This week's top stories

Hamilton goes to Omaha: Aurora grad’s path to law
 The path to uphold the law is not an easy or straightforward one. Hallie (Snider) Hamilton has been on the curving path from political activism to graduating law school and serving as a law clerk in Omaha.
Hamilton, daughter of Linsey Snider who works for Prairie Technologies and sister to Heidi Walters who owns Espressions coffee shop, did not always see a law career as inevitable for herself.
“I don’t think it was,” Hamilton said. “It was never sort of a plan per se. I had an interest in government politics, in law more generally, growing up. I always enjoyed learning about those kinds of things. But I don’t know. I wouldn’t have said, ‘Oh, I really want to be a lawyer when I grow up.’”

Tennis lessons an ace in Aurora community
The Aurora Tennis Recreational Facility has been a popular spot on Saturdays for the past few weeks. 
Jennifer Dennis, member of the Aurora Recreational Tennis Facility board and lesson helper, noted that this has been a long-time coming and the turnout has been much greater than expected. 
“We started working on this, kind of organizing it and planning last spring,” Dennis said. “Because we were getting a little close to summer activities, we decided to just hold off and launch this in the fall.”
The group hoped a lot of other activities had wrapped up by then, she said.

Hampton couple make a home inside and out
Fall is the season of the harvest. A time for reaping what is sown and putting the finishing touches on before the long winter ahead. 
For Hampton couple Paul and Shelly Bowman, this year the improvements they have wanted for their house have come all in a few months, transforming both inside and out of the cozy ranch-style house, into a home they have wanted for five years. 
“I think we’ve pretty much done everything to it that we’ll need for a while,” Paul said. 
The couple both work outside of Hampton. Paul uses his skills as an insurance agent working in Aurora. Shelly is a medical coder at Henderson Healthcare by day and owner of Backyard Blooms by night. Together the pair has two daughters and four grandchildren. They moved from their home of 17 years in Aurora to Hampton several years ago.

Hampton soars past Bluejays in district opener
An off week was just what the doctor ordered for Hampton’s football team. 
The Hawks, playing with a couple players in new positions, scored early and often in a 65-6 rout at Elba Thursday night. 
While Hampton coach Jereme Jones wasn’t completely pleased with the team effort, noting some things to still clean up, he was happy with how the team responded when challenged on the sideline. 
“Honestly, I was disappointed how we came out but we got it figured out. The guys picked it up and got going,” Jones said. “That happens sometimes with a young team learning how to win. We haven’t had a lot of games the last few years where we could come in and blow somebody out. We have to rise to that level and play like a great team from the beginning.”

Lady Hawks tussle at the net in home tournament Saturday
Hampton really made Heartland earn one in the Hawks Nest last week. 
The visiting Huskies held strong leads in each of the three sets, but the Lady Hawks made each of them interesting down the stretch in a 25-23, 25-20 and 25-17 loss to Heartland Sept. 20. 
Heartland jumped out to an 8-2 lead in the opening set behind two back-to-back ace serves. 
Hampton found some early offensive success from  Neveah Lukassen and Lillian Dose, cutting the lead in half before trailing 11-7. 
The Lady Hawks continued to chip away, making it a one-point game at 15-14 after two more Lukassen swings and Gavin Gilmore’s first. 

To read more of any of this week's top stories, please see this week's print or e-edition.