The Big Picture Archive

NORMAL - Monticello running back Koyie Williams finds an open lane during his team's state title game against Montini on Friday. Williams finished with 32 all-purpose yards in the Sages' 49-8 loss to the Broncos in the Class 3A state title game on Friday. (Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks)

Tolono - Members of the Unity football team and student fans celebrate the football team's upset victory over St. Joseph-Ogden at Hicks Field on Saturday. The Rockets advance in the Class 3A bracket to host Nashville next Saturday after defeating the Spartans, 35-7. (Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks)

St. Joseph - St. Joseph-Ogden's Brodie Harm and James Barron bring down West Frankfort quarterback Lucas Parker during their first-round IHSA playoff football game. The Spartans earned their 10th win, defeating the visiting Redbirds, 48-0. SJO advances through the bracket to face the Unity Rockets on the road next Saturday at 2pm. (Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks)

PEORIA - Unity's Ashlyn Denney runs the first lap of her run at the IHSA Cross Country State Finals in 2023. Without her at Tuesday's Illini Prairie Conference Meet, the 3X consecutive state champion Rockets still dominated the field, taking first place in the team standings with 31 points.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

Nick Krisman

TOLONO - Kicker Nick Krisman puts the pigskin through the uprights during St. Joseph-Ogden's quarterfinal playoff game at Hicks Field against Unity on November 12, 2005. The Spartans, who entered the game 10-1 and lost their earlier regular season battle 28-26, fell in another heartbreaking barnburner, 21-20 in double overtime. Unity (13-1) eventually advanced to the Class 3A title game, falling 34-7 to the Bureau Valley Storm (14-0).

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

CORRECTION: Part of the original caption for this photo was incorrect. It said, "The Spartans, who entered the game 11-0 and had shutout the Rockets 43-0 earlier in the season, fell in a heartbreaking barnburner, 18-14. Rival football nomads, SJO and Unity (9-4) played tough independent schedules that season while looking for new conferences to call home." This was incorrect. The caption above reflects the correct game and moment.

Tayton Gerdes

Tayton Gerdes watches the ball sails away after holding for Lucas Smith during a second-half kick-off in St. Joseph-Ogden's home game against Carterville. The Spartans, who went 5-0 after the 26-20 home victory over the Lions, travel to Bloomington to take on a 3-win, 2-loss Central Catholic team this Friday.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

St. Joseph-Ogden's Alex Acosta and Logan Mills celebrate Mills' second-half score on their way to 9-0 shutout over Illini Prairie Conference foe Central Catholic. Acosta led all scorers with four goals and one assist. Mills record four assists during SJO's home match on Tuesday, October 1.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

Good spin for Tigers, Urbana tennis team downs St. Joseph at home

Lillian Hall hits the ball back over the next during her match at #2 singles against St.Joseph-Ogden's Madison Clampitt. Hall, a senior, defeated Clampitt, 6-3 , 6-7, 7-4.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

URBANA - The Urbana tennis team won five singles matches and all three doubles contests to defeat St. Joseph-Ogden at home Monday. The Tigers were dominant on all nine courts, winning the dual match 8-1.

All but one of the four matches decided by a third-set tiebreaker ended in Urbana's favor. Lillian Hall won the first set 6-3 and dropped the second set 7-6 in her match at No. 2 singles against SJO's Madison Clampitt. Taking an early lead in the tiebreaker, Hall secured the win with a 7-4 finish.

Coming off a 6-1, 6-1 loss to Danville’s Aliya Morgan, Urbana’s Ananyah Tangmunarunkit lost her first set against St. Joseph-Ogden’s Madison Farber at No. 3 singles, 6-3. Regrouping, she frustrated Farber with strong defensive play, running down good shots that could have been winners to take the second set 6-1. Tangmunarunkit, a sophomore, held on to an early lead to win 10-7 in the final set.

The Tigers also won both doubles matches that required an extra set.

