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Today's News

  • Jr. Vandals win regional championship

    Vandalia's eighth-graders picked up their second straight regional championship on Thursday, coming back against Greenville for a 41-38 win.

    Nathan Casey had 12 points and Marcus Zimmerman added 11 to lead the Jr. Vandals (18-3), who will play next Wednesday at the Vandalia Sectional at 6 p.m. Their opponent will be determined on Saturday when the Divernon Regional finals are played.

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  • Vandals to be at home for chance at 20th straight regional

    VANDALIA – Standout wrestling has been a constant in Vandalia for the past 19 years.

    And the 20th year hasn’t been too shabby, either.

    The Vandals will be heavy favorites on their home mats this Saturday as they pursue the team’s 20th straight regional championship and look to get all 14 of their wrestlers through to the following weekend’s individual sectional.

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  • Maxey's combination of skills leads to 1,000 career points

    ALTAMONT – Levi Maxey may not have been the first among National Trail Conference guards to reach 1,000 career points this season, but that doesn’t mean the argument can’t be made that he is the best in the conference.

    Maxey made a driving layup to reach the career milestone with 2:57 left in the first half of a 70-63 victory against Windsor last Thursday in the NTC Tournament consolation semifinals, one day after Altamont senior Garrett Ziegler reached the mark.

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  • Maxey's combination of skills help him to 1,000 career points

    ALTAMONT – Levi Maxey may not have been the first among National Trail Conference guards to reach 1,000 career points this season, but that doesn’t mean the argument can’t be made that he is the best in the conference.

    Maxey made a driving layup to reach the career milestone with 2:57 left in the first half of a 70-63 victory against Windsor last Thursday in the NTC Tournament consolation semifinals, one day after Altamont senior Garrett Ziegler reached the mark.

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  • Banks of the Okaw

    This week’s Mystery Banks Photo: This young man, shown about 75 years ago, was a lifelong farmer on the same farm he was born on in the western part of Fayette County.

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  • The Way We Were

    25 Years Ago

    1989 – Patoka’s basketball team came up with a giant victory, beating Lebanon 76-73 in the Flora Shootout. Chad Mansker scored 26 points and earned MVP honors for the Warriors.
    Lisa Luster was crowned queen and Darren Rhodes king of the Brownstown Community High School homecoming.
    Beth Blankenship was named Mulberry Grove High School homecoming queen, while Sara Beth Murfin was named Patoka High School homecoming queen.
    John Baird retired from the St. Elmo post office after a 30-year postal career.

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  • The Wakefields were first Otego settlers

    John Allen Wakefield is credited with being the first white man to live in what is now Otego Township in Fayette County.  In 1824, Wakefield and young wife, Eliza, built a log home near the Vincennes Trace in Section 17 and opened it to travelers. This house was the first to be built in the township.

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  • Steady career leads Behrends to 1,000th career point

    ALTAMONT – It was five years ago when former Brownstown High School coach Vince Rohr could tell that he had a special player in Jacob Behrends.

    Showing maturity beyond his years then, Behrends has slowly improved year by year up to his senior year, becoming one of the more feared players in the area along the way.

    Last Saturday, he cemented his place in local basketball lore by scoring his 1,000th career point on a driving layup with 7:19 left in a 63-37 win against Beecher City in the fifth-place game of the National Trail Conference Tournament.

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  • Three Vandals and team take titles at Litchfield

    Lately, it hasn’t been what the Vandals are accustomed to at the Litchfield Tournament.

    Vandalia, which won 13 of 14 Rich Lovellette Invitationals from 1995-2008, had a five-year championship drought ended last Saturday, fending off a tough Lena-Winslow squad for a 233-230 victory.

    Sophomore Kendrick Woolsey pinned his opponent in the championship bout at 285 pounds to give Vandalia a slight advantage over Lena-Winslow in the final regular-season event of the season.

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  • School funding needs overhaul

    A task force that has been studying the state’s current system of funding school districts has come to a not-so-startling conclusion: the system is broken.
    “The way we fund public education in Illinois is currently very complex,” state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, told reporters on Monday. “But one piece of it is very simple: It isn’t working.”

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