Massachusetts
Massachusetts Swim & Dive Emerge Victorious Over Bryant On Senior Day – University of Massachusetts Athletics
Sophomore diver Andrew Bell picked up two gold medals in both diving events, including scoring a six-dive total of 409.05 in the three-meter dive, breaking his own previous school record of 397.28. Freshmen Beren Cakiroglu and Lindsay Burbage, and junior Anna Kwon tallied two first-place finishes apiece for the Minutewomen, as senior Minuteman Jack Artis touched the wall first twice on the day, as well.
Women’s Swimming & Diving
The Minutewomen tallied 24 top-three finishes, with coming away with 12 individual gold medals.
Cakiroglu swam a time of 1:55.84 to place first in the 200 freestyle, before senior Bri Williams picked up the gold in the 100 backstroke with a time of 57.79. Burbage touched the wall first in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:05.69, followed by fifth-year student Summer Pierce in second with a time of 1:08.54.
In the 200 butterfly, Kwon paced the Minutewomen with a time of 2:06.29 to finish first, as freshman Olga Stoura recorded a personal-best time of 2:11.66 to claim third. Senior Maggie Desmond raced into first with a time of 23.69 in the 50 freestyle event with fellow classmate Caroline Mahoney close behind in second with a time of 23.82.
Mahoney received the gold in the 100 freestyle with a time of 52.14, while Stoura took second with a time of 54.42. The Minutewomen, then, swept the podium in the 200 backstroke with senior Megan Mitchell leading with a time of 2:02.98. Williams finished second with a time of 2:04.97 and freshman Ali Merone earned third with a time of 2:11.15.
Another podium sweep saw Burbage secure her second individual gold of the day, swimming a time of 2:26.47 in the 200 breaststroke. Cakiroglu followed with a time of 2:26.70 in second and freshman Diya Ackerman-Vallala finished in third with a time of 2:28.83. Kwon placed first for the second time on the afternoon, recording a time of 5:07.50 in the 500 freestyle, as freshman Sophie Porter took third with a time of 5:26.38.
Pierce collected the gold in the 100 butterfly with a time of 57.45. Cakiroglu earned another first-place finish on the day in the 200 individual medley with a time of 2:09.98, while Kwon finished second in the event with a time of 2:10.02.
In the relays, the team of Mitchell, Burbage, Pierce and Desmond took first in the 200 medley relay with a time of 1:45.86. The squad of Williams, Ackerman-Vallala, senior Ashley Calderon and Mahoney placed second in the event, combining for a time of 1:47.41.
The 200 freestyle relay team consisting of Calderon, Mitchell, Desmond and Mahoney swam a time of 1:36.37 to claim first.
Men’s Swimming & Diving
The Minutemen tallied 25 top-three finishes, while collecting eight individual gold medals on the day.
Freshmen Jude Boukarroum and Aydin Erkan started off the individual events in the 1,000 freestyle, grabbing second (9:55.80) and third (10:08.43), respectively. Boukarroum’s time marked a season-best for the rookie. The 200 freestyle saw senior Juan Montori touch the wall first with a time of 1:44.66, followed by freshman Alonso Montori in third with a time of 1:45.75.
In the 100 backstroke, junior Beau Bengston swam a season-best time of 52.50 to claim second, while senior Eric Eastham finished 0.01 second behind in third (52.51). Artis led the way in the 100 breastroke with a time of 58.24 to collect the gold, as fellow classmate Freddie Borg earned the bronze with a time of 59.03 in the event.
Senior Charles Blanc placed first in the 200 butterfly with a time of 1:55.05 and junior Jake Bailey swam into second-place with a time of 1:58.06. Sophomore Sammy Quigg took first in the 50 freestyle with a time of 20.89, as sophomore Aidan Shepston recorded a season-best time of 21.41 in the event to claim third.
Graduate student Emerson Kiefer swam a time of 47.65 in the 100 freestyle to touch the wall first with Alonso Montori finished tied for third with a time of 48.06. Eastham secured the silver in the 200 backstroke with a time of 1:55.58. Artis picked up his second gold medal of the day with a time of 2:09.16 in the 200 breaststroke.
In the 500 freestyle, Boukarroum (4:47.43) and senior Wilson Dubois (4:52.16) placed second and third, respectively. Juan Montori swam a time of 50.78 in the 100 butterfly to finish in second place. Senior Sam Haddad capped off the individual events with a first-place finish in the 200 individual medley with a time of 1:56.32.
During the relay events, the 200 medley relay team of Bengston, Artis, junior Grant Beebe and Quigg swam into first place with a combined time of 1:33.86. The 200 freestyle team of Beebe, Shepston, Juan Montori and Quigg placed first after swimming a time of 1:25.32
On The Boards
Sophomore Shreeya Sinha competed for the Minutewomen in the diving events, placing second in both the one-meter and three-meter dive. She had a six-dive total of 242.48 in the one-meter, after scoring a 214.73 in the three-meter.
Bell broke a new school record in the one-meter dive, earning a personal-best score of 409.05 to claim the gold. He took first in the three-meter dive, as well, with his total of 364.28. Graduate student Tommy Cotner finished second in both events with season-best totals. In the one-meter, Cotner scored a 287.55, before earning a score of 313.43 in the three-meter.
