By Coach Yunus Brevik

We’ve entered the sixth month of the year, home to the strawberry moon and longest day of the year, and — unique to our little spot of the earth — the time of year when T-ball season starts. Elise, who just turned 6, spoke for us all on opening night Friday, June 5, when she noted she’s been taking a break from Perry League “because it wasn’t summer.”

While a severe thunderstorm watch was in effect for the weekend, Friday night was as gorgeous as we could hope for and a nice contrast to last year’s opening night no-gamer because of a too-muddy infield.

Five minutes before game time, a steady line moved through registration and about a dozen young ones roamed the infield, at least half in this year’s new tie-dye shirts, with a variety of the past few years’ tie-dye shirts as well. A few children were dragging the tee around, several were throwing or chasing balls, some were just running or chasing others, a few were huddling and socializing, and at least one really little person was sitting and just soaking it all up.

We had to make a pre-game decision on what to do with the bleachers, given the recent addition of more formal dugouts to the field. This was the first game to our knowledge during which the bleachers sat behind the fence. We were worried those waiting to bat would be too far from the field, or the view wouldn’t be as nice, yet it all seemed to work out fine. It definitely made a difference with sending out one player at a time to bat, which, if you’ve witnessed any games in the past, is a bit of a challenge when you have so many eager young batters and they are all just a few feet from the pile of bats.

T-ball is only possible because a handful of adults are willing to volunteer their time and help to ensure the game runs smoothly. Thanks to those who answered the call and joined us on the field or on the bench. Even the writing of this article is a group effort. We made a call for someone willing to jot down notes while positioned near home plate. At the beginning of the game Cissy and her mom, Liz, took note of each player’s name as they came to bat. By mid- to late-game, Ender’s mom, Jen, had a turn and added a variety of comments. This is incredibly helpful for us coaches.

A few minutes after six, the whistle was blown and children were called to line up on the third baseline. I’m not sure if any of us counted, but we started the evening with a lot of players. There wasn’t an official count of how many players had braids, but we had quite the range, as some came with a single braid, or two or three, some with five or more. There’s also a good chance the number of players with shoes was about the same as those without. A small handful brought their own bats, including a Savannah Bananas bat. That was a first.

As is customary, everyone runs, walks, or gets carried to the outfield for a warm-up. Usually a few hats are picked up on the way. You’d understand if you saw how fast some of them sprint. The coach tries to be mindful to warm up with movements that prepare parts of the body used in baseball, such as wrists, shoulders and hamstrings, to name a few. However, the warm-up is much more like play than anything else. Throwing our arms up while riding a rollercoaster, or crawling on the ground like a cat or dog are common moves.

Warm-ups done, children back on the third baseline for a safety debriefing, and then a scramble to find a spot in the infield or on the bench to bat, and it was game on. We often have a few older and savvy children who know how the bench system works and make every effort to be first to sit so they’re first to hit. On opening night that older child was River Brevik, 7, who considered T-ball as extra practice since he now plays in the Yellow Springs minor league. He called foul on his first hit and found redemption in his second swing. Younger brother Cassian, 3, had followed River to the bench, so was up second. Because he chose a bat bigger than his body, it took a few swings to make contact before he was off and running for first.

Kai, 6,  was up third. I observed that we both had the same shoes on. He looked down and said, “But I don’t have shoes on,” to which I responded, “No shoes are a type of shoes. You got your feet on.” He thought for a minute then broke into a smile. He too had a solid hit, and then our game was in full swing, bases loaded.

One of opening night’s many joys is seeing children return year after year. Camilla, 6, approached the tee and, after reminding me of her name (my memory has some lapses during that long break between summers), was engaged in small talk before hitting. I said, “I remember you from last year. You have a brother, right?” Rather quickly she replied, “Yeah. He’s in my mom’s tummy.” That’s likely not the brother I was remembering from last year, so I followed up, “Do you have another brother?” She pointed to the baseball field at the other end of the park and said, ‘Yes. But he plays over there now.” Time flies.

