By David Wolman
PLANO – Plano East and Sachse’s cross country teams have high expectations for this season, and Saturday’s season opener at Hoblitzelle Park shows there is the potential for both squads to be contenders in their respective districts and regions.
The Plano East Lady Panthers, fresh off winning their first district title since 2017, had a strong showing with a third-place finish in the girls’ division with 81 points at the Plano ISD Invitational.
Senior Meena Mulford showed that she is ready to lead the Lady Panthers to big things this year, capturing third place with a time of 12:01.
Senior Brooke Tierney further highlighted Plano East’s depth within its upper classes, taking 16th with a 13:27. Junior Louisa Christensen placed 20th in 13:29 and senior Katy Salyer was just feet behind Christensen and went on to earn 21st place in 13:29. Junior Reagan Diggs placed 27th in 13:45 and junior Sophia Nguyen rounded out the Lady Panthers’ efforts with a 35th-place finish with a time of 14:05.
Plano East’s boys captured second place in the boys’ division (66 points) was fueled by a fifth-place finish by senior Isaac Updike (10:27). Senior Deyan Bhakta finished in 11th with a 10:42. Sophomore Levi Rowe, a returning regional qualifier, placed 13th in 10:47. Sophomore Grant Updike ran to 18th place in 11:05 and senior Michael Sharp was 19th in 11:08. Sophomore Aiden Allen finished just outside the top 20, placing 21st in 11:15. Trinabh Madadi, a junior, placed 26th in 11:26 and sophomore Joshua Cruz was 30th in 11:30.
Stay informed and support your local community newspaper — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
For more than 30 years, the annual rodeo has been a community tradition, with the Wylie Area Chamber of Commerce partnering with Wylie ISD for the past 20 years to host the event at the F.O. Birmingham Agricultural Facility and Rodeo Arena.
Earlier this year, Wylie ISD began renovations to the facility as part of improvements intended to better serve students. In response, the Chamber and the City of Wylie spent several months exploring alternative locations for this year’s rodeo.
According to the Chamber, none of the sites considered could provide the space, infrastructure and safety needed to host the event while remaining logistically and financially feasible.
Read the full story in the August 13th edition. Stay informed — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
]]>Trustees of Collin College have called for a November bond election to raise $600 million for expansion including three new facilities.
The board voted unanimously to place Proposition A on the Tuesday, Nov. 3, general election ballot.
The proposition would authorize $600 million for workforce and academic expansions at the McKinney Campus, the Technical Campus located in Allen, the Frisco Campus, the Wylie Campus, the Farmersville Campus and the Courtyard Center located in Plano.
The proposition also includes funding for new facilities, including an Aviation Academy in McKinney, a new campus in Anna and a new campus in Royse City.
“Based on current financial projections, the college does not anticipate an increase in the tax rate if voters approve the bond proposition,” the college said in a release on Friday, Aug. 7.
“The Board of Trustees has always believed in planning for the future while honoring the commitments we’ve made to our community,” said Jay Saad, chair of the Board of Trustees. “The projects completed through our previous bond program have strengthened the economic impact of our region, while providing accessible and affordable pathways for our students.”
The release said the proposed bond package is the next step in implementing Destination 2030, the college’s long-range master plan designed to expand educational access, strengthen workforce training and modernize facilities to serve one of the nation’s fastest-growing regions.
The college said credit enrollment over has increased by more than 31% over the past decade, and the pace of growth is expected to continue. As enrollment and workforce demand continue to rise, the college developed Destination 2030 as a three-phase roadmap to expand capacity to address this growth.
Phase I prioritized projects addressing near-term enrollment growth, workforce shortages and aging learning spaces. Most Phase I projects are complete, with the remaining work scheduled for completion in 2027.
Phases II and III focus on expanding educational opportunities in the county’s fastest-growing communities, increasing capacity in high-demand workforce and academic programs and modernizing existing facilities.
Collin College said it serves more than 62,000 credit and continuing education students annually and offers more than 200 degrees and certificates.
Stay informed and support local journalism — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
]]>Within 24 hours, a tiny hole in a buried copper pipe sprayed more than 15,000 gallons of water into the dirt 4 feet below the sidewalk in a Murphy neighborhood.
Once the leak was detected, it took more than two hours for a four-man crew from the Murphy Public Works Department to dig down and fix it.
The aging copper service lines that connect water mains with meters are a big reason that Murphy lost 13% of water in the municipal system, more than 168 million gallons, Public Works Director Donald Reese says.
Read the full story in the August 13th edition. Stay informed — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
]]>Councilmembers meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 4, did not vote on the increases, but City Manager Aretha Adams won preliminary approval for increasing the city budget by $4.3 million to $67.4 million.
Adams proposed adoption of the voter approval property tax rate of $0.361832 per $100 of assessed valuation, an increase of $0.004318 or 1.2%.
Read the full story in the August 13th edition. Stay informed — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
]]>By John Moore | TheCountryWriter.com
Leaving Ashdown, Arkansas, was an event unto itself. When your family has one car, going anywhere was a treat. Especially if the destination was a long one where there were lots of people.
So, to be told you’re going to see somewhere you’ve never heard of was the equivalent of going to England. Which at even the ripe old preschool age I was, I had heard of England. The Beatles made sure of it.
When I was quite young, my parents drove us to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, and then back to Dodge City, Kansas, before sailing down through the Ozark Mountains on Arkansas’ western side.
This was in a ‘60 model Buick with no air-conditioning. When you add a four-year-old and a two-year-old to a June trip in a ‘60 model Buick with no air conditioning, you’re witnessing true bravery.
In the mid-1960’s, the Interstate Highway System was not completely finished. It wouldn’t be until 1992, when the last segment of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon, Colorado was done.
So, in the 60’s, you had your choice: the back roads or the backroads. Even many of the state highways then looked like backroads.
And it was on the backroads that I first met America.
I remember the state police saying hello to my sister and me. The Buick had overheated trying to climb a mountain in New Mexico. Their uniforms looked more like the ones I’d seen on TV.
The police told my dad that cars overheated at that spot all the time. Since we were crossing the top of the mountain and headed downhill, the car shouldn’t overheat again.
It didn’t.
The park rangers and visitors at Carlsbad Caverns were nice to us kids. They told us that it was hot outside, but soon we’d ride an elevator down into the caves and it would be nice and cool.
It was.
I remember my dad telling my mom that he was amazed I had walked all the way through the caves, which was over two miles. Mom had carried my sister the whole time. Hindsight, that was amazing. My mom was five feet tall and about 100 pounds.
I recall the trip from Carlsbad to Dodge City took way longer than I wanted it too. But once there, we watched a real gunfight (at that age, it sure looked real), and rode in a period stagecoach.
We have the 8-millimeter movies to prove it.
From there, we headed home.
My dad had radar for peaches or peanuts. If there were fresh, Elberta peaches or bags of peanuts for sale, we stopped.
The people who ran the stand where dad wheeled in were older. Older folks love little kids. Most older folks back then did, anyway.
The lady gave my sister and me a peach each. I’m sure that was after dad had purchased plenty from them.
You feel special when you’re young and are given something. Especially if it’s from someone you just met.
What was special was dad stopping at the roadside parks that once dotted the landscape of the backroads. The concrete picnic tables and cover were free and great.
I took a bite of that peach and chased it with roasted peanuts. Today, I still cherish that combination.
You don’t get that view of our great country when you’re on a plane or a train. Only from a car.
Maybe that’s what I miss most about traveling before the interstates took over. Getting there wasn’t something you endured. Getting there was part of the trip. You passed through small towns, saw courthouse squares, filling stations, diners, farms, and people sitting on front porches. You knew when you crossed a state line because things looked a little different.
There was no GPS telling you when you’d arrive. Dad had a paper map, and we had windows to look out of. Sometimes we got lost. Sometimes we stopped just because something looked interesting. And somehow, we always made it home.
Over 25 years ago, my wife and I hatched the idea of driving what’s left of Route 66, America’s original mother road. A number of things prevented it, but I intend for us to do it.
I’ll be looking for more of what I saw the last time.
Enjoying this column? Let us know. Support your local community newspaper — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
]]>By David Wolman
Plano East head football coach Tony Benedetto and his coaching staff used all of the spring and summer to acclimate themselves to walking to the practice field.
With ongoing renovations to the baseball and softball fields as well as the construction of a new athletics center that will allow the Plano East basketball and volleyball teams to play freshman, junior varsity and varsity games in different gyms, players and coaches had to walk around the fences that have been built up around the construction area on Monday morning for the first day of fall practice.
The construction has forced the coaching staff for the Plano East football team to temporarily move their office to the former locker room of the softball and volleyball teams.
The athletic center was scheduled to be completed in July but is delayed and a completion date is still to be determined.
Construction and all, Plano East is just happy to be back playing on its practice field. Last year, the Panthers held their practices at Tom Kimbrough Stadium, located 3.4 miles, or a 10-minute drive, from the high school campus.
“It’s nice, especially for juniors and seniors to go here and not have to bus and drive to practice,” Benedetto said.
After several players warmed up at 7 a.m., the team’s remaining players and coaches arrived at the field 20 minutes later to officially commence the fall 2026 season.
Players lined up in the south end zone, yelled out chants of “oh” and clapped twice before spreading out across the length of the field for stretching.
The players were then split into their position groups.
Linemen worked on one-on-one blocking drills and calling out blocking assignments. Wide receivers competed in one-on-one drills against defensive backs and catching passes from the quarterbacks. Both the wide receivers and running backs also attempted to hold onto the ball for 20 yards while two defenders attempted to rip the ball out of their hands.
Benedetto is eager to see how Plano East’s offensive line grows over the next three weeks, a unit that doesn’t return any starters. The Panthers lost one player to transfer to a Houston-area school, and another isn’t returning to the team. Benedetto said there is a likelihood of starting one senior, three juniors and one sophomore along Plano East’s offensive line.
“The spring was a huge learning curve for the guys, with all of them having only played lower-level football,” Benedetto said. “Offensive line coach Kyle Sanders had them here every single day after workouts. They are moving with more energy and confidence today.”
Senior quarterback Josh Gordon looked like a No. 1 quarterback after spring ball and all of his passes Monday had a lot of zip and accuracy.
Sophomore running back Treyce Seldon, who recorded 1,231 all-purpose yards and 10 total touchdowns as a freshman, is looking more confident and has added 15 pounds of muscle.
Plano East’s wide receivers have been very competitive in practice. Juniors Colt Shannon and Tyson Seldon are tall-bodied receivers, which is something the Panthers haven’t had in recent years.
Shannon and Seldon should make Plano East’s offense more explosive than last year, a season in which the Panthers finished 2-8 after back-to-back six-win seasons.
Plano East will host Highland Park at 7 p.m. Aug. 20 for a scrimmage. The format will be 10 plays on offense for each team.
“Highland Park is a great scrimmage because it exposes the details kids may overlook,” Benedetto said. “You may find things like not being in the right gap or eyes not in the right place. That humbles us and gets us ready for week one.”
Stay informed and support your local community newspaper — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
Qualifying items can be purchased tax free from a Texas store or from an online or catalog seller doing business in Texas.
The three-day sales tax holiday begins Friday, Aug. 7, and runs through midnight Sunday, Aug. 9.
The comptroller’s office says the sales tax exemption applies only to qualifying items bought during the period. Items purchased before or after the sales tax holiday do not qualify for exemption, and there is no tax refund available.
The exemption applies to each eligible item sold for less than $100, and there is no limit to the number of qualifying items you can buy.
Computers, software and textbooks are not included. Jewelry, handbags, purses, briefcases, luggage, umbrellas, wallets, watches and other accessories are also not exempt.
However, delivery, shipping, handling and transportation charges by the seller are part of the item’s sales price. If the delivery charge is a flat rate per package, and the amount charged is the same regardless of how many items are included in the package, the total charge can be attributed to any one of the items in the package.
A complete list of school supplies covered by the tax holiday is available at: https://bit.ly/3RkCnpL.
Stay informed and support your local community newspaper — subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
]]>Sometimes the passenger is a woman carrying little more than a purse and a few belongings. Other times, it’s a father traveling with children. Some rides last only a few miles; others stretch across state lines.
The circumstances are always different, but the mission never changes.
Discreetly and often urgently, Families to Freedom staff and volunteers help survivors put distance between themselves and the people hurting them — one ride, one flight, one bus ticket and one tank of gas at a time.
For founder and CEO Sarah Nejdl, the organization grew from understanding a difficult truth: leaving abuse is rarely as simple as walking out the door — and no single charity offered flights for domestic violence victims.
“We started as an all-volunteer organization focused on helping sheltered survivors get to family by road trip or by private flight,” said Nejdl, a private pilot.
Within a year, Families to Freedom expanded beyond private flights, adding transportation to rural shelters, bus and commercial travel, and fuel assistance. During the pandemic, the organization broadened its mission again, helping survivors reach any available shelter regardless of distance.
Today, the nonprofit operates offices in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston and is expanding into East Texas, helping connect rural victims with resources in larger cities while also guiding metro-area survivors to available shelters in smaller communities.
Funding support has also transformed the nonprofit’s reach.
“Those funds help us afford frontline personnel so donations go directly toward victim travel,” Nejdl said.
Since 2015, Families to Freedom has coordinated more than 1.7 million transportation miles through local and regional rides, cross-state travel, bus transportation, fuel assistance and commercial flights.
For Nejdl, a few stories still stand out.
“There are many survival stories that remind us that sometimes our services are literally saving lives,” she said.
