Week In Review: Class M Wrestling Champs, School Programs Restored, Pizza And Community Gardens

Ledyard High School wrestlers won the ECC Class M championships this weekend with a total of 259 points. On Friday, the team finished with 79.5 points and 13 out of 14 wrestlers went on to compete in the quarter-finals Saturday.

On Valentine’s Day, we read about a New London couple who were high school sweethearts and then reunited 40 years later.

And, the owners of Ray’s New Haven Pizza surprised everyone by quietly opening their doors for business. Their “soft opening” was one week ago today and since then, they’ve been ordering supplies, getting a good rhythm going in the kitchen and learning the Ledyard roads. Patch took a moment of owner and pizza chef Ray Raney’s time to find out exactly what is New Haven style pizza and this is what he said:

“It’s the thin crust cooked right on the bricks, and more toward well-done and crispy. People know if they come here, they’ll get the thinner crust.”

Maybe you like thin crust, maybe not. Either way, you can’t go wrong when the dough and sauce are made from scratch daily and the toppings are fresh.

Speaking of food –sort of– people are talking about what they’d like to see take the spot of the now-empty Subway sandwich store on Route 12 in Gales Ferry. What business or enterprise would you like to see there?

And, as long as we’re picking and choosing what should go where in Ledyard, former mayor Fred Allyn Jr. invited two consultants to the Ledyard Rotary Club meeting to talk about community gardening. Allyn has an idea that the old Clark farm would be a very nice spot for a community garden and said, “we need to protect that farmland for future use. The day is going to come when we wish we had more control over our own food supply."

Patrick Kelley and David Fairman of the Eastern Connecticut Community Gardens Association couldn’t agree more and offer their services, which are free, to anyone who is interested in starting a garden.

The top issue this week was that the 2012-13 proposed school budget was revised to accommodate the polite and compelling arguments Ledyard residents made for funds to be restored to the fifth and sixth grade music program, Project Oceanology, and tutors in the elementary school.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Michael Graner re-negotiated the transportation contract and cut excess money that would have been used for unforeseen costs in order to pay for the programs.

In other good news from the schools, Ledyard High School junior, Kimberly Codding won the Rotary Club’s Four-Way district speech contest.  English teacher Susan Park posted an announcement saying that Kimberly’s award winning speech was about “the need for a return to civility in the process of nominating presidential candidates.” Park said the final contest was held at Yale and Kimberly competed with scholars from four counties in Connecticut.

If you have some announcements you’d like to share with Patch readers, don't wait for me! You can submit all the information and pictures onto the Ledyard Patch in the Announcements section. It's super easy and self-explanatory. After you submit the information, send me a link or email to let me know about the announcement and I’ll feature it on the main page as soon as possible.