Issue #12
April 2, 2025
Smithville Senior's Resolve Lands College Football Dream
“As Spring arrived during Christian Osorio’s junior year, he found himself at a crossroads. He had aspirations of playing college football, but the district had just hired a new head football coach.
Could he trust someone he didn’t know to help fulfill his dream?”
If you are looking for some inspiration this week, we’ve got you covered.
We sat down with Christian to hear his amazing story of pursuing a dream and dedicating himself to it–no matter what life threw in his way.
Make some time this week for a wonderful story of true grit and determination.
SISD Budget Woes
The SISD Board of Trustees met on Monday and several revenue shortfalls were revealed at the halfway point in the fiscal year.
You can see how the district is planning to cover the shortfall, and learn about the resolution passed relaying the board's stance on school vouchers in our meeting recap.
Upcoming Special Board Meetings:
The Board of Trustees will have two special meetings early next week to meet with their consultant about the superintendent search process.
April 7, 6pm at the Admin Building
April 9, 6pm at the Admin Building
Those meetings will be held in closed session, but you can issue public comment at the start of the meetings. Let your voice be heard!
Register to Vote!
Today marks 31 days until Smithville holds its municipal elections and if you’re not registered to vote, you have until tomorrow (April 3) to do so.
As we reported last week, Place 2 write-in candidate Cale Lammerts announced on social media he was dropping out of the race. But with the ballots already printed, his name will still appear as an approved write-in candidate.
Election rules require a candidate to file a notarized letter to officially withdraw. In a message posted on Next Door today he said, “Due to my work schedule I'm not sure that I will ‘officially’ be able to pull out of the race, but I have no plans on excepting [sic] the position if I was to win.”
Without the official withdrawal, if Lammerts receives the most votes, he would legally be declared the winner.
Upcoming Candidate Events:
April 8, 5:30p-7:30p: Place 3 incumbent Jimmy Jenkins is hosting a meet and greet at Quinto Patio
April 10, 6pm: Chamber of Commerce Candidate Forum at the Rec Center
April 12, 2pm: Palace 3 candidate Brian Wells is hosting a meet and greet at The Front Room
You can hear where the candidates stand on the issues in our wrap-ups from the first candidate forum on March 12.
Road Closures
We hope you've been enjoying that beautiful newly-paved Main Street and 2nd Street!
The street renovations have moved over to Olive Street, which will remain closed from March 31 to April 11.
Quinto Patio is OPEN, so please don’t be scared to patron their business during the construction.
You can read about the reason for the construction from our Feb. 28 article.
New Ownership at the General Store
On April 5, Brandon Dunham will take over ownership of the Smithville Coffee House and General Store, according to a post on their Facebook page.
From the Publisher
As the calendar turns to April, it means baseball is back, and I couldn't be happier. Few things give me greater pleasure in life than singing "Go Cubs Go" after watching a win at Wrigley.
One of the early MLB storylines this season has been about the torpedo bats used by the New York Yankees. These bats moved mass from the end of the bat, where it wasn't connecting with the ball, and placed it more towards the hands, where hitters were connecting.
The design came from Aaron Leanhardt, a literal physicist who, after teaching at MIT, decided to pursue a career in baseball. He worked in the hitting department, and as he got into the role, he had a simple question for his hitters: What can we do to make our offense better?
When broken down, baseball is simply a game of man with ball versus man with bat.
So the hitters had an easy answer: Get the ball on the barrel of the bat more.
MLB has rules about the size and weight of bats that can be used in games. So the initial idea (make the barrel bigger) didn't work. It would make the bat too heavy.
So Leanhardt looked at the problem differently. He told his hitters to think about each bat having a "wood budget," weight that can be distributed over a specific length.
As a baseball purist, I think the result looks ridiculous. But the Yankees mashed nine homers that first weekend, and when other clubs started using it, they had similar results.
Full disclosure: I despise the Yankees. I’d be happy if they never hoist another World Series trophy again. But you gotta admit, this bat thing is genius, right?
My favorite part of this story is how Leanhardt used a First Principles approach to solving his problem. Bats have been standardized in baseball for over 150 years, and the iconic "bottle" shape has been popular for 100 years.
But Leanhardt didn't accept that the hitter was the only thing that could be changed to solve the problem of wanting more offense. He looked at EVERYTHING—even things that hadn't been changed for a century.
That's the kind of thinking I am trying to bring to Smithville Texas News. The newspaper industry went unchanged for nearly a century, and the migration to digital has been devastating (Traffic by Ben Smith is a great read on why).
In 2025, it still feels like the industry is clinging to the notion of digitizing a 400-year-old paper product.
So my question to you, Smithville, is this: What can we do to make news distribution better in our community?
What is our "torpedo bat" idea?
Hit reply to this email and let me know your wildest ideas.
Looking forward to see what we can build together,
~K
Kristen Meriwether
Publisher, Smithville Texas News
Kristen@smithvilleTexasNews.com
Follow us on X @NewsSmithville
