Bad form
Team spirit
Don’t cloak hunting cruelties in science
CVU helps Johnson gymnast balances sport, school
POSTAL CUSTOMER
PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT #217 CONCORD, NH ECRWSSEDDM
Page 4 Page 9
February 17, 2022
Weekly news coverage for Charlotte and Hinesburg
thecitizenvt.com
In Hinesburg
Air apparent
Community Resource Center hires new head SCOOTER MACMILLAN STAFF REPORTER
The Hinesburg Community Resource Center has a new executive director but one with the same message her predecessor often spread. Like Rachel Kring before her, Shannon Wheeler really, really wants people to realize the nonprofit organization has lots of different programs they may not know about. In fact, Wheeler was at the selectboard meeting Feb. 2 impressing upon those gathered the gospel of the wide variety of help the resource center offers.
The food shelf is the program most people are familiar with, but the resource center also sponsors the emergency financial assistance program, which offers emergency funds for people behind on their bills who may need help paying for heating and electricity or car repairs. The medical equipment lending program loans equipment like wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, canes, commodes and shower seats to community members in need. The resource center’s website, hinesburgresource.org, has a See WHEELER on page 6
‘He’s going to be the best of them all’ Ryan Cochran-Siegle wins silver in Beijing KIM BROWN CONTRIBUTOR
PHOTO BY AL FREY
Whether she’s swinging from bar to bar or inverting atop a skinny beam, Lamoille Union’s Kayla Meegan is one of the top gymnasts in the state. Meegan trains and travels with the team from Champlain Valley Union High School, since Lamoille doesn’t have a gymnastics team. See story, page 9.
To tell the story of Ryan Cochran-Siegle’s recent success — he just won a silver in the men’s super G at the Beijing Olympics — you’ve got to start with the story of Cochran’s Ski Area. That’s the ski hill Mickey and Ginny Cochran created on their farm in Richmond, where they erected a rope tow behind the house, mounted lights on trees and invited the whole neighborhood over to ski. Their four kids, Barbara Ann, Marilyn, Bobby and Lindy became World Cup stars and Olympians. B.A., as Barbara Ann is known to everyone, reached the summit in 1972 with a gold medal
in slalom at the Olympic Games in Sapporo, Japan. The Cochran family is American alpine skiing’s first family, not because Mickey and Ginny produced four Olympians, and not because the next generation of Cochran’s sported six more World Cup skiers, two of whom would also become Olympians. No, it is because this is a place that still invites the neighborhood kids over to ski and those kids to this day still learn from the stars of previous generations. At Cochran’s if there is one cliché that rings true, it’s “pay it forward.” But among those cousins who See COCHRAN-SIEGLE on page 2