Urbana’s Grace Coady and Lillian Hall pulled out the win at No. 1 doubles after defeating St. Joseph-Ogden duo Lily Rice and MaKennah Hamilton, 4-6, 6-2, 10-6.

Ananyah Tangmunarunkit, a sophomore, lines up a short-angled shot during her doubles match with partner Elianna Lee. The Tigers' doubles duo beat St. Joseph-Ogden’s Ella Dieteker and Sara Kearney in a three-setter. Tangmunarunkit's singles matches was also decided after three sets.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

At No. 2 doubles, Ananyah Tangmunarunkit and Elianna Lee played an exciting match against St. Joseph-Ogden’s Ella Dieteker and Sara Kearney. The Spartan pair won the first set 6-4, thanks to outstanding net play from Kearney. The Urbana duo regrouped, keeping the ball away from SJO’s best net player to win the second set 6-2. Tied at one set apiece, Urbana won the decider 10-5.

The Spartans’ only victory came at No. 1 singles. In a contentious battle, SJO’s Sami Kelso defeated Urbana’s Grace Coady 3-6, 7-5, 10-5.

The Tigers are back on the courts at Blair Park next Tuesday for their final home match of the season, hosting Central.

Final Score:
Urbana 8 - St. Joseph-Ogden 1

Singles:
Samantha Kelso, SJO def. Grace Coady, Urbana, 3-6, 6-5, 10-5; Lillian Hall, Urbana def. Madison Clampitt, SJO, 6-3 , 6-7, 7-4; Ananyah Tangmunarunkit, Urbana def. Madison Farber, SJO, 4-6, 6-1, 10-7; Elianna Lee, Urbana def. Ainsley Rhoten, SJO, 6-2, 6-2; Gwen McLean, Urbana def. Audrie Helfrich, SJO, 6-0, 6-4; Amani Brown, Urbana def. Avarie Dietiker, SJO, 6-4, 6-2.

Doubles:
Grace Coady - Lillian Hall, Urbana def. Lily Rice - MaKennah Hamilton, SJO, 4-6, 6-2, 10-6; Ananyah Tangmunarunkit - Elianna Lee, Urbana def. Ella Dieteker - Sara Kearney, SJO, 4-6, 6-2, 10-5; Catherine Bretl - Amani Brown, Urbana def. Audrey Benoit - Claire Hartman, SJO, 7-6, 6-0.

Acosta racks up four goals against Central Catholic

ST. JOSEPH - St. Joseph-Ogden's Alex Acosta takes a first-half shot on the Central Catholic goal during his team's home match on Tuesday. Acosta and the Spartans improved to 15-2-1 after rolling over the visiting Saints, 9-0. The senior led SJO with four goals and one assist in the conference contest at Dick Duval Field. More Sentinel photos and recap coming soon.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

Getty, Rhoten earn hard-fought, hardcourt wins at home Tuesday

Sara Kearney hits the ball back over the net during her doubles game against the Urbana tennis team with partner Ella Dietiker. The pair were back in action together Tuesday after Monday's road loss to the Tigers.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

URBANA - Spartans Ainsley Rhoten and Olivia Getty pulled out wins in singles play at Atkins Tennis Center on Tuesday against Watseka. When the ball fuzz had settled, St. Joseph-Ogden came up short, losing to the Warriors, 7-2.

Rhoten defeated Watseka's Annika Greene in straight sets, 7-6 (5), 6-3. Meanwhile, playing on the #5 court, Getty battled Warriors' Rose Koester in a marathon, three-setter, 6-7 (4), 6-1, 10-4.

The Spartans are back in action this Thursday at Centennial High School.

Final Score:
St. Joseph-Ogden 2 - Watseka - 7

Singles:
Sarah Parsons, Watseka def. Samantha Kelso, (SJO), 6-2 , 6-1. Marisa Clark, Watseka def. Madison Clampitt, (SJO), 6-3, 6-1. Skyla Buwalda, Watseka def. Madison Farber, (SJO), 6-3 , 6-0. Ainsley Rhoten, (SJO) def. Annika Greene, Watseka, 7-6 (5), 6-3. Olivia Getty, (SJO) def. Rose Koester, Watseka, 7-6 (4), 6-1 , 10-4. Reagan Anderson, Watseka def. Audrey Benoit, (SJO), 6-3 , 6-1.

