This article originally appeared in the winter 2016 Harker Magazine
Harker students sent cards to more than 100 service members this year via Operation Gratitude, and many more in uniform enjoyed treats courtesy of Halloween candy donations.
Grade 3 students have been sending cards to those serving in the military for years, and this year the effort included grade 6 students. According to its website, Operation Gratitude sends 200,000-plus care packages to veterans, first responders, recruits, wounded heroes, care givers and overseas U.S. service members every year.
Elise Robichaud, grade 3 English teacher, pioneered the outreach effort to honor those in the military. Each year, she gathers the names of relatives of Harker students, faculty and staff who are serving and arranges for third graders to make cards for them.
One Saturday afternoon in September, in a parent-driven effort, sixth graders gathered at school to make cards for Operation Gratitude. About two dozen students produced about 40 cards. That was just the opening volley in thisyear’s efforts to fill packages and bring smiles to the faces of those deployed overseas.
Then in early October, Robichaud started her third grade classes working on cards for military personnel. This year, they sent cards to 70 Harker relations, as well as a batch of cards to Operation Gratitude for that organization to distribute.
Harker students also contributed Halloween candy to Operation: Care and Comfort, a Bay Area organization that sends goodies to adopted units overseas. “This year I collaborated with my former room parent Robin Feinman-Marino,” Robichaud said. “I had her daughter, Sofie (grade 4), in my homeroom last year, and her cousin is currently serving. They were asking for extra Halloween candy, so we happily stepped up. The children in third grade, and some from grades 4 and 5, filled up three giant tubs with Halloween candy.”
Veterans Visits
Each year Robichaud recruits speakers to come talk to the students about how much it means to get cards and other items from students. “Last year we had former Harker teacher and retired colonel Ray Fowler visit (he was a submarine-hunting pilot during the Cold War) and Col. Patrick Shea (a doctor in the U.S. Air Force), brother of chef Matt Shea, visit,” said Robichaud. “This year I organized another visit from the colonel. He came on Nov. 8, right before Veterans Day, to discuss the importance of veterans and to thank the children for their cards.”
Robichaud noted that the recent contentious election left students with questions about basic freedoms and the outreach helped drive home some basic democratic ideals. The project “helped to explain to the children that we live in this great country where everyone can have different opinions and where people vote on their leaders,” Robichaud said. “However, we would not have that freedom unless we had these amazing people who were willing to serve in our military and defend our country. I told them that not everyone in the world can enjoy these freedoms, but we can because of our amazing military and their sacrifices.”
Robichaud said the response to the student efforts has been overwhelming. “This year,” she noted, “we had a special video message sent from Commander Mike Kent, uncle to one of my students.” And San Francisco 49er tight end Garrett Celek, a 49ers service award winner, signed a football and sent a personalized video message for the students to keep up the good work.
“I have incredible stories from parents who told me that this was the first time they have connected with a [serving] relative,” added Robichaud. “A co-worker told me that the children’s cards brought her Marine husband and his tough buddies to tears.”
The World Chess Federation recently rated Vyom Vidyarthi, a rising fifth grader, the No. 1 under-10 chess player in the United States and the fifth-highest worldwide. Vidyarthi achieved the rating after his performances at the Bay Area Chess Summer Start Championship and the Best of the West Chess Class Championship, held in April and May, respectively. Congrats and best of luck to this talented young chess enthusiast!
Congratulations to Vivian Wang, grade 11, and Ethan Hu, grade 9, each of whom placed fourth at the CIF State Swimming Championships. Wang competed in the 100 breaststroke and Hu in the 100 butterfly. Congratulations!
Boys Tennis
Harker sent two doubles teams to compete in CCS last week. Ed Tischler, grade 12, and Ram Vegesna, grade 9, defeated Monterey in the first round before falling to Cupertino in the second round. Juniors Neil Bai and Randy Zhao lost their first round matchup with Pioneer. Congrats on a great season!
Track and Field
Over the weekend, Davis Dunaway, grade 12, represented Harker at the CCS track prelims in the pole vault. Although Dunaway did not make it to the finals, he had a great season!
