City Honors Local Wrestling Champs

Crystalyn Felan, Zane Rankin and Mayor Roger Stagner

 

Mayor Roger Stagner presented two young residents with Keys to the City at the outset of the City Council meeting on Monday, March 11th.

High school freshman, Crystalyn Felan had her accomplishment entered into the record books with her first place finish in the first-ever sanctioned Colorado High School Girls State Wrestling Tournament held recently. Crystalyn weighed in for the 111 pound event and was first in her weight group and just one of 70 young women who participated in the ground-breaking tournament on February 9th.  Stagner said he and the council was very happy to recognize two local individuals who became champions through their efforts and as representatives of the Lamar community.

The second key was presented to Zane Rankin who participated in the 132 pound weight class and placed first for the State 3A Title at the Pepsi Center on February 23rd.  Rankin, who did not place last year as a freshman, won his weight division in this year’s Lamar Invitational Wrestling Tournament and defeated his challenger in the recently held Tri Peaks League Tournament.

The last such presentation of keys was made in March, 2017 when the council  issued a resolution honoring the Lamar High School Girls Basketball State Tournament Team for their championship performance in Class 3-A Basketball. Their achievement marked the 5th state girl’s title and their first in 19 years.  Stagner, awarded each player with her own Key to the City in light of their performance, finishing their year with a 25-2 record, overall, and with their tournament victory over Colorado Springs Christian.

Another community achievement was recognized during the council meeting as Lamar Fire Chief, Jeremy Burkhart presented badges of achievement to several members of his staff. “This group will probably be the last Intermediate class held in Lamar for some time due to changes taking place at the state level”, he noted.

Lamar Fire Department Achievement Recipients

 

Those receiving their EMT Intermediate certification included: Deputy Chief Marcus Widener, Captain Ryan Cook, Engineer Evan Mendenhall, Engineer Michael Walter and volunteer firefighter Heather Burkhart.  Intermediate EMT Basic certification went to:  Engineer Jonathon Esparza, Matthew Guerriero and Volunteer Devon Silva.  (Not in Picture:  Guerriero and Walter)

Mayor Stagner also presented an update on the city’s and Lamar Library’s most recent efforts to prevent adult content literature to filter to school students through a nationally used search engine, EBSCO.

It was explained that new filtering software is being used to conduct a rapid scan for hundreds of key words which when found, prohibits any further use or entry onto another related page in the EBSCO system. He added, “If somebody finds something, there are forms in the library which can be submitted to the librarian which will be reviewed by the Library Advisory Board for consideration for removal.”

Stagner said some questions over the cost of the EBSCO system have been brought up. “There are different packages basically, and the EBSCO Data Base package, which has been the main topic, is $1,875 and that comes through CLIC and there are other items we bought from them.  Another question asked, why we bought the Encyclopedia Britannica separately and the answer is it is an encyclopedia, not a data base and there’s a difference there and we need both.  We buy subscription services directly from EBSCO and these are paper magazines that we have in the library and they cost $1,691 for this year.”  The mayor said the library stopped service from three offerings from EBSCO that were found to be underused over a time period.

By Russ Baldwin

Filed Under: City of LamarConsumer IssuesEducationEventsFeaturedPublic SafetyRecreationSchoolSportsYouth

Tags:

About the Author: