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CEDAR GROVE, NJ -- Joe Zichelli, Cedar Grove's deputy mayor and a Township Council member, has been appointed the new township manager in Cedar Grove.

Councilman Peter Tanella, the former mayor, made the announcement at Monday night's Township Council meeting. Zichelli, 26, has been a member of Cedar Grove's Township Council since 2020.

In addition to Zichelli's appointment, the council also approved the appointment of a new township clerk, Dale Forde, who was sworn in to her new position Monday night.

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Last summer, two longtime Cedar Grove employees retired: Thomas Tucci, the former township manager; and Kathleen Stutz, the former township clerk. Alex Palumbo has been serving as the acting township manager since August.

Tanella referred to the hiring of Zichelli as Cedar Grove acquiring "our franchise quarterback."

"I think anybody who's sat up here and watched our town meetings and been a part of Cedar Grove knows that it's impossible to (fill) the shoes of Tom Tucci," Tanella said. "However, I'm excited about the next chapter in Cedar Grove, and Joe Zichelli leading our township as our manager and working together with him. ... It's a really exciting opportunity for Cedar Grove and I'm happy to be part of it. I think Joe's going to do great things for Cedar Grove, and I'm gonna steal the words of our mayor: We were looking for our next 'franchise quarterback,' and I think we've found him in Joe Zichelli."

"I'm confident we have the right guy for the job," Councilwoman Melissa Skabich said.

"I echo the sentiments of everybody," Councilwoman Kerry Peterson said.

"In my year as mayor, we had a retirement of Tom Tucci, who served for 33 years for the township, we had a retirement of our CFO of 39 years, and of our clerk, who was (here) for over 30 years," Mayor Joseph Maceri said. "So that was my gift this year as mayor. It's been quite a ride for six months with all the change. Certainly, the township manager (is) an important position in town. There's been a lot of meetings, a lot of review, and yes, I did mention a few times, we're drafting our quarterback, and I'm very confident that Councilman Zichelli will do a great job."

Mayor Maceri said to Forde, "We have had the pleasure of having you as the acting clerk for the last few months, and you've done a great job. We look forward to you continuing in that role."

"I have to thank Almighty God for this new chapter in my life," Forde said. "He blesses us in His own time, but He's always on time."

Forde thanked her predecessor. Kathleen Stutz, and said, "I aspire to my own style, to set my own standard of excellence in the years to come. I thank Thomas Tucci, the former manager, as well as the Township Council, for this opportunity. I'm grateful for your confidence in me."

The Verona High School color guard, with its bright flags and crisp routines, has been a fixture at football games and marching band competitions for decades. But once fall ended, the guard receded into the background of the busy life at VHS. No more: After a 40-year absence, VHS once again has a winter color guard to compete across the tri-state area.

“It’s something we’ve always wanted to do,” says Brittany Woods, who, with Brenda Lizarraga, is the instructor for the fall guard and the new winter cohort. “Winter color guard is just about the guard and is a good way to develop technique.”

VHS is a small school with a lot of activities competing for students’ attention in winter. Year after year, there weren’t enough students available to participate in winter guard. “This year, we discovered that we had many who were willing to commit,” says Woods. “Then the question became, do we have the means, space and costumes to do it?”

Woods and her team of 15 students are well on their way to answering those questions. Since they don’t perform with a marching band, they had to pick their own show music and chose Sia’s “Elastic Heart.” But winter guard is, for now, a pay-to-play sport, which means that the participating students needed to cover a bevvy of expenses. There were membership dues to pay to MAIN, the Mid-Atlantic Indoor Network, which sets the competition rules and schedule. After a bit of sleuthing on Amazon, they found costumes on Amazon that didn’t break the bank. Winter guards compete on a floor tarp, not a turf field, and that had to be purchased too. The new guard also needs to pay for its transportation to competitions.

If the guard gets on solid footing again, a lot of those expenses could be covered by the powerhouse Verona Music Parents Association (VMPA), which fundraises for fall band and color guard activities. But the decision to have a winter guard this year came too late for VMPA’s planning. While the guard has gotten some donations, it also set up a modest fundraiser–just $3,500–through PayPal and is halfway to its goal. Woods says that the community can also help with food donations on competition days, which can be very long, and showing up at competitions to cheer the winter guard on.

The winter guard’s first competition will be January 28 in West Orange and the students are hard at work building their show. “Guard is a mixture of creative expression and sports,” says Woods, “and the kids have shown so much improvement already.”

Amy Fox, a Verona resident for more than 35 years, is directing “Sweat,” a play that opens at Montclair’s Studio Playhouse on Friday January 26. She’ll be joined in the show by fellow Veronans Kevin Ohlweiler, its fight choreographer and assistant stage manager, and Bill O’Brien, who plays the role of Stan, the affable bartender.