One involved a mother and her children fleeing an ex-partner who pursued them from state to state.
“She got a ride from us to a secure facility in another state where she could completely change her identity to disappear from him,” Nejdl said.
Another call came through a sheriff’s office requesting transportation to an emergency shelter in another county. One of Families to Freedom’s volunteer drivers transported the woman to safety only minutes before her abuser returned.
“The sheriff later shared that the abuser came home within 10 minutes of our driver leaving with her, and he had shotguns in the truck,” Nejdl said.
Roberta “Robbie” Chandler has seen the mission from behind the wheel.
After volunteering for 12 years with a McKinney nonprofit, Chandler attended a meeting where Nejdl spoke about Families to Freedom’s need for volunteers.
“I just automatically put my hand up,” Chandler said. “It just seemed like there was a desperate need.”
Four years later, Chandler dedicates 20 to 25 hours each week to the organization, handling North Dallas outreach and public speaking while reminding audiences that abuse can affect anyone.
When people ask why victims don’t simply leave, Chandler said those questions usually come from people who have never experienced abuse firsthand.
“Before they come to us, they have probably exhausted what friends and family they have,” she said.
Families to Freedom staff handle intake calls, develop individualized safety plans and assign one staff member to remain with each client throughout the process, coordinating transportation and working directly with volunteers.
Volunteers never pick people up at front doors and are never placed in unnecessary danger. Drivers are tracked from pickup through drop-off, receive descriptions of suspected abusers and remain in constant contact with staff.
“We know at all times, if we’re driving, that we’re being watched,” Chandler said.
Volunteers also provide small comforts. Survivors receive purses stocked with essentials, gift cards and toiletries, while children receive backpacks, books, toys and snacks.
“Anything that would make them feel like they have something to call their own,” Chandler said.
Staff continue checking on survivors for up to a month after they reach safety and will arrange additional transportation if another shelter becomes necessary.
The work, Chandler admitted, can be emotionally draining.
“You never cry in front of the client when you hear their story,” she said. “You wait until you get them safely delivered.”
Afterward, volunteers check in with office staff to talk through the trip.
“They’ve got nothing but our best interest at heart,” Chandler said.
The past decade has brought tremendous growth for Families to Freedom, though Nejdl said she wishes there were no need for the organization at all.
“Sadly, we won’t run out of work to do,” she said.
Still, she remains hopeful.
“I dream of a future when all Texas victims have access to arrive to safety … no matter how far away,” she said. “With more volunteers, grant funding and donations, we’ll see that become a reality soon enough.”
To volunteer, donate or learn more about Families to Freedom, visit familiestofreedom.org or call 833-903-SAFE (7233).
Stay informed, and support your local community newspaper, subscribe to The Murphy Monitor
]]>Thousands of Plano ISD students and their families swarmed the Plano Center for the district’s annual Back to School Fair.
Working in triple-digit heat, Plano police officers controlled access to the Wednesday, July 29, event — funneling cars to park on the grass. Overflow crowds parked across Jupiter Road at the Oak Point Recreation Center.
PISD students could pre-register for a free Trailsport backpack and there were a variety of other services available including Toni&Guy haircuts, Constant Eye Care vision screening and dental screening by Family Smiles.
Lovepacs and Minnie’s Food Pantry had food boxes and Passport Health/Staying Healthy Medical Services operated a vaccination clinic with immunizations for chicken pox, diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis (whooping cough), mumps/measles/rubella, polio, pneumonia, meningitis and hepatitis.
District resources on site provided school enrollment and registration, food and nutrition services support, language services, transportation information about bus routes and eligibility, and help with school details or programs like the Head Start Early Childhood Campus. There was also a PISD recruiting booth for jobseekers.
Titan Robotics club students set up displays in the courtyard so visitors could operate robots that threw balls and Toyota had an inflatable soccer goal for students to practice free kicks.
Community vendors manned tables offering information about health, wellness, social services, sports and after-school programs and enrichment opportunities.
There was a long line for Cane’s chicken fingers; Bed Start, a local ministry of sharing, asked, “Do you need a hand up?” and a playful squirrel puppet enticed young readers to sign up for a Plano Public Library card.
Plano ISD campuses serving Murphy students include Boggess, Hickey, Hunt and Miller Elementary Schools, Murphy Middle School, McMillen High School and Plano East Senior High School.
Most campuses have “Meet the Teacher” events on Monday, Aug. 10, prior PISD’s first day of school on Tuesday, Aug. 11.
Stay informed, and support your local community newspaper, subscribe to Murphy Monitor.
]]>