Another joy is watching how much a child can change in the short span of one evening. Luna, 5, started the game quite unsure of what she’d be dealing with. There were tears before the game started and a considerable amount of apprehension early in the game. By her second time to bat, which was an impressive line drive, she was wearing a smile that was all the more beautiful after those early tears.

Apologies to Cameron, 4, who was announced as Carmen. There are children who correct me when I attempt to confirm their name, and there are children who smile and nod as I mispronounce their name. Cameron was the latter, with an enthusiastic nod and broad smile as I said, “Carmen. It’s Carmen? Am I saying that right? Carmen?” I’ll try to make sure I get it right next week.

We were blessed with several new faces on Friday. Ellie, 3, Stone, 5, Jory, 3, Jamon, 2,  and Frankie, 2, all made their Perry League debuts. You would have never known it was Ellie’s first time given her ability to hit. Jory was new, yet showed up in a 2010 Perry League shirt from the Clarks. He fit right in. Stone brought such infectious joy, and was enthusiastically cheerleaded at the tee by his father, Shane. Jamon approached the tee holding the bat like a cue stick ready to play billiards, and was gently encouraged to experiment with a standard bat grip instead. Frankie explored about every square inch of the infield for the first half of the game, and was incredibly helpful with bringing balls to the tee. She waited until late in the game to have a go at hitting, and seemed to enjoy that as well.

That’s a snippet of what was our first night of this season’s Yellow Springs Perry League T-ball. Our all-volunteer program is noncompetitive, free and open to children aged 2-9, regardless of their race, color, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, spiritual inclination or practice, ability or disability. All are welcome to join us each Friday evening through Aug. 7, except July 3, starting at 6 p.m. in Gaunt Park.

With a handful of recent storefront closures in downtown Yellow Springs, a pressing question naturally arises: Is the village at all in jeopardy of losing its longtime grocery store?

Not in the slightest, said the new interim general manager, John Mabbott, last week. 

“I guarantee it,” he told the News. “In fact, I’m going to make it dance.”

Such a feat began with small-town exuberance on Tuesday morning, June 16, when around 100 villagers crowded the shoulder of Xenia Avenue to watch the ceremonial ribbon cutting — an occasion that marked the end of Tom’s Market and the beginning of Springs Market, and what could one day become a community-owned grocery store.

For now, villagers can expect business as usual at the downtown market — the same hours, operations, friendly staffers and inventory.

News readers will recall that the Yellow Springs Community Foundation announced late last year its intentions to facilitate the transition of Tom’s Market into a co-op, with the organization keeping in view the Gray family’s desire to step away from the business, and at the same time, seeking to retain local ownership and control of the downtown staple.

On Monday, that transition officially kicked off.

Jeff Gray, son of the store’s former namesake, turned over the keys to Tom’s Market to the foundation. The purchase included all Tom’s inventory, most of the coolers and machines, and full operational control of all 6,800 square feet of retail space and all products coming in and and going out.

Changes are underway: The building’s facade got a new coat of burgundy paint and soon, a new awning will hang over the entrance. The seasonal pop dispensers went away and in their place are the ice machine and firewood. New bike racks were installed and additional accessible parking spaces were added — now with a wider berth.

Inside, the store no longer sells tobacco products — which don’t align with the Foundation’s values, the News was told — and the overhead shelving above the front register is gone.

This is all just the beginning, Mabbott said. Drawing from his decades of experience sprucing up stores across the country, he has a few more tricks in his apron. 

The interim general manager hails from the Pacific Northwest, where he came of age in the grocery business. He started out at a Safeway — the West Coast-version of a corporate supermarket — in the late ’70s. He eventually worked his way to owning a neighborhood market and wine shop — the kind like Tom’s, he said, where meetings of the mind happen in the produce aisle and everyone knows your name.

Throughout his career, Mabbott’s been a fierce advocate for both worker rights and equitable retailing. In the late ’80s, he was a leader in the massive, 81-day labor strike among grocery clerks and meat cutters in the Puget Sound area, and later, worked for the largest consumer-owned food co-op in the U.S. — the Puget Consumers Co-op.

Nowadays, he works as a consultant  — simply put, helping small-town markets make it work.

