REVIEW BAINBRIDGE ISLAND
INSIDE: Spare the rod, Sports, A12
Friday, August 21, 2015 | Vol. 90, No. 34 | WWW.BAINBRIDGEREVIEW.COM | 75¢
Transitioning to Bainbridge High, the Link Crew way New mentor program helps freshmen adjust to high school life BY JESSICA SHELTON Bainbridge Island Review
Fifty-one students will show up to Bainbridge High School wearing the exact same outfit for the first day of school: a sky-blue T-shirt with the words “Link Crew” emblazoned across the front. It’s no fashion faux pas. They’re peer mentors for BHS’ new freshmen orientation program, and besides forgoing their right to “dress to impress” when classes resume the first week of September, they’re devoting 14 precious end-of-summer hours to smoothing out that oft anxiety-inducing middleto-high school transition. On Tuesday, the Link Leaders began their training,
a two-day tutorial of team building and leadership techniques that will equip them to lead crews of 10 students at Spartan Start Up, BHS’ freshmen orientation event this Friday. But the commitment to underclassmen doesn’t stop there. Ideally, Link Leaders will connect with their crews all year long. “The idea right now is to have at least once-a-month check-ins between the Link Leaders and their Link Crews,” said Katie Leigh, a BHS Health teacher who attended a Link Crew conference earlier this summer. “By check in, we’re hoping that it’s something fun — if a leader is a soccer player, the crew might go along with the other leader and watch the soccer game — it doesn’t have to be all 400 TURN TO LINK | A17
Jessica Shelton | Bainbridge Island Review
BHS senior Robin Hilderman explains 64 Squares, a team-building game from the Link Leader handbook, at Wednesday’s training. Hilderman and a co-leader will walk a crew of 10 freshmen through the exercise during Friday’s Spartan Start Up.
POOLSIDE REFLECTIONS
A look back at the first summer at the Pool at Pleasant Beach BY LUCIANO MARANO Bainbridge Island Review
Luciano Marano | Bainbridge Island Review
Some younger swimmers enjoy a few minutes in the hot tub during adult swim — the last 10 minutes of every hour — at The Pool at Pleasant Beach.
Sitting in the sun, sporting comfy shorts and cool shades, Patti Peterson looks out over the picturesque blue water, squealing kids and smiling families from her station poolside. Not a bad day at the office, really, but it’s all in a day’s work for the manager of The Pool at Pleasant Beach. In fact, it’s just another Thursday afternoon. The pool, which officially opened in downtown Lynwood in June, has quickly become a community staple, making Peterson — already indivisible from thoughts of aquatic sports in the minds
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of most islanders — the perfect person for the job. She’s taught numerous classes at the Bainbridge Island Aquatic Center and the Wing Point Country Club pool, as well as been a coach for the Bainbridge High School girls swimming and diving team for many years. Basically, she laughed, she never really gets to dry off. Now, with presumably a little more than a month of the new pool’s inaugural season left to go, Peterson said the first year saw some delays, some snags and a whole lot of success. All told, the pool has approximately 160 member families already, she said, and though it will remain open “until the end of September or until the
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weather turns to fall,” there are already plans to keep the fitness fun going through the winter at Pleasant Beach with additional exercise equipment and group activities. Construction has already begun on an upstairs cardio fitness center — consisting of aerobic machines, a stretching area and free weights — which will be available all year to pool members starting this fall. “It’s a nice thing on the south end,” Peterson said. “Actually, we’ve had a lot of people who live down here who really like the development as a whole because there’s so much going on now and there’s so much variety of things TURN TO POOL | A10
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