Lifelong baseball fan and girls little league softball coach, John O’Neil can honestly say that his favorite team is the Mets – as in the group of 16 young ladies he trains every spring. No offense to the New York Mets, but the choice between the hardened major league team and his budding talents is a virtual no-brainer.

Since joining the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park in 2000, Christina Taylor has seen a lot of changes. Involvement in the Friends’ environmental internships has increased, areas of the park are being reforested and, of course, in 2004, the city chose Van Cortlandt Park as the site for a controversial new water filtration plant.

Leaving his new family behind and putting his life in potential danger, Staff Sergeant Christopher Perkins of Norwood is on his way back to Iraq for a second tour of duty. Perkins spent his first 15-month tour in southern Iraq with his fellow soldiers from the 245th Maintenance Company of the National Guard, a unit based in the Kingsbridge Armory.

More than 30 people gathered in the rain two weeks ago to tell the Parks Department and the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) how they think $4.5 million the city has set aside for Jerome Park Reservoir can best be used.

Never underestimate the power of J-Lo. Need evidence? Take the hundreds of screaming, starry-eyed fans who lined up last week for a chance to meet the multi-talented Bronx-bred performer, otherwise known as Jennifer Lopez, at an autograph session inside F.Y.E. music store on Jerome Avenue near Gun hill Road.

In an ongoing effort to improve living conditions in this growing part of the northwest Bronx, Community Board 7 decided at its February meeting to authorize the city’s Department of Planning to work with them on the rezoning process referred to as 197C in the city’s Charter.

The Norwood News took home a first place award for Heather Haddon’s investigation of the Pinnacle Group at the New York Press Association’s annual convention in upstate Saratoga last weekend.

When community activists successfully defeated the city’s plan to build the filtration plant in the Jerome Park Reservoir in the mid-1990s, some also took the time to imagine how the reservoir could be reintegrated with the community.

Despite all of his best efforts, Discovery High School Principal Scott Goldner can’t stop his students from calling him by his first name. “He tried,” says Ashley Cameron, a senior who lives just a couple of blocks away from the small school located inside the Walton HS campus near Kingsbridge Road. “But it just didn’t work. He’s Scott.” That may be the only thing not working for Goldner as his burgeoning institution heads toward the end of its fourth year, which will culminate in June with Discovery’s first graduation ceremony. Judging by the results of its first-ever School Quality Review

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