“There was only one I knew I had to close before I even walked in, the rest I’ve fixed,” Mabbott said.

“And trust me,” he added, gesturing at the new Springs Market. “This place is fine.”

His interim role as the store’s general manager over the next six months — that is, before the Community Foundation hires a permanent manager — is straightforward, he suggested. He isn’t there to help with the creation of a co-op model, but rather to make the grocery store more financially viable and evermore responsive to the needs of the immediate community.

“I want people to feel like they’re voting for the future of the store, the town, when they shop here,” Mabbott said. “We want to be a compelling store — one that makes you feel like s- -t for shopping at the competition, when we’re giving $150 to your kid’s robotics team.”

Mabbott said the new Springs Market will likely boast more regularly marketed specials, a diversified inventory and reduced prices throughout most sections of the store.

“We absolutely need more things on special — and you know, every store should always have two [frozen] pizzas for $12. I think that’s even in the Bible,” Mabbott quipped.

He plans to bring back paninis in the deli, consolidate the number of places where cheese is displayed and possibly revive an in-house butcher station, or at the least, partner with local meat producers to better stock the shelves. If he had his druthers, a stage for regular music performances would be behind the store.

Though he has these big ideas, he’s still a realist. 

“No matter what, the math needs to work,”  he noted.

He knows there’s no price-point comparison with what neighboring Kroger can offer — especially the “baby-sized $5 watermelons they’re getting by the semi-load” — but perhaps there are other avenues that a Yellow Springs store can tread that corporations can’t. To him, that looks like strengthening local relationships.

“Maybe there’s a day when a portion of our sales go to ‘Who’s Hungry?’” Mabbott mused.

With all those logistical and operational changes coming down the pike, there’s an above-all, imperative call Mabbott’s career has primed him to answer: how to keep taking care of his new people — the 26 stalwart staffers and department heads working through the store’s ongoing transition in ownership and management.

“I truly believe that customer service is a spiritual undertaking and, at the same time, a selfish act — you give great service to protect your future,” Mabbott said.

He continued: “But that service begins with learning to love yourself and knowing how not to take s—t from anybody — and getting a fair wage from doing the best you can and feeling safe. This place needs to be safe. The world has never been easier to be an asshole, never easier to hate.”

All his grand ambitions for the new Springs Market notwithstanding, Mabbott said he’s still open to suggestions — there’s a box near the front where patrons can write in a word of advice for new products, aesthetic changes, or any concern that strikes someone in the check-out lane.

But as a reminder: Mabbott’s here as an interim manager — a role he’s filling for six months until he returns home to the Pacific Northwest. 

Kumar Jensen — longtime local and the project manager for the Community Foundation’s efforts to build a co-op in Tom’s Market’s stead — said that he and his team received about 20 applications for the permanent manager position.

“The vast majority were from locals,” Jensen said.

Jensen added that the Foundation aims to have interviews completed by the end of the month, with a final selection ready to hit store’s tiles as the long-term manager of Springs Market by July 4.

That person will shadow and learn from Mabbott until the expiration of his interim position. All  the while, the Foundation will continue to lay the groundwork for a potential co-op model. The nearest steps include forming a steering committee of interested community members, which will be led by Co-op Dayton.

Additionally, three community open houses are being coordinated by Co-op Dayton to build local involvement in a potential co-op model. They’re scheduled for:

• Thursday, June 25, 6 p.m. at the YS Senior Center, 227 Xenia Ave.;

• Saturday, June 27, 11 a.m., at Agraria, 131 East Dayton-Yellow Springs Road; and

• Tuesday, June 30, 1 p.m., at MVECA, 888 Dayton St.

A retirement, finally

In true Gray fashion, father and son duo Tom and Jeff Gray beamed with quiet humility at Tuesday’s ribbon cutting when, before the big cut was made, Mayor Steve McQueen proclaimed June 16, 2026 as official “Gray Family Day.”

The proclamation read, in part: “The Gray family has provided over 25 years of local investment and grocery leadership in the Yellow Springs community. Tom’s Market has employed hundreds of local residents, invested in local businesses and vendors, and supported Yellow Springs’ vibrant downtown community.”