Doubles:
Sarah Parsons/Kiaria Wright, Watseka def. MaKennah Hamilton/Lily Rice, (SJO), 6-2 , 7-5. Marisa Clark/Skyla Buwalda, Watseka def. Ella Dieteker/Sara Kearney, (SJO), 7-5 , 6-2. Annika Greene, Watseka/Lili Sorenson, Watseka def. Claire Hartman/Arely Castro (SJO), 6-3 , 6-1.

Now is the time to protect yourself from the flu and COVID-19

NAPSI - While there’s no distinct COVID-19 season like there is for the flu, it’s been shown that COVID-19 can peak during the winter months. To help fight respiratory illnesses, it’s recommended you get a flu vaccination, as well as the updated COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people six months and older, with rare exception, should get the updated annual flu vaccine, ideally by the end of October. The CDC also recommends that everyone ages six months and older should get the updated 2024–2025 COVID-19 vaccine, unless otherwise noted, to help restore and enhance protection against the currently circulating virus variants.

It’s especially important to protect certain populations. This includes those at increased risk of complications from severe flu or COVID-19 illness, such as adults 65 and older, people with certain immunocompromising or chronic medical conditions, infants, children younger than two and pregnant women.

“Preventive vaccinations are the best way to protect yourself and your family from seasonal illnesses,” said Dr. Sree Chaguturu, executive vice president and chief medical officer at CVS Health. “Access to preventive vaccinations is critical to keeping communities healthy.”

According to Dr. Chaguturu, it’s helpful to understand the science behind vaccines so people feel informed and safe getting vaccinated.

Myth #1: You should wait until flu season peaks to get vaccinated.

According to the CDC, the timing of flu season is difficult to predict and can vary in different parts of the country and from season to season. It’s important to get vaccinated before flu season peaks or outbreaks occur in your area since it takes about two weeks for your body to build up protection after getting vaccinated.

Myth #2: You can’t receive other vaccinations with the flu shot.

The CDC says patients can get a COVID-19 vaccine at the same time as the flu vaccine and other eligible vaccines. At CVS Pharmacy, patients can schedule multiple vaccinations in one appointment.

Myth #3: You don’t need updated vaccinations for the flu.

Getting the flu shot every year is essential because the body’s protection from the vaccine declines over time. Also, flu viruses vary yearly, so receiving the latest vaccine formulation provides optimal protection.

Flu shot appointments (for up to four people in one appointment) can be scheduled at CVS Pharmacy or MinuteClinic by visiting CVS.com or the CVS Pharmacy app.

Kelso wins one for SJO

URBANA - St. Joseph-Ogden's Sami Kelso hits a forehand during her match against Urbana's Grace Coady on Monday at Blair Park. Kelso, who lost to Coady earlier in the season, prevailed via 6-3, 7-6 victory at #1 singles for the Spartans' only individual win. The SJO tennis team dropped the non-conference match 8-1 to the host Tigers. More Sentinel photos from this match are coming soon.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

Eyes of the Tiger, UHS dominates home match with Spartans

URBANA - Urbana's Grace Coady concentrates on hitting a backhand shot during her #1 singles match with St. Joseph-Ogden's Sami Kelso on Monday at Blair Park on Monday. Coady fell in straight sets, 6-3, 7-6. Later, teaming up with Lillian Hall at #1 doubles, the pair defeated visiting Spartans Lily Rice and MaKennah Hamilton in a scorching three-set match end at 4-6, 6-2, 10-6. After sunset and the dust settled, the Tigers defeated SJO, 8-1. More photos from this match are coming soon.

