Gold Medal Swimmer, Williamstown Resident to Speak at Bay State Winter Games

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- Olympic Gold Medalist and former Bay State Games competitor Samantha Livingstone will share her story through her “Dreams Come True” presentation at the Bay State Winter Games.
 
Livingstone will  meet with the athletes and their families while at the annual Bay State Games’ Athlete Party. The party is part of the Bay State Games Figure Skating competition which takes place Feb. 10 and 11 and features nearly 450 performances by skaters from Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island.
 
Livingstone is from Peabody and competed in the Bay State Summer Games as a swimmer from the North Shore Swim Club. She was a seven-time NCAA All-American Swimmer from the University of Georgia and co-captain of the 2005 NCAA Women’s Championship team. Samantha was a member of the gold medal winning Women’s 4-by-200 Freestyle Relay Team at the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She currently resides in Williamstown, Massachusetts with her husband and four children.
 
Through the power of storytelling, Livingstone brings you on a journey from a little girl wishing on a star to the top of the Olympic podium: living proof that dreams do come true. In this presentation, she will talk about what it really looks like to go after a dream, how it feels to stand atop the podium, and why you don’t need to know all the hows before you begin chasing down a dream. She cracks open her toolbox of skills that she acquired over the years – sharing her biggest takeaways and shedding light on which skills truly served her and which ones held her back.
 
“Over the last four decades, nearly three dozen athletes have participated in the Bay State Summer or Winter Games and then competed in the Olympics later in their careers” Bay State Games Executive Director Kevin Cummings said. “We are excited and proud to have one of those Olympic alumni return to the Games and inspire the next generation of Bay State Games participants to pursue their dreams."
 
The Bay State Winter Games celebrates its 33rd year in when the competition opens with the figure Skating competition on Saturday at Williams College's Champan Rink. Athletes competing in figure skating, curling, bowling and masters ice hockey will represent Massachusetts as well as New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island. Participants in the Winter Games represent several hundred different communities and range in age from 6 to 70. For additional information on event specifics, please review the sports specific pages of the Winter Games at www.baystategames.org.
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Williamstown Select Board Awards ARPA Funds to Remedy Hall

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday allocated $20,000 in COVID-19-era relief funds to help a non-profit born of the pandemic era that seeks to provide relief to residents in need.
 
On a unanimous vote, the board voted to grant the American Rescue Plan Act money to support Remedy Hall, a resource center that provides "basic life necessities" and emotional support to "individuals and families experiencing great hardship."
 
The board of the non-profit approached the Select Board with a request for $12,000 in ARPA Funds to help cover some of the relief agency's startup costs, including the purchase of a vehicle to pick up donations and deliver items to clients, storage rental space and insurance.
 
The board estimates that the cost of operating Remedy Hall in its second year — including some one-time expenses — at just north of $31,500. But as board members explained on Monday night, some sources of funding are not available to Remedy Hall now but will be in the future.
 
"With the [Williamstown] Community Chest, you have to be in existence four or five years before you can qualify for funding," Carolyn Greene told the Select Board. "The same goes for state agencies that would typically be the ones to fund social service agencies.
 
"ARPA made sense because [Remedy Hall] is very much post-COVID in terms of the needs of the town becoming more evident."
 
In a seven-page letter to the town requesting the funds, the Remedy Hall board wrote that, "need is ubiquitous and we are unveiling that truth daily."
 
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