The community is invited to attend open houses at Lake Hills, Mary A. White, Peach Plains and Robinson elementary schools on Thursday. These schools underwent energy and technology improvements this past summer, and this is an opportunity for the community to see the upgrades made through support of the May 2009 bond issues. All open houses will run from 6-7:30 p.m.

Take a look at the scorecard of any of the girls on the Grand Haven varsity golf team and you'll find an occasional 3, some random 4's, and plenty of 5's. But you'll also see a bunch of 7's, some 8's, even a few 9's and 10's. The positive holes give coach Roger Glass a glimmer of hope, but the "blow-up holes,' as Glass calls them, drive the coach crazy.

Host Zeeland, ranked No. 10 in the Division 1 state swim and dive rankings, defeated both Grand Haven and Spring Lake in a tri-meet on Tuesday. Zeeland won 11 of 12 events to help it top the Lakers, 116-68, and the Bucs, 112-72. In their head-to-head matchup, the Bucs prevailed over the Lakers, 117-69. Grand Haven first-year coach Doug Thorne said his very young squad is starting to show tremendous leaps of improvement and it showed Tuesday evening.

Spring Lake secured its seventh consecutive Lakes Eight Conference girls golf championship on Tuesday with a victory at the Tri-County jamboree. Lakers' coach George Bitner thought his league season was complete a week ago, but the Tri-County event was determined to count toward the conference standings, forcing the Lakers to win one more time. That turned out to be no problem, as Spring Lake turned in a team score of 192. Fruitport was a distant second at 229, followed by Tri-County at 235, Fremont at 245 and Ludington at 250.

The Grand Haven Area Community Foundation has selected Kim Mercurio McLaughlin to lead the Tri-Cities College Access Network, a program to increase the number of Tri-Cities residents who have a college degree or post-secondary certificate. "Kim has the experience and enthusiasm to lead the team to put programs in place for students of all ages - from preschoolers to adult learners,' GHACF President Ann Tabor said. A native of Spring Lake, McLaughlin comes from Chicago where she has been teaching for the past eight years.

Police said they're trying to figure out what caused an explosion that turned a vehicle along a Michigan street into a blackened shell and seriously injured a man and two children inside. Monroe Police Lt. Charles Abel said the blast Tuesday evening is "being listed as a car fire with an explosion,' and he doesn't know whether it was the result of a vehicle malfunction or something else. Police in the city near the Ohio state line had said this moring it was "being investigated as the detonation of a car bomb.'

Residents had questions Tuesday night, and Michigan Department of Transportation officials had answers during a M-231 bypass open house at Crockery Township Hall. More than a dozen MDOT officials were present to explain the construction and detour process for the new highway - which will eventually run from M-104 south to M-45, and is designed to serve as an alternate route for U.S. 31 motorists.