WEST HARTFORD ? There was just the slightest trace of incredulousness in Chris Petersen?s voice when the Newtown resident was making arrangements to bring a busload of kids from the Newtown Youth Basketball Association to Saturday?s UConn/Hartford women?s basketball game. Petersen, a three-year baseball letter winner at Hartford in the late 1980s when Jeff Bagwell was leading the Hawks to dizzying heights, heard from current Hartford baseball coach Justin Blood shortly after news broke about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Not only did Hartford officials find room, they incorporated the children into a poignant pregame ceremony in which the Newtown kids lined up alongside Hartford and UConn players as a bell chimed 26 times during a period of silence which lasted nearly 2� minutes. Even somebody like Petersen, who has been to a couple of wakes in the last week and picked up his three children from the scene of unspeakable carnage, admitted the ceremony before the game touched his soul. The phone hasn?t stopped ringing and everybody has been saying what can we do? I had three kids who were at Sandy Hook Elementary School and they made it ... Petersen said he has tried to talk to his kids about the events on Dec. 14, but so far they haven?t been up to share just how deeply they have been impacted. Children from the school have been receiving so many gifts from strangers that there has been a request to stop sending stuffed animals. The key is that the kids have been getting so much; they wanted to give back to the players, so they gave them the T-shirts and teddy bears. Petersen said the Newtown Youth Academy has been a site where kids have been entertained by those looking to reach out to the stricken community. Former UConn star Tina Charles came down Saturday to speak to kids and the Houston Dynamos of Major League Soccer are expected to come up for a clinic in early January.
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