“Sweat” is a 2015 play by American playwright Lynn Nottage. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, it tells the story of a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets, and laughs while working together on the factory floor. But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in a heart-wrenching fight to stay afloat.

Fox has been directing at Studio Playhouse for about 13 years, and is its current president. The mother of three Verona High School graduates, who were all active in Spotlight Players, she was an active participant in the Spotlight Players Parents Association for years. Community theater and the arts are near and dear to her heart.

When not on stage, O’Brien is a paramedic supervisor at University Hospital in Newark. He and Fox have worked on several projects together at Studio Playhouse, including “The Great American Trailer Park Musical,” “Other People’s Money,” “Twentieth Century,” and “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All To You.”

The show will run for three weekends beginning Friday, January 26, and closing on February 11. Shows are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets range from $22 to $25 and can be purchased at online. Group rates are available; contact the box office at 973-744-9752.

Studio Playhouse is located at 14 Alvin Place, Upper Montclair – next to the ACME supermarket. Visit https://studioplayhouse.org/ for additional information about the show.

Skopos Hospitality Restaurant Group, the parent company of The Parkside Social in Verona, will hold its first ever restaurant week, running for much more than a week from January 23 through February 12. North Jersey residents can experience curated prix-fixe menus consisting of their favorite menu items and some new menu items as well.

Restaurant week will be taking place at all six Skopos Hospitality restaurants: Cowan’s Public in Nutley, The Barrow House in Clifton, The Vanguard in Harrison, Gus’ Last Word in Wood-Ridge, Franklin Social in Jersey City and their newest location, The Parkside Social in Verona. All Restaurant Week menus can be found online at each of the restaurant’s websites. Reservations are highly recommended.

Guests will also be dining for a cause. Skopos Hospitality will be donating a percentage of all Restaurant Week sales to New Jersey ProStart National Restaurant Educational Foundation, a two-year industry-backed culinary arts and restaurant management program for high school students. The program reaches approximately 165,000 students in the United States. Skopos Hospitality is excited to be partnering with them for this fundraiser.

During an early-season stretch in January when the Dayton girls basketball team lost four consecutive games, head coach Dave Rennie implored his team to get back to the brand of basketball that is a winning formula for the Bulldogs.

The phrase “Bulldog basketball” has been used a lot around the team this year and everyone around the program understands what that means -- a grind-it-out style on offense in which any of the five starting players can lead the team in scoring on a given night and a suffocating style of defense that will always be there.

Following a loss to Johnson on Jan. 10 that dropped the Bulldogs to 5-4, Dayton has been one of the hottest teams in North Jersey with a 14-3 record for the remainder of the season, including wins over big Union County teams in Elizabeth and Cranford. The 63-58 win over Elizabeth on Feb. 1 came when Elizabeth had a record of 20-0.

“We had a little rough stretch when one loss kind of fed off another,” Rennie said. “Our heads weren’t right and we were kind of down on ourselves, but we just had to get back to playing ‘Bulldog basketball.’ We’ve used that phrase a lot this year. It’s just grinding it out and playing real tough defense. If we’re struggling on offense on any given night, let’s let our defense do the hard work and then the offense will come.”

This long stretch of winning basketball helped Dayton earn the fourth seed in the North 2, Group 2 Tournament, and the Bulldogs now find themselves in the sectional semifinals following a hard-fought 43-35 win over fifth-seeded Verona at home on Thursday evening.

“We’re really excited,” junior Molly Martys said. “A little tired, but we have the energy moving forward. We’re excited for the semifinals and hopefully we can keep this energy moving forward.”

“We’ve had two really good wins here against Bernards, who we had a close game with earlier in the season, and Verona, so I think we’re just going to keep that momentum going into Saturday,” senior Samantha Casey said. “We all came together and worked together to overcome adversity to not let that define our season, but to grow from it and progress as we play more games.”

Everything that the Bulldogs have preached about their winning style was on display against the Hillbillies with the defense being a constant through all four quarters and getting timely scoring on offense.

“The last few weeks of the season we’ve been playing our best basketball of the season,” Rennie said. “We’re really pleased. We have had to grind out these two states games agains tough opponents who play aggressively. We struggled at times in these games, but our girls just tough it out. They compliment each other so well with their passing and sharing the ball. Nobody feels like they have to be the star.”

The Bulldogs jumped out to a 9-2 lead in the first quarter and never trailed again. Casey had a three-pointer to put Dayton ahead 5-0 and a post move to extend that to a 7-2 lead, and two Amiel Dillard free throws accounted for the final two points of the run.

Verona hung in well and made sure the Bulldogs would not pull away early. Following a Caitlyn Del Duca catch-and-shoot three-pointer that put Dayton up 15-8 with 5:05 left in the second quarter, Emily Baumgaurd answered right back with a three of her own. A Cali Giacomazza driving and-one finish cut the Hillbillies deficit to 17-16, which was the halftime score.