(Even this reporter worked behind the deli counter for a summer in 2011.)

In speaking with the News following the ribbon cutting, Jeff Gray said he’s overcome with gratitude — namely for his fellow villagers who supported him over the last four years — and even a little grief to be passing the torch of his family’s store.

“It has been the biggest challenge of my life, and now it’s over,” Gray said.

He moved back to Yellow Springs in 2021 to take the reins from his father — a concerted attempt to give his father the retirement he sought for so many years. Tom had, after all, worked at the store for around 57 years, starting as a bag boy at Luttrell’s Market. He became owner in 2001, succeeding Bud Weaver. 

But Tom’s retirement never fully happened — after taking over, the younger Gray often relied on his dad’s practical advice and sometimes even his physical help in the meat department.

By his own admission, Jeff’s not a grocer — he’s an electrician who happened to run a grocery store. What ultimately made that unlikely occupation work, he said, were his staffers.

“I brought together the best crew I could imagine having,” Gray said. “I feel comfortable and confident in their ability to continue upholding the level of service and gratitude necessary to make our local grocery store an outstanding success.”

Local chess instructor Tony Mumford has been working on a grandmaster plan for quite a few years now. And like any good strategist, he always has an eye on the next move.

Since 2021, Mumford has been building a youth chess program in Yellow Springs — one designed to teach village kids not just the fundamentals of the age-old game, but also to foster confidence and critical thinking that can be taken well beyond the checkered board.

Local youth looking to capture those and other skills are invited to attend a slate of upcoming chess camps that Mumford and other expert instructors with the YS Chess Club have planned this summer.

The first two camps are Saturdays, June 27 and July 11, 11 a.m.–2 p.m., at John Bryan Community Center. The other two are Saturdays, July 18, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and  July 25, 10 a.m.–1 p.m., at YS Community Library.

Courtesy of support from YS Community Foundation, camps are free and open to all kids ages 6–17. To register, email yellowspringschess@gmail.com with the name and grade of the child as well as the chosen dates of attendance.

“These camps are about sharpening your game and your mind. They’re about learning new tactics and strategy, and maybe making a new friend,” Mumford told the News earlier this month.

He added: “And they’re open to all skill levels, beginners who’ve never moved a piece to seasoned players. We have masters on hand who can still teach you a thing or two.”

Though he’s looking forward to these upcoming camps, they’re far from Mumford’s end-game.

He said he aims to put the whole of Greene County on the map in the competitive chess world, and in recent years, Yellow Springs players have become his knights in shining armor.

“There’s so much potential here, so many kids who could be masters before they even get to high school,” Mumford said, and pointed to 13-year-old villager Zander Breza who, in January, finished first in a tournament in Cincinnati.

“That’s what consistency and mentorship can do!” Mumford exclaimed.

Breza was among the original crop of Yellow Springs youngsters who started working with Mumford when he held free after-school programs at the library four years ago, when he began expanding the Fairborn Chess Club’s reach eastward into the village.

As previously reported in the News, Mumford was lured to town after he met former villager Omar Durrani — affectionately known as “Mister Omar” by his Yellow Springs Chess Academy students.  Durrani moved to Florida about nine years ago after nearly a decade teaching chess in the village, resulting in a chess-club-sized gap that Mumford has filled.

Since setting up shop in town, Mumford has established in- and after-school programs at Mills Lawn, occasional open play events at the Emporium, Senior Center and Community Foundation building; as well as reliable summer camps like the ones coming up.  All the while, Mumford has hosted weekly tournaments and instruction at the Fairborn Methodist Church.

“There’s no off-season for chess. It’s year-round,” he said with a laugh.

To prove his point, Mumford said he’s expanding his scholastic program in Yellow Springs Schools when classes start again this fall.

Chess instruction has previously only been offered at Mills Lawn, but will now include YS Middle and High School students.

“We have no shortage of talent and teachers to make this happen,” Mumford said. “It’s my dream to make chess an official part of the curriculum — and not just here, but everywhere.”

The academic benefits, he believes, are manifold.

“After playing chess, interesting things start happening,” Mumford said. “Teachers say their vocabulary is different. Kids start talking about diagonals, algebraic notations.”

