The Daily Five: East Lyme Football Seeks New Coach, Conservation Accomplishments, and Charity Scams

1. Today should be sunny but not warm, with a high temperature of just 38 degrees, followed by a clear but cold night with an overnight low of 26 degrees, according to weather.com. 

2. East Lyme High School's football team is looking for a new head coach. Paul Tenaglia recently announced that he was resigning as head coach for the Vikings. Tenaglia told the Norwich Bulletin that the school was considering making the position available to someone from the High School's staff, saying that Old Saybrook-Westbrook cooperative head coach Rudy Bagos, who works at East Lyme High and coaches Freshman Football and High School golf, would be his likely successor.

East Lyme High School Athletic Director Steve Hargis told the Bulletin that the number of students participating in the football program had decreased from 100 when Tenaglia first came on board in 2006 to just 60 and that the school typically pulls coaches from among staff members. He said the job is posted and Bagos is among a number of people who have applied for the position.

Tenaglia helped lead the team to four championship games but the Vikings didn't have a good season this year, finishing 2-8 after playing every game away while the school's athletic field was under construction.  

Hargis told the Bulletin that a new head coach would likely be announced mid-January.  

3. The nonprofit environmental organization Save the Sound was busy in 2012. Here are some of the accomplishments that Rebecca Kaplan, director of communications for the Connecticut Fund for the Environment says the group is particularly proud of this past year. 

• We successfully intervened in the merger between Northeast Utilities and NSTAR, protecting thousands of acres of open space in the drinking water watershed. 
• We held our first-ever live-Twitter chat in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy 
• We rallied advocates, environmental organizations and elected officials together to urge for a conservation sale of Plum Island.
• We successfully advocated for several bills that were signed into law regarding sea level rise, phosphorus, and open space.
• We defended against several bills that would be environmentally harmful, including Route 11 tolls, transfer of DEEP’s conservation functions to the Department of Agriculture, and a bill that would weaken CEPA.
• We brought together 2,450 volunteers from around the state who removed 16,310 pounds of trash from 57 miles of Connecticut beaches and riverfronts during 57 coastal cleanups.

Learn more at http://greencitiesbluewaters.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/cfesave-the-sounds-2012-year-in-review/

4. Tides came in unusually high yesterday but though there was a coastal flood alert issued for our area, Old Lyme Emergency Operations Director Dave Roberge said there was no significant flooding reported in Old Lyme's beach communities. Then again, compared to Sandy's storm surge, what might have been considered worth writing home about at one point may seem like just another day at the beach now.  

5. It's awful that there's a need to say this but, please beware of charity scams this time of year. One of the more offensive scams came to light yesterday when Connecticut office of the U.S. Department of Justice announced it had arrested a New York woman for fraud for allegedly seeking contributions to help pay for the funeral of a family member she claimed was a victim of the Sandy Hook school shooting. It boggles the mind that people can sink to such levels.