $45 – $65 (with a new discounted price of $24 for anyone 30 years and younger) and are available by calling the TRTC Box Office at 732.345.1400, or visiting the TRTC website for schedule details and availability — as well as info on dinner/show packages and other special-event performances.

Delores Martin, mother of point guard Asim Jules, cheers on Red Bank Regional in its NJSIAA Central Jersey Group II showdown against Rumson-Fair Haven Tuesday night.

Bulldog senior JJ Conklin scored a career-high 22 points as R-FH won at home, 47-39, and advanced to the second round of state playoffs at Ewing Thursday night. (Photos by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge)

The event card included races for age groups ranging from eighth graders to masters, and featured an appearance by Craig Slater, a Ranney School senior who is lined up to row (on water) at Harvard beginning in the fall.