Up Next
Massachusetts returns to the pool on Friday, January 19, for the Tate Ramsden Invitational, in Hanover, New Hampshire at 5 p.m.
Massachusetts
Peabody man claims $500,000 Massachusetts State Lottery prize
PEABODY, Mass. (WWLP) – A Peabody resident is celebrating a big lottery win after claiming a $500,000 top prize in a Massachusetts State Lottery instant ticket game.
David McHenry won one of the top prizes in the Massachusetts State Lottery’s “$500,000 Frenzy” instant ticket game, lottery officials announced Wednesday.
McHenry chose to receive his winnings as a one-time payment of $500,000 before taxes.
The winning ticket was purchased at E Market Convenience Store & Deli, located at 598 Lowell St. in Peabody. The retailer will receive a $5,000 bonus from the Massachusetts State Lottery for selling the winning ticket.
According to lottery officials, McHenry’s prize marks the seventh $500,000 top prize claimed in the “$500,000 Frenzy” instant ticket game.
Local News Headlines
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Download the 22News Plus app on your TV to watch live-streaming newscasts and video on demand.
Massachusetts
Improving Long-Term Care for Seniors in Massachusetts – Center for Retirement Research
In recent years, Massachusetts has taken significant steps to improve care for seniors, most notably the Act to Improve Quality and Oversight of Long-Term Care. In a recent Risking Old Age in America podcast, Rep. Thomas M. Stanley, Co-chair of the Elder Affairs Committee, describes this initiative as well as further steps in the works. These include creating a family caregiver commission, licensing home health agencies, and working towards universal long-term care insurance.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation:
Senior Living Facilities
Risking Old Age in America (ROA): You have been working [to make improvements] across the whole continuum of care from nursing homes [to] assisted living facilities to home healthcare. Please talk about the legislature’s initiatives in these areas.
Rep. Thomas M. Stanley: In 2024, the governor signed the long-term care reform bill into law. This was the first major legislative update of nursing homes and assisted living residences in over 25 years.
It increases transparency and oversight of nursing homes through new suitability standards for owners and operators. It requires a review of the civil and criminal litigation history of owners and operators; and we put in place tools for the Department of Public Health to monitor and take punitive action against facilities, including increased fines and creating the ability to appoint a temporary manager to oversee a struggling facility.
It expands the suitability reviews of management companies including any [firm] with at least a 5-percent stake in a nursing facility. The law also establishes the long-term care workforce and capital fund to help address the workforce crisis in nursing homes. Money from the fund can be used for Certified Nursing Assistant training grants, career ladder grants for Licensed Practical Nurses, and also leadership training.
The law gives assisted living facilities the ability to offer basic health services, like wound care, eye drops, and medication distribution to their residents.
ROA: The Dignity Alliance [a senior advocacy group]…[has said] state supervision and enforcement of nursing facilities is…not tough enough, that there might be fines and other penalties on the books, but nobody’s applying them to nursing homes that don’t meet their obligations. It sounds like the ability to put them into receivership under the new legislation may be the remedy that’s needed.
Stanley: That’s correct. Under the old rules you would end up in the situation of really punishing or fining a nursing home and end up having it going to foreclosure. In that case, where are the residents going to go? The new law allows the Department of Public Health (DPH) to get in earlier and work with them so that they understand what the DPH is looking for in terms of quality of care and so forth. They can take care of the facility and all the residents so they don’t go astray.
ROA: So the DPH might have felt that it was between a rock and a hard place because if they enforced the regulations, they might lose the nursing home.
Stanley: [Yes]…and the nursing homes, by and large, were not letting them know that they were having certain problems. So this allows the DPH to get in earlier, understand what’s going on and help them make adjustments so that they can right the ship.
Long-Term Care Insurance
Stanley: The state of Washington is really in the forefront of looking down the road to provide for some type of revenue stream…for folks to be able to afford their home care or [other] long-term care needs. So we’re modeling our program after theirs and we’re learning from their mistakes and successes.
ROA: That’s the Washington Cares Fund?
Stanley: Yes, exactly. Last session Senator Jehlen and I worked together to get $500,000 in the state budget for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services to hire an independent firm to conduct the actuary study of various public, private and public-private long-term support service financing options. They hired Milliman to conduct the study. [The full study is available here.]
How it would work in a nutshell is that a public…insurance program would be funded via a payroll tax. After individuals pay into the program for a certain number of years, a vesting period, they would become eligible. And as they age and require long-term support services, they can apply for benefits under the program. There are countless ways to design the program, increasing or decreasing the benefit amount or…the vesting period, determining what the benefit can be used for – home care, assisted living or even paying family caregivers. We have filed legislation to establish a commission to discuss the results of the actuary study and the feasibility of a public long-term care financing program in Massachusetts and potentially recommending a model that works.
ROA: It sounds like this would help a lot, but one question I have about it is that if there’s a vesting period where you have to pay in for a number of years before you can become eligible for the benefit, would it only be available for people who are continuing to work during that time?
Stanley: That’s definitely something that has to be discussed by the commission, but everyone has to contribute and the 10-year vesting period is necessary to get enough money into the program to make it sustainable.
Listen to our entire conversation here.
For more from Harry Margolis, check out his Risking Old Age in America blog and podcast. He also answers consumer estate planning questions at AskHarry.info. To stay current on the Squared Away blog, join our free email list.
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