The 2024 Vermont high school spring season has begun. See below for scores, schedules and game details (statistical leaders, game notes) from baseball, softball, lacrosse, track and field, tennis and Ultimate.

To report scores: Coaches or team representatives are asked to report results ASAP after games by emailing sports@burlingtonfreepress.com. Please submit with a name/contact number.

►Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @aabrami5

PREVIOUS COVERAGE

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school boys lacrosse players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school girls lacrosse players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school softball players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school baseball players for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school Ultimate athletes for the 2024 season

Watch list: The top returning Vermont high school tennis players for the 2024 season

WEDNESDAY’S H.S. GAMES

Girls lacrosse

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Green Mountain Valley at Stratton Mountain

Stowe at Spaulding 

Hartford at Rice

Mount Mansfield at BFA-St. Albans

South Burlington at Middlebury

Boys lacrosse

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Randolph at Mount Abraham/Vergennes

Middlebury at South Burlington

Rice at Essex

BFA-St. Albans at Mount Mansfield

Softball

Lyndon at South Burlington, 4:30 p.m.

Missisquoi at BFA-St. Albans, 4:30 p.m.

Burlington/Winooski at Rice, 4:30 p.m.

Baseball

Rice at BFA-St. Albans, 4:30 p.m.

Girls tennis

Matches at 3:30 p.m. unless noted

North Country at U-32

South Burlington at St. Johnsbury

Montpelier at Harwood

Essex at Stowe

Rice at Middlebury

Colchester at Mount Mansfield

Burlington at Champlain Valley, 4:30 p.m.

Boys tennis

Matches at 3:30 p.m. unless noted

South Burlington at St. Johnsbury

Stowe at Essex

Champlain Valley at Burlington

Middlebury at Rice

Mount Mansfield at Colchester

Boys Ultimate

Games at 4 p.m. unless noted

Colchester at Essex

RIce at Burr and Burton

South Burlington at Middlebury

Milton at Mount Mansfield

Champlain Valley at Burlington, 4:30 p.m.

Montpelier at St. Johnsbury, 7 p.m.

Track and field

Meets at 3:30 p.m. 

Colchester-hosted meet

U-32-hosted meet

THURSDAY’S H.S. GAMES

Girls lacrosse

Games at 4 p.m. unless noted

St. Johnsbury at Burlington, 4 p.m.

Burr and Burton at Champlain Valley, 4 p.m.

Esex at Harwood, 4:30 p.m.

Boys lacrosse

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Stowe at BFA-Fairfax

Burr and Burton at Champlain Valley

Green Mountain Valley at Otter Valley

Softball

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Oxbow at Craftsbury

Paine Mountain at Blue Mountain

Spaulding at U-32

Colchester at Burlington/Winooski

Essex at South Burlington

North Country at Lake Region

Rice at Richford

Lamoille at BFA-Fairfax

Milton at Harwood

Middlebury at BFA-St. Albans

Champlain Valley at Mount Mansfield

Missisquoi at St. Johnsbury

Mount Abraham at Otter Valley

Baseball

Games at 4:30 p.m. unless noted

Paine Mountain at Blue Mountain

Vergennes at Peoples/Stowe

Essex at South Burlington

North Country at Lake Region

BFA-Fairfax at Lamoille

Spaulding at U-32

Milton at Harwood

St. Johnsbury at Rice

Middlebury at BFA-St. Albans

Burlington at Colchester

Richford at Missisquoi

Champlain Valley at Mount Mansfield

Mount Abraham at Otter Valley

Thetford at Windsor

Hartford at Lyndon

Girls Ultimate

Games at 4 p.m. unless noted

Burr and Burton at Milton, 2 p.m.

Mount Mansfield at South Burlington

St. Johnsbury at Burlington

Track and field

Essex-hosted meet, 3:30 p.m.

(Subject to change)

The most beloved home fries in Burlington are back. The heaping mound of perfectly griddled potatoes topped with melted cheese, salsa, sour cream and green onions have a new name — and a new home. But they’re still a Bucket-o-Spuds.

The iconic Penny Cluse Café dish’s new name, House of Spudology, is a nod to that new home: Deep City, the restaurant attached to Foam Brewers. A year and a half after closing the landmark breakfast and lunch spot he co-owned with his wife, Holly Cluse, Charles Reeves is now the brewery’s food director, working closely with the team behind Foam and House of Fermentology. And while he initially told Seven Days that he wouldn’t be “opening up Penny Cluse” at the restaurant near the waterfront, he sort of did.

Deep City’s brunch — served Friday through Monday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. — lacks some of the sandwiches and simpler breakfast options Penny Cluse served during its nearly quarter-century run, from 1998 to 2022. “But it’s all the hits,” Reeves said. “The aesthetic is the same, and some of the recipes are exactly the same.”