Alumni Golf
On Monday, Maverick McNealy ’13 made his third trip to the Ben Hogan Award ceremony, and this time he was named the top men’s collegiate golfer. McNealy is one of only two golfers in the award’s history to be a finalist three times, and he is currently one of only two golfers to be ranked in the top 10 in all four major college and amateur ranking systems. Check out the full story and video from the event:
Lower and middle school results provided by Theresa “Smitty” Smith.
VA (Grades 7-8) Baseball: The Varsity A team, coached by Jeff Paull, Matt Arensberg and Richard Amarillas, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 5-0. This is the first lower or middle school baseball team to win a league title since the league started back in 2008! Team awards went to Marcus Anderson, grade 8, and Nicholas Coulter, grade 8 (co-MVPs), Levi Sutton, grade 8 (Eagle) and George Wehner, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVA (Grades 4-6) Baseball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Jon Cvitanich, Tim Hopkins and Jeff Martarano, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-4. Team awards went to Drew Diffenderfer, grade 4 (MVP), Jack Ledford, grade 5 (Eagle) and Wyatt Cote, grade 6 (Coaches).
Intramural (Grades 4-5) Baseball: Team awards went to Nathan Wilcox, grade 4 (Eagle) and Anderson Chung, grade 4, and Advay Monga, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Ken Allen, Tobias Wade and Justin Sullivan.
VA (Grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity A team, coached by Theresa Smith and Stephanie Coleman, and assisted by Lindsey Trinh, grade 12, and Lauren Napier, grade 11, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a record of 5-3. Team awards went to Julia Yusupov, grade 8 (MVP), Emma Dionne, grade 8 (Eagle), and Shreya Srinivasan, grade 8, and Anvitha Tummala, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (Grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity B team, coached by Xiaofeng Foret, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 7-0. The team did not lose a single set all season! Team awards went to Catherine Feng, grade 7 (MVP), Alivia Li, grade 7 (Eagle) and Brooklyn Cicero, grade 7 (Coaches).
VB2 (Grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity B2 team, coached by Josh Miller, finished tied for third place in the WBAL with a record of 5-2. Team awards went to Maria Vazhaeparambil, grade 8 (MVP), Sarah Leafstrand, grade 7 (Eagle) and Lucy Ge, grade 7 (Coaches).
JVA (Grade 6) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Sara Pawloski, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 2-4. Team awards went to Allison Zhu (MVP), Sonya He (Eagle) and Austina Xu (Coaches).
JVB6 (Grade 6) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B6 team, coached by Belle Carley, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-4. Team awards went to Riya Gupta and Amruta Dharmapurikar (Eagle) and Shea Bryden (Coaches).
JVB1 (Grade 5) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B1 team, coached by Ellie Pereira, finished in second place in the WBAL with a record of 5-1. Team awards went to Kate Grannis (MVP), Michelle Wei (Eagle) and Alice Tao (Coaches).
JVB2 (Grade 5) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B2 team, coached by Sydney Voss, finished in eighth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-5. Team awards went to Ava Pakravan (MVP), Emily Kwan (Eagle) and Claire Bauschlicher (Coaches).
Intramural (Grade 4) Girls Volleyball: Team awards went to Saira Ramakrishnan (MVP), Angelina Burrows (Eagle) and Menaka Aron (Coaches). The team was coached by Allison Pereira.
VA (Grades 7-8) Boys Volleyball: The Varsity A team, coached by Pete Anderson, finished in third place in the ADAL with a record of 6-2. The team went 7-2 overall. Team awards went to Marcus Page, grade 7 (MVP), Avery Young, grade 8 (Eagle) and David Gong, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVA (Grades 6-7) Boys Volleyball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Julie Meline, finished in third place in the ADAL with a record of 6-2. Team awards went to Sam Boucher, grade 7, and Sujith Pakala, grade 7 (Co-MVP), Jack Lyon, grade 6 (Eagle) and Carlo Banzon, grade 6 (Coaches).