He recounted one little girl who was falling behind in her elementary math class, back when Mumford was volunteering in his neighboring Fairborn school district — she was about to leave her friends for a remedial program.

“I learned that if I talked about the pieces in terms of dollar amounts instead of numeric values, she got it,” Mumford said.

In short order, the little girl not only caught onto the game of chess, but all of arithmetic suddenly clicked. When she reunited with her friends, she found herself ahead of the pack.

“That’s what it’s about, and why I do what I do. What a feeling it is to see a child believe in themselves, sometimes when no one else will,” Mumford said.

He continued: “You see? Chess is the great equalizer. It doesn’t care how old you are, how much money you have or what color you are. You can’t let a win get to your head or let a loss into your heart — there’s always another game.”

To support the Yellow Springs Chess Club and Mumford’s efforts to bring more chess instruction to and beyond local classrooms, he said the nonprofit welcomes donations through a GoFundMe crowd-based fundraising page, which can be easily accessed by Googling “Yellow Springs Chess Club GoFundMe.”

To learn more about or to sign up for the upcoming chess camps at the Bryan Center and library, email yellowspringschess@gmail.com

Alissa Paolella is used to asking the questions. Their first career was as a journalist, and even after moving into a second career in marketing and communications, the local resident was still typically on the giving end of queries.

This month, though, sitting in the News office for an interview about their newly launched business, Springs Content Studio, Paolella acknowledged the role reversal with a laugh.

“I’ve interviewed professionally for a long time, right?” they said. “But talking about myself is a totally different thing.”

Paolella’s comment hit at the center of the work they said they aim to do via Springs Content Studio. Most people and organizations have stories to tell, Paolella said, but they don’t always know how to articulate those stories to the world at large, or at least the portion of the world they want to reach.

Though Paolella has already been offering marketing and communications consulting work under their own name for a while, they said the official launch of Springs Content Studio last month formalizes that work and puts a structure around it — and potentially solves a pragmatic issue.

“Nobody can spell [Paolella] — or, you know, say it,” they said. “I’ve got to think about search engines and how people are finding companies that do the kind of work I do.”

Paolella described their work as “ethical marketing,” an approach they said is shaped by their years in journalism, and later sharpened by time spent in organizational work.

“I don’t lie or mislead, but I do message things in a certain way,” they said.

Marketing, they said, is selective by nature; so is storytelling — and so, in its way, is journalism, for that matter. The work of ethical marketing is all about shining a light on a person’s body of work, the services a business offers or the mission of a nonprofit so it’s visible to the folks who might need it — without bending the truth. 

“That’s what you lead with, it’s what you’re focusing your attention on — you’re telling the truth, but in a way that makes you look good,” they said. “When we talk about transparency, that doesn’t just mean that everyone knows everything all the time — it’s the right information at the right time, and that might not be everything all at once.”

What to say, when to say it and who needs to hear it, Paolella said, are skills they first learned as a journalist — and still use as a frequent freelance reporter for the News. Growing up in Northwest Ohio, they knew early on that they wanted to write for a living, and by high school, Paolella was editing the school newspaper. They later attended Ohio University’s Scripps School of Journalism and worked as a community reporter for more than a decade.

Paolella said they loved newspaper reporting, but the political climate for journalists in 2016 — “I was in a very conservative area, and I wasn’t feeling super safe in that newsroom,” they said — combined with long hours and low pay, pushed them to look for work outside the field.

The movement from journalism into broader communications wasn’t immediate, particularly as Paolella pitched potential employers on the idea that the skills they had built as a reporter — interviewing, listening, organizing information and understanding audiences — were valuable beyond the newsroom.

“I tried to convince people that my skills were transferable,” they said. “That can be difficult.”

Eventually, Paolella moved into marketing and communications work, first in nonprofit senior living, later at marketing agencies and most recently at Central State University in Wilberforce. Across those roles, they said, they developed a number of skills — media relations, design and promotion, social media messaging and copywriting and editing, among others — and found themselves helping fill gaps where they arose.