So was my order on Deep City’s opening weekend in mid-April: the aforementioned spuds ($9), which I accidentally ordered by their previous name; one large buttermilk pancake ($5) and a chile relleno with salsa ranchero ($5) to share; and huevos verdes ($16). My only new addition, appropriately beer-filled for the setting, was a michelada ($10), now made with Foam’s Tranquil Pils lager.

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• Daria Bishop
• Foam Brewers food director Charles Reeves

I usually skip a restaurant’s opening weekend to give the team time to settle in and work out the kinks. But I had confidence in the pairing of Reeves and Foam — especially with longtime Penny Cluse floor manager Anastasia Evans helming the front of house and Maura O’Sullivan, Penny’s kitchen manager, helping Reeves while she works to open her new Burlington restaurant, Majestic, this summer. When friends asked if we’d like to join them for an early Sunday meal, it was a no-brainer.

Like Penny Cluse, Deep City is walk-in only. We arrived with the high-chair crowd around 8:45 and were quickly seated. The dining room is smaller than Penny Cluse was — 50 seats versus 68 — but the lake-view patio will add space for 35 in May, once weather and staffing allow.

Foam’s sister restaurant first opened in March 2020, then closed in November 2023 due to lingering pandemic-era challenges and short-staffing in the kitchen. Deep City was a dinner spot, serving dressed-up pub food such as burgers, vegan poutine, and a ranch-and-romaine salad that sustained me through the early part of the pandemic.

Somehow, though, the space seems like it was always designed for brunch. Sunlight streams in through huge windows and bounces off the high ceilings, exposed brick and wooden beams. The kitchen — visible past a big bar — gets so much light that Reeves said it can be hard to judge the height of the flames on the stove.

“I’ll have to wear sunglasses,” he joked.

The energy of the space was bright during my early morning visit, too. Evans enthusiastically greeted longtime Penny Cluse customers, one after another. I waited in my fair share of lines on Cherry Street over the years but was far from a regular — especially compared to the fans who eulogized the restaurant in poetry, prose and art in these pages ahead of its closure in late 2022.

Looking at the familiar menu, I thought back to eating tofu scram with my late grandmother and hungover biscuits and gravy with my five college roommates. And then there was the time I learned the genius of ordering a pancake for the table from service-industry friends. (It’s more for snacking than budgetary purposes, but we were broke, so it ticked both boxes.) This time, I shared a table pancake with my 10-month-old son, who is just starting to learn how glorious such things can be. He was a big fan.

Based on the response in the restaurant that day and on social media, there seems to be an overwhelming sense of relief that Reeves did open up Penny Cluse. Tasting all that history again — and how it holds up, even in a new setting — I got a little choked up over my chile relleno.

The consistency, Reeves said, is largely due to how he thinks about food.

“I’m a documenter,” the chef explained. “If I change a recipe, I update my recipe card. I like to be methodical.”

He also predicted that the new Deep City would draw a crowd, which, so far, it has. “We had to open with a menu that was going to work,” he said. “This is not the time for me to be super experimental. This is the time for me to land the ship.”

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• Daria Bishop
• Biscuits and gravy

As things get rolling and summer produce season approaches, Reeves thinks the menu will expand. Now that dishes such as the biscuits and gravy ($7 for the starter-size BAG and $16 for the version with eggs and home fries, still called the Penny Cluse) are back — along with gluten-free gingerbread pancakes, which Penny Cluse stopped making four or five years ago — “there’s no rational way I can remove them,” he said.

That means Reeves will continue to spend a good chunk of his time making the much-loved herb cream gravy — gallons per day.

I’d skipped the biscuits on my first visit and decided that was reason enough to go back. When I texted a friend asking if she’d be up for Friday breakfast at Deep City for “the return of Penny Cluse,” I didn’t immediately realize my mistake. She showed up 15 minutes late, having first gone to Cherry Street. A farm-to-table dinner restaurant called Frankie’s launched in mid-April in the former Penny Cluse space, but thankfully it wasn’t open for brunch.

When she arrived, I ordered the BAG and another batch of the spuds. The latter dish, Reeves said, is the latest in a long line of potato piles that mark his career. In San Francisco, he worked at Boogaloos, where the dish was called Temple of Spuds, inspired by Spuds-o-Rama at another city brunch spot, Spaghetti Western. He’s changed the seasoning mix over the years, but in its recent evolution from a “bucket” to a “house,” Reeves said, it’s stayed the same.

“Home fries have gone to a dark place culturally,” he continued, lambasting the now-common over-fried square version. When he started at Deep City, Reeves eighty-sixed the fryers. The spuds are cooked on the griddle, browned with onions and finished with herb butter, “as they should be,” he said.

Some of the name changes come from the fact that, while he’s in charge, this isn’t Reeves’ restaurant. He was 56 when he and Cluse decided to close their restaurant to spend more time with family, after working in the kitchen 50 hours per week and running the business another 15 hours on top of that. Here, even though his role as food director encompasses more than Deep City’s brunch, there’s somebody else to print menus and do payroll.