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

How cattle grazing protects and benefits the land

Photo provided

(Brandpoint) - With cattle ranching featured front and center in America's living rooms due to the popularity of shows highlighting the western lifestyle, and with Climate Week piquing interest in sustainability, it's a good time to raise awareness about how farmers and ranchers - and their cattle - do a lot more for the country and environment than just being the backdrop of a popular western drama series.

According to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, a contractor to the Beef Checkoff, it's about ranchers as stewards of sustainable land management, their cattle playing a crucial role in mitigating climate change and wildfires, and beef's role in a healthy, sustainable diet.

New research links cattle grazing to wildfire mitigation

New research by the USDA Agricultural Research Service recently reported some surprising findings: Grazing can benefit invasive sagebrush communities and more than that, can combat wildfires. With much of the western U.S. beset by wildfires in recent years, it is crucial for people living in those areas to understand that cattle grazing actively mitigates the effects and spread of fires by consuming plants that would otherwise act as fuel.

Outdated dogma suggests livestock grazing in the sagebrush steppe in western rangelands negatively impacts those ecosystems. This new research, published in the scientific journal Ecosphere, found the opposite is true. According to the report, the ARS discovered that "strategically applying livestock grazing prior to the occurrence of climate-induced wildfires can modify sagebrush steppe characteristics in ways that decrease fire probability in the communities, promote biodiversity while reducing postfire annual grass invasion, fire-induced loss of native bunchgrasses and fire damage to soil biocrusts."

In plain language, it means that if cattle graze on the sagebrush steppe regularly, it will induce shorter flame lengths if a fire occurs, slow the rate of fire spread and prevent invasive grasses from popping up after the fire moves through. That's because, when cattle graze, they're munching away on grass and plants that could otherwise act as fuel during wildfire season, and they're doing so on land that is most often unsuitable for growing crops.

How cattle grazing can benefit the land

"As we talk about climate change, and the dryness that we see, cows are a great mitigator of wildfires," said Janey VanWinkle, a fourth-generation cattle rancher in Colorado. "In a lot of areas where there are invasive plant species, for example, cheatgrass, cows will eat that forage down, which slows the burn once a wildfire is started."

Ranchers like the VanWinkle family are conservationists. While caring for their animals, they're also caring for the land.

"When talking about land use, you could ask, 'Could this land be used for producing crops and other types of food?' and the answer is, most likely not where I live, with one of the limiting factors here being water," VanWinkle explained.

The ways cattle grazing can benefit the land go even deeper than preventing wildfires. According to 2024 UC Davis research, grazing:

* Decreases the potential for soil erosion and regulates the return of nutrients to the soil

* Promotes plant diversity and abundance by regulating weed growth

* Preserves open space and regenerates soil and plant life to promote carbon sequestration through the biogenic carbon cycle.

Cattle and bison have been grazing on U.S. lands for centuries. With careful stewardship of ranchers like the VanWinkle family, they can be helping the planet for centuries more.

"Cattle grazing truly is the best use of this land as it provides wildlife habitat and a very high-quality source of protein," VanWinkle said. "What really matters is protecting our landscapes. I assure you that I want my grandchildren to know what it's like out in nature and on the ranch."

Why the Far-Right lies about immigrants

Photo: StockSnap/Pixabay

by Peter Certo
OtherWords

When my dad moved to southwest Ohio in the early 1970s, the Dayton-Springfield area’s second city was home to over 80,000 people. When I was growing up nearby in the 1990s, it was 70,000. Today, it’s less than 60,000.

Springfield’s decline looks like an awful lot of Rust Belt cities and towns. And behind those numbers is a lot of human suffering.

Corporations engineered trade deals that made it cheaper to move jobs abroad, where they could pay workers less and pollute more with impunity. As the region’s secure blue collar jobs dried up, so did the local tax base — and as union membership dwindled, so did social cohesion.

Local employers have heaped praise on their Haitian American workers.

Young people sought greener pastures elsewhere while those who remained nursed resentments, battled a flood of opioids, and gritted their teeth through empty promises from politicians.

