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It isn’t just a new library being built at the old Pederson Automotive site on Morris Street. An understanding that the local area is one community – a single, multi-cultural community – is being built there as well, La Conner Library Foundation Director Susan Macek said last week. The much-anticipated start of construction of the La Conner-Swinomish Regional Library underscores the value of working together on a project that will serve and benefit the many diverse groups within the library district here, Macek said. And s...
If science requires solving complex problems one step at a time, a La Conner alumnus is among those setting the pace when it comes to the vital on-going study of viruses, stem cells and gene therapy. Nick Llewellyn, a 1998 high school graduate, is a member of the research team at the acclaimed Paula Cannon Lab at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he has been engaged in critical studies involving both HIV and COVID-19. “My work over the past year,” Llewellyn told the...
Three greater La Conner family farms will participate in the Skagit Festival of Family Farms this weekend: Roozengaarde, Schuh Farms and Gordon Skagit Farms. Longtime participant Hedlin Family Farms is not on the roster. Started 20-plus years ago by the Washington State University’s Skagit County Extension program, the event took a break last year, a result of the coronavirus pandemic. “Last fall there was no vaccine, so we as a group decided it would be better not to encourage people to com...
Construction Update The La Conner Library is excited to announce Tiger Construction is mobilizing to the site of the new La Conner Swinomish Library and demolition of the Thrift Shop is expected this week. This is an exciting step forward in a series of highly visible progress on the new library. A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for 1 p.m. Wednesday, Sept.29. The community is invited to this long anticipated event. The site will be blessed by the Swinomish Tribe and county and state representatives have been invited to take part. Summer R...
There was no saving Grace in Marysville Friday. The La Conner High School boys' soccer team saw to that. The Braves won their first match of the young season with an impressive 4-0 triumph over Grace Academy, helping take the sting out of close losses to NW2B foes Friday Harbor and Mount Vernon Christian that opened the fall campaign. Cameron Burks, Isa Rojas-Gonzales, Thomas Kitchen and Christian Fix – all among a core of key Braves returnees – scored goals for the victors. Mason Wilson assisted on two scores, while Samuel...
They say it is an ill wind that blows no good. If that’s the case, conditions at Whittaker Field Friday were plenty bad as heavy rain, fierce winds and a partial power outage made for an uncomfortable night of high school football. And that was just in the stands. Down on the field, a young La Conner High football team suffered a 61-0 blowout loss to perennial NW2B title contender Friday Harbor. The Wolverines (1-2), who opted out of last spring’s modified grid season due to a COVID-19 surge in the San Juan Islands, stormed past a La Con...
A La Conner distance runner shone through gray skies and rainy conditions at the Skagit Flats Marathon Sept. 12. Galina Free, who was a cross-country skier growing up in far east Russia, didn’t melt in the face of a strong field and the opportunity to qualify for the storied Boston Marathon. Far from it, in fact. Free, 45, who can often be seen on training runs in and around La Conner, covered the 26.2 miles course in just over three hours and nine minutes, placing fifth overall and first a...
It was at La Conner High School where one of the foremost archaeologists in North America started to dig what would become her life’s work. A transfer student in the late 1990s from Victoria, B.C., the future Dr. Kisha Supernant recalled, “as a sophomore, I took the world history class with Mr. (Vince) Sellen that really helped solidify my interest in archaeology.” Today, she is the director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology and an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. Super...
As a La Conner High student in the late 1990s, she was shy and introspective, a teen apt to shun the limelight save once when called upon to sing a solo in a campus stage play. These days, Kisha Supernant – now Dr. Kisha Supernant – has become one of the most widely recognized leaders in her field, the subject of numerous TV, radio and print media interviews in the U.S. and Canada this summer alone. Supernant, an archaeologist, has worked with indigenous communities to locate human...
Idled by the COVID-19 pandemic a year ago, the two-time defending state 2B champion La Conner High School volleyball team couldn’t wait to get back in the gym this fall. And when that time came last week, the Lady Braves got back to business by making short work of 2A foe Sehome and NW2B rival Darrington with twin straight-sets victories to open the 2021 net campaign. Ellie Marble delivered 20 kills and Emma Keller fueled the attack with 30 assists to lead a 25-11, 25-6, 25-20 rout of Sehome last Tuesday at Landy James Gym. Marble added 15 k...
Donald R. Kruse passed away at his home with his son by his side on August 27, 2021 after an 18-month battle with Leukemia. He was the owner of Skagit Sun, a berry farm in La Conner, Washington. Don Kruse was born in Jefferson City, Missouri on July 12, 1948, the youngest of three children born to Eleanor (Stratton) Kruse and Raymond Kruse. He finished high school in Jefferson City. During his formative years, Don’s family lived in the city but also had a farm where they spent much of their t...
Having turned the page on the Labor Day holiday, La Conner High sports teams are poised to get down to business this week with the return of their regular fall sports schedules. The La Conner High volleyball team, which won State 2B crowns in 2018 and 2019 and did not lose a single set during last spring’s modified season, opened their current schedule with a non-conference home match opposite 2A Sehome Tuesday night. “Filling a non-league schedule with larger schools will help our girls to improve and play at a higher level,” La Conner head vo...