VA (Grades 6-8) Water Polo: The Varsity A water polo team, coached by Ted Ujifusa and Allie Lamb, finished the season with a league tournament. Although the team went 0-2 in that tournament, the scores were very close and the team improved tremendously over the course of the season. Team awards went to Bayden Yazalina, grade 8 (MVP), Elizabeth Fields, grade 8, and Daniel Fields, grade 7 (Eagle) and Anna Arnaudova, grade 8 (Coaches).
VA (Grades 6-8) Tennis: The Varsity A tennis team, coached by JP Fruttero, John Fruttero and Mike Nguyen, finished in second place in the WBAL at 3-1 and third place in the MTP at 3-1. The team finished the MTP tournament in third place and had an overall season record of 8-3. Team awards went to Santoshi Tirumala, grade 8, and Gowtham Irrinki, grade 8 (Co-MVP), Dhruv Saoji, grade 7, and Sachi Bajaj, grade 8 (Eagle) and Dawson Chen, grade 7, and Tuhin Chatterjee, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (Grades 6-8) Tennis: The Varsity B tennis team, coached by JP Fruttero, John Fruttero and Mike Nguyen, finished tied for first place in the WBAL with a record of 4-1. Team awards went to Anishka Raina, grade 7 (MVP), Madeleine Hansen, grade 7, and Victoria Han, grade 7 (Eagle), and Samuel Jonker, grade 6, and Kailash Ranganathan, grade 7 (Coaches).
VA (Grades 6-8) Golf: The Varsity A golf team, coached by Ie-Chen Cheng, took first place in the WBAL spring tournament, held at a tough Crystal Springs Golf Course. The team shot a 164 on the front nine. They beat the rest of the field by 21 strokes! The top four golfers were Natalie Vo, grade 8 (39), Aditya Tadimeti, grade 8 (39), Bowen Yin, grade 8 (42) and Marcus Page, grade 7 (44).
LS (Grades 4-5) Boys Track: The lower school boys team took second place overall at the WBAL track meet. The top fifth grade performance was turned in by Veyd Patil (second place in the 800). Top fourth grade performances were turned in by Vyom Vidyarthi (first place in the 400 and 800 and second place in the 200), Ori Muramatsu (second place in the 800), Robert Fields (second place in the 400) and Oskar Baumgarte (second place in the long jump).
LS (Grades 4-5) Girls Track: The lower school girls team took second place overall at the WBAL track meet. Top fifth grade performances were turned in by Katherine Fields (second place in the 800) and Mira Goodwin (second place in the 400). Top fourth grade performances were turned in by Chiling Han (first place in the 800), Claire Anderson (second place in the softball throw) and the 4×100 relay team (third place with Claire Anderson, Chiling Han, Genieve Malinen and Sidak Sanghari)
MS (Grades 6-8) Boys Track: The middle school boys track team took first place overall at the WBAL track meet for the first time ever! Top eighth grade performances were turned in by Anton Novikov (first place in the 100 and 200 and anchored the first place 4×100 relay team with Bayden Yazalina, McCoy Buchsteiner and Rosh Roy) and Arya Maheshwari (first place in the 1200). Top seventh grade performances were turned in by Justin Fung (first place in the 50, 100 and 200 and anchored the first place 4×100 relay team with Ishaan Mantripragada, Muthiah Panchanatham and Harsh Deep) and Harsh Deep (first place in the 400). Top sixth grade performances were turned in by Rigo Gonzales (first place in the 100, 200 and 400) and Siddharth Selvakumar (first place in the softball throw).
MS (Grades 6-8) Girls Track: The middle school girls track team took fifth place overall at the WBAL track meet. Top eighth grade performances were turned in by Anna Vazhaeparambil (first place in the long jump) and Anna Weirich (second place in the 800 and 1,200). The top seventh grade performance was turned in Ashley Barth (third place in the long jump).