“They’re set up, they’re smart and they’re savvy,” Reeves said of his new employers. “Foam has a great thing going on.”

The brewery celebrated its eighth anniversary over the weekend with a big bash. Early last Friday morning, Foam cofounder and creative director Jon Farmer called me before heading into Deep City for a light breakfast of biscuits and gravy — his first sit-down meal at the restaurant since it reopened.

“We all missed Penny Cluse massively,” Farmer said, naming the huevos rancheros and verdes as among his favorite dishes. “To have these options back is pretty incredible.”

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• Daria Bishop
• Deep City at brunch

Deep City had offered brunch occasionally over the years, he said, “but we were spread too thin with dinner, and I always thought it would be a dinner restaurant first.”

When Reeves and Foam cofounder Dani Casey pitched the rest of the team on the current brunch concept, Farmer continued, “it clicked for everybody that this could be the best use of the space.”

Only serving brunch leaves the restaurant open for nighttime events and overflow for live music and comedy shows at the brewery — a win-win.

Spirits are high at 112 Lake Street, Farmer said. Reeves is also revamping the menu on the taproom side, and the team is considering opening the Foam taproom before noon on weekends to let customers enjoy coffee or beer if there’s a wait for brunch.

Working with Reeves and his tight-knit team has been “a dream,” Farmer said. “I mean, he’s hilarious and professional at the same time.”

The return of Penny Cluse has been a dream for Reeves, too.

“The end of Penny Cluse was emotional. People were coming in, giving hugs and being like, ‘Oh, my God. I can’t believe it,’” Reeves recalled. “This is the whole thing in reverse: People are coming in, giving hugs and being like, ‘Oh, my God. I can’t believe it.’”

Blackback Pub in Waterbury has long been a starred stop on Vermont’s beer tourism map. Its impressive tap list always includes half a dozen choices from Greensboro’s Hill Farmstead Brewery alongside other noteworthy American brews, plus Belgian exemplars such as the barrel-aged Rodenbach Grand Cru sour red ale.

Aside from Blackback’s legendary nachos ($14) — loaded with two cheeses, bacon and scallions and laced with maple-chipotle sauce — the beer has largely overshadowed the food. But chef and co-owner Cory Swafford is working to change that.

Last October, after almost a decade of ownership, Lynn Mason and Dave Juenker sold Blackback to its general manager, Ehren Hill, and Swafford, a 50-year-old career cook who has plied his trade at many landmark restaurants. His résumé includes stints at Leunig’s Bistro & Café and A Single Pebble in Burlington, Sneakers Bistro in Winooski, and Pro Pig in Waterbury, where he rose to executive chef.

Since Swafford started at Blackback in late summer 2022, he has gradually overhauled the menu. Notably, the chef, who eats vegan at home, has added several vegan options. His broccolini with gochujang peanut sauce and tamari peanuts ($9) and chickpea fritter gyro ($17) with sumac onions and a housemade version of the fermented mango condiment called amba are as compelling as his Tunisian-inspired chermoula chicken sandwich ($18).

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• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Cory Swafford

Swafford runs the busy kitchen with sous chef Joseph Wallace and three line cooks. (If you spy Swafford on a break, ask the former professional card magician to do a trick.) On nights off, the chef and his wife have friends over for roasted broccoli Reubens with homemade sauerkraut, followed by spirited rounds of some of their 2,000 board games. (Ricochet Robots is a favorite.)

Seven Days chatted with Swafford about how he unexpectedly became a professional cook, his decision to go vegan and those famous pub nachos.

Have you always loved to cook?

I had never cooked anything other than chicken Alfredo for one girlfriend in my teens. I was not looking to be a cook. I was actually with a roommate in Burlington 28 years ago [when] he was interviewing at a Friendly’s restaurant, and I was sitting there waiting for him. The general manager came out and pointed at me and said, “Hey, do you need a job?”

I did need a job, and it turned out I loved it. I thrived on the energy in the kitchen.

What prompted you to go mostly vegan at home?

Being the chef at [Pro Pig], I was eating fistfuls of brisket and pork every day. I was getting into my mid-forties, and I needed to make a change. I went to get life insurance and had a full physical and bloodwork done, and it wasn’t very favorable. I couldn’t change at work, so my wife and I made the change at home. I dropped tons of weight, and I felt more energetic.

When I started, we’d batch-cook on Sundays: crockpot beans and rice, veggie burgers, simple things. I’d make big salads at home with oil-free dressing to bring to work.

I do a lot of Indian cooking at home, like palak paneer with tofu instead of paneer, butter chicken but using seitan for chicken and cashew cream instead of dairy. I just choose a region of the world and kind of go wild with it for a while.

You’ve changed up most of Blackback’s menu, but the pub nachos remain.

That [dish] is a legend all its own. I wouldn’t even dream of taking that away from anybody. It’s sweet and salty. It’s rich with the blue cheese and that little bit of heat from the chipotle. It will be here forever.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity and length.