“PR is not the same as communications, is not the same as marketing, but I’ve done all three,” they said. “Because my skill-set is wide, and I’m a helper, I would say, ‘Oh, I can help out with that until someone fills the role,’ and then often, it would become part of my job.”

Transitioning into consulting work, then, was a way to corral all the various kinds of work Paolella had amassed into a defined stream of offerings. It also offered a way to keep doing the work they knew they were good at, but with more autonomy than they had found in some traditional workplaces. After experiencing workplaces that trusted them to manage their own time, they said, it was hard to imagine stepping back into any environment that valued how many hours were logged versus the quality and efficiency of their work.

“I enjoy working for myself,” they said.

Through Springs Content Studio, Paolella focuses on strategy, writing, design and public relations storytelling — or, as they put it, “how you get your story out there.” That’s where the journalist still remains visible within the consultant, they said: they’re listening for the details that, they hope, will make a story land, especially for those who may be too close to their own work to know how to describe it.

“Small businesses are sometimes just the owner, and articulating who you are, and then actually getting that out into the public, can be a challenge,” Paolella said.

Working as a kind of translator between values and public expression fits the way Paolella self-identifies as a consultant; they noted that a workplace assessment once determined their two primary traits as “creator” and “connector.”

“It’s not just connecting people,” they said. “It’s also connecting ideas,”

The creator and connector roles, Paolella said, also shape the way they aim to move through the Yellow Springs community, including its local business community. Paolella, who also co-owns Elysium Massage, said they have tried through both businesses to support and promote other local businesses; they pointed to a February local business campaign, for which they created and shared graphics highlighting other participating businesses.

“I want us all to succeed, and I believe in this town and in the people in it,” Paolella said. “I’m so lucky to be here; there’s no place like Yellow Springs.”

Paolella moved to the village about three and a half years ago, after years of feeling isolated elsewhere in Ohio. They said they came to the village intentionally, after realizing that the way they felt when they visited Yellow Springs might be reason enough to put down roots.

“I say it all the time: I feel like I belong here in ways that I’ve not belonged in other places,” they said. “There’s no perfect place — but this place is perfect for me.”

Paolella said they jumped right into getting involved in the community, becoming part of planning annual Pride events and the community Thanksgiving meal. Now they’re a double business owner, member of the Chamber of Commerce and, by one particular metric they mentioned, woven into the tapestry of village life.

“Pretty shortly after I moved here, the first time someone yelled ‘Alissa!’ out their car window as I was walking down the street, I thought, ‘I’m a local,’” they said.

For more on Springs Content Studio, go to http://www.springscontentstudio.com

The 2026 installment of the annual Yellow Springs Pride Festival and Pride Parade will take place Saturday, June 27, 11 a.m.–5 p.m., on South Walnut and Short streets. Lineup for the parade will begin at 10 a.m. on the Railroad Street gravel lot.

The festival will include vendors, musical performances, community resources, a beer garden, food trucks, dancing, Pride merchandise and community.

The schedule of events includes:

11 a.m. — Pride Parade begins, stepping off from the gravel lot on Railroad Street and proceeding through downtown Yellow Springs. The parade is open to individuals, organizations and businesses, and float entries are welcome. To participate, visit http://www.yspride.com/ys-pride-parade to sign up and learn more.

11 a.m. — Ohio Brass & Electric opens the festival with the official welcome and a danceable mix spanning musical genres and eras.

1 p.m. — Scarlett Moon & Friends, Dayton-based drag group, performs.

2 p.m. — Egyptian Breeze Belly Dancers, an eclectic group of women from across the Miami Valley, performs.

2:30 p.m. — Scarlett Moon & Friends, second performance.

3:30 p.m. — !PUFF!, a musical fairytale and art collective, performs.

9 p.m. — Afterparty at Peach’s Grill, with live music, dancing and drag performances for ages 21 and older.

For more information about YS Pride and the annual festival, visit http://www.yspride.com or email volunteers@yspride.com

What's New?

Username

Password

Login form protected by Login Lockdown

Remember Me

-->

Forgot your password?
Register for a free account

Username or E-mail:

You will receive a new
password via e-mail.