It’s a sad chapter for countless American cities, but it hardly needs to be the last one. After all, the region’s affordable housing — and infrastructure built to support larger populations — can make it attractive for new arrivals looking to build a better life. And they in turn revitalize their new communities.

So it was in Springfield, where between 15,000 and 20,000 Haitian migrants have settled in the last few years. “On Sunday afternoons, you could suddenly hear Creole mass wafting through downtown streets,” NPR reported. “Haitian restaurants started popping up.”

One migrant told the network he’d heard that “Ohio is the [best] place to come get a job easily.” He now works at a steel plant and as a Creole translator. Local employers have heaped praise on their Haitian American workers, while small businesses have reaped the benefits of new customers and wages have surged.

Some powerful people don’t want to share prosperity equally. So they lie.

Reversing decades of population decline in a few short years is bound to cause some growing pains. But on balance, Springfield is a textbook case of how immigration can change a region’s luck for the better.

“Immigrants are good for this country,” my colleagues Lindsay Koshgarian and Alliyah Lusuegro have written. “They work critical jobs, pay taxes, build businesses, and introduce many of our favorite foods and cultural innovations (donuts, anyone?)… They make the United States the strong, diverse nation that it is.”

In fact, it was earlier waves of migration — including African Americans from the South, poor whites from Appalachia, and immigrants from abroad — that fueled much of the industrial heartland’s earlier prosperity.

But some powerful people don’t want to share prosperity equally. So they lie.

“From politicians who win office with anti-immigrant campaigns to white supremacists who peddle racist conspiracy theories and corporations that rely on undocumented workers to keep wages low and deny workers’ rights,” Lindsay and Alliyah explain, “these people stoke fear about immigrants to divide us for their own gain.”

So it is with an absurd and dangerous lie — peddled recently by Donald Trump, JD Vance, Republican politicians, and a bunch of internet trolls — that Haitian Americans are fueling a crime wave in Springfield, abducting and eating people’s pets, and other racist nonsense.

It’s lies like these, not immigrants, who threaten the recovery of Rust Belt cities.

“According to interviews with a dozen local and county and officials as well as city police data,” Reuters reports, there’s been no “general rise in violent or property crime” or “reports or specific claims of pets being harmed” in Springfield. Instead, many of these lies appear to have originated with a local neo-Nazi group called “Blood Pride” — who are about as lovely as they sound.

“In reality, immigrants commit fewer crimes, pay more taxes, and do critical jobs that most Americans don’t want,” Lindsay and Alliyah point out.

Politicians who want you to believe otherwise are covering for someone else — like the corporations who shipped jobs out of communities like Springfield in the first place — all to win votes from pathetic white nationalists in need of a new hobby. It’s lies like these, not immigrants, who threaten the recovery of Rust Belt cities.

Springfield’s immigrant influx is a success story, not a scandal. And don’t let any desperate politicians tell you otherwise.

Peter Certo is the communications director of the Institute for Policy Studies and editor of OtherWords.org.

Rocket sets school record

Photo: Daniel L. Chamness

ST. JOSEPH - Running on the heals of Marshall's Molly Farrell, Unity senior Emily Decker (right) rounds the corner of the track at Dick Duval Field at the Spartan Classic on Saturday. Decker finished third, circumventing the course in 16 minutes, 55.13 seconds. Her sub-17 minute time is the best in school history for the Unity girls' cross-country program. The Rockets have won every Class 1A state cross-country championship since the fall of 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Winning me, SJO football keeps win streak alive

Photo: Sentinel/Clark Brooks

ST. JOSEPH - SJO Maroon Platoon members Izzy Wiese, Mia Jones, Kenzie Lochen, and Taylor Maddock get ready to cheer for the Spartans at Friday night's home game against Carterville. Despite strong winds, rain, and falling temperatures as the night went on, the St. Joseph-Ogden football team posted their fifth victory and remain undefeated after their 26-20 win over Carterville at Dick Duval Field. The Spartans travel Bloomington to face Central Catholic this Friday.