Hempfield townlively.com
JUNE 11, 2025
SERVING THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES SINCE 1954
Hempfield Doubles Team Nets State Title BY GEORGE DEIBEL
Watershed Planner Returns to His Neck of the Woods BY GEORGE DEIBEL
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ooper Lehman and Braylen Garcia put ’em down deep. The Hempfield doubles team captured the PIAA Class 3A championship with a 2-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 victory over Dallastown’s Jacob Horn and Hayden Koons on May 24 at Hershey Racquet Club. Cooper knew the first thing he needed to do after receiving his gold medal was call his biggest fan: his grandmother Josie Lehman. Josie was unable to attend the match, and it was not livestreamed. It took a couple minutes for Cooper to explain to Josie how to answer a FaceTime call, but they eventually connected. “I showed her my medal, and she was in awe,” Cooper recalled. “My grandma is my No. 1 supporter. Before a match, she tells me to ‘put ’em down,’ and before facing a tough opponent, she says to ‘put ’em down deep.’ She told me to ‘tell Braylen I love him.’ It was really cool.” During the second set, it seemed like Cooper’s post-match talk with his grandma was going to have a far less-celebratory tone. Cooper, a senior, and Braylen, a freshman, dropped the first set and fell behind in the second against the Dallastown duo. “ We had no energ y at all,” Braylen said. “We weren’t playing our greatest. We just stuck with it all the way. Just played for every point. We didn’t fold under the pressure, and we rose to the occasion.” Dallastown had a match point before the Black Knights tandem rallied. Cooper and Braylen are friends with the members of the Dallastown team and had
Brian Gish takes great pride in each plan he writes to heal sick waterways, but his latest project hits home. Gish, who is the Pennsylvania senior watershed planner for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
(CBF), is in the early stages of devising a proposal to improve the condition of 13 streams that impact portions of Columbia Borough, Mountville Borough, West Hempfield Township, and Manor Township. “This one is special for me,” he said. See Watershed pg 5
Brian Gish looks out over Shawnee Run. Photo by George Deibel
Hempfield’s Braylen Garcia (left) and Cooper Lehman won a PIAA boys’ doubles tennis title.
defeated them in the district final. “They were playing really well, and it threw us off,” Cooper said. “We were getting frustrated. I was just trying to stay composed and keep myself calm so that would reflect on Braylen.” Although in his first season of high school tennis, Braylen’s experience belies his age. “I feel like I’ve always been kind of calm,” he said. “I play in a lot of tournaments. It gives me experience with that kind of stuff.” Hempfield had not broken Jacob’s serve in the district title
contest or up until the point the Dallastown player was serving for the match. Cooper conceded he had very little hope left while facing match point, so he decided to take a simple approach. “I just started playing and tried not to think about losing or winning. I was just being in the moment.” Cooper and Braylen wound up taking the second set in a tiebreaker and then rolled in the third set. “We started playing a lot better,” Braylen said. “My serve was getting better. Our volleys were a lot better. We were
LCWG Is Made Up of a Bunch of Do-Gooders BY JEFF FALK
Good is universal, timeless and objective. Because it mirrors God, good is good. The Lancaster County Women for Good (LCWG) group knows some things about the concept of doing good. It’s part of the all-volunteer organization’s mission, purpose and reason for existing. “ We use that word a lot, ‘good,’” said Anna Horst, the chairperson of the five-member
board that oversees LCWG’s operations. “It’s in our name. I think it’s safe to say our connections and providing nonprofits with resources is part of the good we aim to do. I think there are a number of nonprofits in Lancaster County who have amazing missions. T hey ’re real people trying to help real people. They are problems that a majority of us would agree need to be solved. Maybe we need to be more clear by what we mean by ‘good.’”
See State Champs pg 8
See LCWG pg 2
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