Today's News

After easily winning the opening round of regional play over Gillespie on Thursday, the Vandalia Lady Vandals volleyball squad dropped a hard-fought contest to Staunton in Saturday’s regional finals at Southwestern High School in Piasa.

The loss eliminates the Lady Vandals from postseason competition, ending their season at 20-11. That marks the third consecutive 20-win season for the team.

After Saturday’s three-game contest, Coach Allison Brown termed the effort “the best any Vandal volleyball team has ever played in the regional.”

Mark Twain wrote of his Western travels in the book, “Roughing It.” Twain said that the men he traveled with had three subjects on their mind – "Californy, the Nevada silver mines and the desperado, Slade."

Twain wrote, “From Ft. Kearney west, he was feared a great deal more than the Almighty. Mothers used his name to strike terror in the hearts of their misbehaving children.”

A Vandalia representative on the National Road Association of Illinois Board concedes that a recent grant received by the group won’t provide funding for everything it needs. But it comes pretty darn close.

“We will always have things that we need to take care of or want to add, but this will come pretty close to giving us what we need,” said Mary Truitt.

Truitt was referring to the $101,750 grant awarded by the Federal Highway Administration for the National Road Interpretive Center in Vandalia.

It’s been a little more than six years since Highland officials let residents of that city know that they planned to handle a congested intersection with a roundabout, instead of stoplights.

Many of the residents responded with, to say the least, skepticism.

But once they started using that roundabout, those same residents told city officials that it was the right decision.

In fact, the roundabout went over so well that the city added a second roundabout late last year, one that replaced stoplights.