Some lower school students had a stellar weekend of competition at the 2017 Tech Challenge, with teams of Harker students taking the top two spots in their grade bracket and a third team with three of four members from Harker winning an award for design process. Fifth graders Reza Jalil, Vardaan Ghai, Veyd Patil and Kyle Leung – known collectively as Team Trespassers – took the first place spot, while Team Arctic Infusion – made up of fifth graders Om Tandon, Jordan Labio, Zachary Blue and Neel Handa – finished second.
Team Huskies – comprising fifth graders Nathan Liu, Adrian Liu and Natasha Rajaram and a fourth member from another school – won an award for Outstanding Engineering Design Process. They were also finalists in the video contest, in which teams created videos outlining the creation of their robots.
The Tech Challenge, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this weekend, had contestants design, build and test a robot over a period of several months with the goal of creating a machine that could traverse the course designed for the contest. More than 2,500 students from grades 4-12 took part in the contest. Congratulations to these outstanding roboticists!
Parents, both those new to Harker and those new to a campus, have the opportunity to meet each other at revamped new parent meetings. The outings are relaxed, offering information as well as plenty of time to socialize!
The annual grade 2 production of the Ogre Awards took place in late March at the Bucknall Theater, where this year’s cast traveled “Around the World in 80 Pages.” Students portrayed characters from stories originating from places including Hawaii, Ghana, Russia and Vietnam.
During the preceding months, the students heard stories from various cultures (told by lower school librarian Kathy Clark) and had lengthy discussions about each story’s characters and the different archetypes they represented. They later voted on which characters would win awards in various categories. Students then played these characters in the Ogre Awards show, where they were presented with the awards.
The theme for the show was based on the classic Jules Verne novel “Around the World in 80 Days,” and rose out of an amusing wager between Clark and fellow lower school librarian Judy Atterholt.
“Ms. Atterholt and I bet on the fastest way to get around the world in stories: through nonfiction like atlases and geography textbooks, or through fiction and folklore,” said Clark.
Lower school technical theater teacher Danny Dunn provided considerable help by tracking down variations of “It’s a Small World (After All)” that were based on musical traditions from the cultures represented in the show.
As has become tradition in the 20-plus-year history of the Ogre Awards, a special Ogre Award was bestowed upon a Harker staff member for his or her support of Harker’s libraries. This year’s recipient was none other than Dan Hudkins, director of information technology service and support. “Mr. Hudkins has always been a library advocate, even before he was a founding member of the school’s Information Literacy Committee,” Clark said.
Grade 1 students conducted their annual drive for the Humane Society of Silicon Valley in mid-March, raising $556 in addition to collecting about 50 bags of supplies, toys, food, treats and other goods from the lower school community. The students made many of the items they donated. For example, Grace Wallace’s class made dog toys and Cindy Proctor’s students made cat blankets. Proctor reported that the folks at HSSV were “thrilled and very appreciative” of the donations.
The annual Jump Rope for Heart event took place at the lower school campus in early March, as students jumped rope and participated in other activities to raise money for the American Heart Association.
Students collected donations in the weeks leading up to the event, during which they jumped rope in the gym and shot hoops at the basketball court. These and other activities are meant to commemorate those suffering from heart problems, as well as bring awareness to healthy lifestyle habits.
This year’s drive raised more than $13,000 for the American Heart Association, surpassing last year’s amount by more than $3,000. Since 2000, the effort has raised nearly $180,000.
Prompted by the idea of a compassionate lower school student, the campus acknowledged World Down Syndrome Day today by learning about Down syndrome and having Crazy Sock Day, “which aligns with what is being done on a larger scale, nationwide and worldwide,” said Ken Allen, lower school dean of students. On World Down Syndrome Day, people are encouraged to wear crazy socks to signify the extra chromosome that people with Down syndrome carry. Under a microscope, pairs of chromosomes look a lot like pairs of colorful socks!
“Eye-catching, brightly colored patterned socks or … socks that simply rock were the menu for the day – in the words of the student who initiated the idea,” Allen added.
Grade 5 students joined preschool students this week to help them understand math! There were so many fifth grade students who wanted to go that math teacher Eileen Schick had to turn some away. What a great way to learn about math!