The park was named after 1997 Mount Greylock graduate William E. Laston.
LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — A scheduling quirk has led to a fitting tribute for a departed community member.
On Friday night, Mount Greylock Regional will host McCann Tech in a varsity football game at Bill Laston Memorial Park.
It is the first time the park, named for the 1997 Mount Greylock graduate, will be used to host a regular season football game and another opportunity to honor Laston's memory.
"When Mount Greylock comes down for scrimmages and things like that, they know who Bill is," said Mark Froio, who married Bill's mother, Joanne Taylor Laston Froio. "He's a former Mount Greylock football player. To have an official game at the park in his honor is huge.
"My wife will be there with Bill's jersey. My wife, her ex-husband, and all their family and friends spent eight years building that park."
Shortly after William E. Laston's death in 2002, those family and friends organized fundraisers that led to the creation of the park, which was dedicated in 2010.
The park is home to youth football, baseball and lacrosse, and earlier this year was the site of a high school football scrimmage between Mount Greylock and Taconic.
But a couple of weeks ago, the opportunity arose to hold a full-fledged varsity game there.
"We started last Saturday talking about it," John Wellspeak said this week. "We miss our Friday night games, and unfortunately our [high school] field was already spoken for for the soccer game. We said, Can we have one at Laston?"
Turns out, they can, with a little help.
"We're getting the lights donated from the sheriff's department," said Wellspeak, a youth football coach and a member of the town's Bill Laston Memorial Park Committee. "They've been very helpful."
The McCann-Mount Greylock game — a league contest for the two schools in the first year of a new high school football alignment — had been scheduled for Saturday evening at the junior-senior high school's John T. Allen Field. That field was already booked for Friday for a boys soccer game against Longmeadow.
"Friday Night Lights — Lanesborough," will not be the first time that Bill Laston Memorial Park has been illuminated. The Route 7 facility has seen temporary lighting for concerts in the past, Wellspeak said.
"We've never had a real sporting event under the lights, so it's going to be interesting setting them up," he said.
That was Wednesday's task, as the lights arrived in the afternoon and were tested at dusk. Wellspeak said Tuesday that the challenge was going to be to ensure the light towers, which extend to a maximum height of 40 feet, provided proper illumination for punts, kickoffs and long passes.
"We're sure we can illuminate it on the ground just fine," he said.
Wellspeak, himself a high school official, inspected the finished product on Wednesday night along with coaches from both teams.
"We had my son [Mount Greylock quarterback Michael Wellspeak] throwing balls way up high in the air and had little pee-wee kids out there trying to catch 'em just to see if they could see the ball," Wellspeak said Wednesday. "It looked good.
"Now, we just have to keep the rain away."
Now that everything is good to go, the anticipation can really start to build as Mount Greylock prepares to play a rare varsity game away from "home" but at home in the other town that comprises the regional school district.
"I'm very excited about it," Wellspeak said. "I'm not doing this by myself by any means. I'm just working to make sure the field is OK. There are a lot of people helping to pull this off."
Part of the excitement stems from the fact that so many of the Mounties played their youth football at Laston Memorial Park, home of the Lanesborough Tigers.
"[Mount Greylock] coach Agostini is very gung-ho about the youth program, so that gives us incentive to help him out in any way we can," Wellspeak said. "The Tigers are very excited. The high school has always been good to us anyway. They've let us run out in front of the team on game nights for many years.
"It's a good relationship, and it's good to see it continue."
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Berkshire Wind Power Cooperative Corporation Scholarships
LUDLOW, Mass. — For the third year, Berkshire Wind Power Cooperative Corporation (BWPCC) will award scholarships to students from Lanesborough and Hancock.
The scholarship is open to seniors at Mount Greylock Regional High School and Charles H. McCann Technical School. BWPCC will select two students from the class of 2024 to receive $1,000 scholarships.
The scholarships will be awarded to qualifying seniors who are planning to attend either a two- or four-year college or trade school program. Seniors must be from either Hancock or Lanesborough to be considered for the scholarship. Special consideration will be given to students with financial need, but all students are encouraged to apply.
The BWPCC owns and operates the Berkshire Wind Power Project, a 12 turbine, 19.6-megawatt wind farm located on Brodie Mountain in Hancock and Lanesborough. The non-profit BWPCC consists of 16 municipal utilities located in Ashburnham, Boylston, Chicopee, Groton, Holden, Hull, Ipswich, Marblehead, Paxton, Peabody, Russell, Shrewsbury, Sterling, Templeton, Wakefield, and West Boylston, and their joint action agency, the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC).
To be considered, students must submit all required documents including a letter of recommendation from their school counselor and a letter detailing their educational and professional goals. Application and submission details will be shared with students via their school counselors. The deadline to apply is Friday, April 19.
MMWEC is a not-for-profit, public corporation and political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts created by an Act of the General Court in 1975 and authorized to issue tax-exempt debt to finance a wide range of energy facilities. MMWEC provides a variety of power supply, financial, risk management and other services to the state's consumer-owned, municipal utilities.
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