Dayton then proceeded to put the game away in the third quarter with a dominant 16-4 showing in which Martys scored seven of her team-high 13 points. After leading 21-18 with 5:33 left in the third, the Bulldogs flourished with a 12-0 run.

It started with a Dillard free throw and followed by a wide-open three-ball from Martys. Dayton then got out on the break following a steal by Angela Gatto, who took it all the way for an and-one finish to put Dayton ahead 28-18 with 2:05 left in the third.

The Bulldogs were not done yet as Casey nailed a three-pointer from the top of the key and Dillard made a great pass to Martys in transition for a layup to go up 33-18.

“We like to stay in our man and communicate,” Martys said. “We like to rotate and just use that to get up fast and break their defense quickly. I think our shots were just falling and we were passing and moving the ball. We were calming down because I think we were rushing a bit, but once we calmed down and our shots went down we did well.”

Four of Dayton’s five starters have a game with at least 20 points this season and all five of them have had at least one game in which they have led the team in scoring.

“We haven’t played a lot of these teams,” so it’s really valuable,” Casey said. “When teams are game planning, it’s really hard to game plan for us because if you face-guard one of us, any one of our other players can drop 20. If you try to shut down one of us, somebody else is going to step up.”

The defense was strong throughout for Dayton, as the Bulldogs held a 20-6 Verona team to one of its lowest point totals of the season. That constant has kept Dayton in almost every game it has played this season.

“They had two key scorers who we were able to shut down,” Casey said. “To hold a team to 16 points in a half is really impressive. We were relentless and never let up. We knew that it was win or go home and we knew we were not going to let their good players get hot.”

Dayton moved up the Mountain Division of the Union County Conference this year after dominating the Valley Division last season. The Bulldogs proved they belong by finishing tied for second in the new division behind only Elizabeth.

With more experience this season against quality competition, Dayton is hoping it pays off when it travels to top-seeded Secaucus for the North 2, Group 2 semifinals on Saturday. Secaucus reached the final round of the Hudson County Tournament and comes in with a sparkling 26-3 record, but the Bulldogs are looking forward to playing the underdog role.

“We’re a little nervous, but it keeps us motivated because we are the underdogs,” Martys said. “We were the underdogs against Elizabeth and other teams throughout the season and we performed, played and won. Hopefully, we can carry that energy throughout and win the game.”

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This Tuesday, February 21, marks the return of Church of the Holy Spirit’s annual Pancake Supper, which this year also will honor the memory of Mike Carlucci (above, center), beloved parishioner, Sunday School teacher, and pancake chef.

“Fat Tuesday” (also known as Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday), is the day before Ash Wednesday, which begins the Christian church season of Lent. During the 40 days of Lent, we’re asked to spend some time in self-reflection, and many people “take on” or “give up” something to mark the 40-day season; fasting is also a traditional practice for some. Pancakes are associated with Mardi Gras because they are a way to use up rich foods such as eggs, milk, and sugar before the fasting season begins.

After two years without this traditional public event, Holy Spirit Verona, located at 36 Gould Street, will once again host a Pancake Supper, and all are invited to attend. This year the event will honor Mike Carlucci, a long-time parishioner who was the pancake-making chef at this event for years and who passed away in September 2022. “Mike also was a Sunday School Teacher, he preached on several Sundays during worship, was on Holy Spirit’s Vestry, mowed the lawn, volunteered in our Food Pantry, shopped for inventory for the Food Pantry, and the list goes on and on,” said Fr. Jerry Racioppi, rector of Holy Spirit. Proceeds from this Pancake Supper will be earmarked for youth events.

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Join Holy Spirit on Tuesday, February 21, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., for this festive event. The cost for a plate of pancakes, sausage, fruit, and dessert is $10 adult / $5 for children ages 6 to 12; under age six is free. Pancakes are also available to go. You can pay online or pay at the door.

Also this year, the church will be selling “Soup for the Soul” at the pancake supper. The soups, which traditionally have been sold at the Fair in the Square, will be mostly meatless for Lent. Soups will be sold for $8/quart, or 2 quarts for $15.

On Ash Wednesday, February 22, Holy Spirit will once again offer “Ashes to Go” in front of the Church on Gould Street from 7:30 to 9 a.m. and from 2 to 3:30 p.m. A service of Holy Eucharist and imposition of ashes will be held at noon in the historic Chapel, and a service of Evening Prayer and imposition of ashes will be held at 7 p.m. There will also be an Ash Wednesday Service for Children at 3:30 p.m., when the kids will bury the “Alleluia” banner, a symbolic tradition that serves to remind us that the word “alleluia” is not using during Lent. For more information on these and all Holy Spirit events, visit holyspiritverona.org.