La Conner teachers welcome students back to class today, a return to full-time in-person instruction for the first time since March 2020. But planning for the Sept. 1 back to school date has been weeks in the making, including a series of summer budget workshops and hearings capped by passage in late July of a balanced $14 million general fund budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year. The school district anticipates $14,070,000 in revenues and expenditures of $14,022,000 during the ’21-’w22 year. The budget was approved during a July 26 hybrid sch...
The countdown is on for the start of school, meaning numbers are now much on the minds of La Conner students, teachers and administrators. That’s especially the case as the La Conner School District begins developing a new math curriculum during the 2021-22 academic year, Superintendent Will Nelson told board members at their nearly two-hour hybrid meeting Aug. 23. His confirmation of the district’s emphasis on math squared nicely with the school panel’s emerging road map for short-term and long-range district goals. “I’d love to see a focus on...
There was a time, in the late 1980s, when famed actor Danny DeVito and a production crew scouted La Conner as a setting for the dark comedy film “War of the Roses,” an eventual Golden Globe nominee for Best Motion Picture. Alas, the Hollywood suits chose Coupeville – often a high school sports rival of La Conner – for the film shoot. But fast forward more than three decades to last weekend and the sweltering San Joaquin Valley city of McFarland, California, which did land a mov...
Calling the La Conner High School girls’ soccer team a work in progress is a compliment Lady Braves players and head coach Christian Warman accept with pride. That’s because the retooled roster has taken a blue-collar, hard-working approach to preseason workouts. And the result, according to Warman, is steady progress made leading up to the team’s Sept. 16 conference opener at Coupeville. “Preseason practices have been going fantastic,” Warman told the Weekly News Tuesday. “Our captains worked very hard in the off-season to keep this team t...
Jacques Brunisholz once completed a demanding 500-mile hike on the famed Pacific Crest Trail. Years before he trekked across much of the globe, including a stop in Afghanistan nearly a half century ago. But given his passion for public service it likely was harder for him to step away from the La Conner Town Council last week. Still, the retired La Conner High School foreign language and art teacher hardly broke stride in choosing to resign his long-held council seat, a tenure begun about 2008, during the town’s famed flap over the status of a...
Decisions, decisions. Perhaps none of late have been so scrutinized as whether to be vaccinated against COVID-19. In some cases, as for the state’s health care workers and emergency responders, it is less a choice than a mandate in the attempt to curb spread of the deadly virus, which has claimed nearly 630,000 American lives in a year and a half, 300 times more than the number of U.S. military members lost in two decades fighting in Afghanistan. This month has brought two major developments on the vaccine front. On Aug. 9, Gov. Jay Inslee p...
Rachel Cram has focused on local history this year, developing an in-depth anecdotal history and virtual tour of landmark La Conner downtown buildings. The La Conner High senior is also eyeing the future – her future. Cram, a 5’6” guard, has signed a letter of intent to attend and play basketball next year at Carroll College, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) school in Helena, Montana that boasts a strong women’s hoops tradition. The Fighting Saints won Front...
It seems like yesterday that the surprising La Conner High football team was securing an NW2B title with a season-ending four-game winning streak after three straight single victory years. And, in a way, it was yesterday as the upstart Braves and their league foes shifted traditional fall schedules to spring in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet much has changed in just four months. First-year La Conner head coach Jeff Scoma stepped down in June to lead the 3A Stanwood High grid program and has been replaced at the Braves helm by defensive...
On a fundamental level this preseason is no different for the La Conner High School volleyball team than any other during the 29-year tenure of hall of fame head coach Suzanne Marble. In other ways, however, it is a far different vibe now than last August. The team, which captured the 2018 and 2019 state 2B net crowns, is looking forward to a full fall season after having been limited to a short spring campaign due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “This year more than ever has been the season we have all looked forward to the most,” Marble told the...
A time came when Lorraine Loomis figured there was a better way to earn a living than toiling at double shifts as a fish processor. She was right. There was a better way. It just wasn’t easier. If anything, becoming a long tenured “salmon warrior” was much harder – but a career that Loomis embraced and now provides a legacy destined to have an impact for generations to come, due to her diligence and perseverance. The longtime director of the Swinomish Tribal Community Fisheries progr...
New La Conner School Superintendent Will Nelson cannot stress enough the value of doing one’s homework. That goes for him as well as the nearly 600 students he and school district staff will greet this fall as La Conner transitions from on-line and hybrid instructional models employed last year in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. School board members chose Nelson this past spring following a rigorous selection process to succeed Rich Stewart as the district’s lead administrator. Nelson had been director of equity and student success at Arl...
Every four years, Maggie Wilder finds herself weeping during the Olympics. “I’m moved by the glory of it and that I never won anything,” she said. “I always wonder what that would feel like.” Knowing that qualifying for the high hurdles was out of the question, Wilder suggested to her sister Georgia Johnson that they enter pies in the Skagit County Fair. “I wanted to win something in a friendly competitive way,” said Wilder, “and what could be friendlier than the fair?” When the judging was o...
An abnormally dry summer here didn’t stop the Pacific Northwest Rain from descending on the Valley of the Sun. The Rain, an area girls’ travel team, took top honors in their high school age division of the recent 2021 Summer Sizzle basketball tournament in Phoenix. Five La Conner High players – Juna Swanson, Rachel Cram, Sarah Cook, Ellie Marble and Josie Harper – were members of the tourney title winners, coached by former Mount Vernon High standout Tyler Amaya, who played col...