Swim The swim team took on The King’s Academy in the last dual meet of the season last week. Highlights included:
The JV girls, varsity girls and varsity boys won their 200 medley relays. In the 200 free relay, the JV and varsity girls took second and the varsity boys took first.
Alyssa Huang, grade 10, and Katie Li, grade 10, went 1-2 in the 200 free and Alex Yu, grade 12, won his 200 race.
Nikela Hulton and Ysabel Chen, both grade 9, went 2-3 in the 200 IM.
Sinaya Joshi, grade 9, set a personal record (PR) and took first in the 50 free.
Ethan Hu, grade 11, Rhys Edwards (PR), grade 10, and Matthew Chung, grade 10, went 1-2-3 in the 50 free.
Nikela Hulton and Sinaya Joshi went 1-3 in the 100 fly. Arnav Joshi (PR), grade 11, took first in the 10 fly as well.
JV and varsity 100 free was dominated by Harker swimmers: first Elizabeth Fields (PR), grade 10; first Jay Thilking (PR), grade 9; second Nicky Kriplani, grade 10; first Ysabel Chen; first Cassandra Ruedy (PR), grade 11; and second Andrew Lu, grade 10.
Harker went 1-2-3 in the 500 free with Matthew Chung, Alex Yu and Andew Chang (PR), grade 10.
Jay Thilking (PR) was first in the 50 back.
Arnav Joshi, grade 11, took first in the 100 back.
Andrew Chang (PR) took first in the 50 breast.
Baseball Last week, the baseball team split a two-game series with South San Francisco. Early in the week, the Eagles lost a tough 10-11 matchup with the Warriors, with Mark Hu, grade 9, driving in three runs. Later in the week, Harker got its revenge with an 11-8 win over SSF, this time with Max Lee, grade 11, and Nick Coulter, grade 10, each driving in three runs. This week, the Eagles travel to Terra Nova on Tuesday, Westmoor on Thursday and Harbor on Saturday.
Softball The softball team won both of its games last week against league opponents. First, the Eagles defeated Notre Dame San Jose 13-5 with Cameron Zell, grade 12, exploding for four hits and five RBIs. Later in the week, the Eagles took down El Camino 14-11, this time led by Natasha Yen, grade 10, who drove in three runs on four hits. This week, the girls host Gunn on Monday before traveling to Menlo Atherton Tuesday and Palo Alto on Thursday.
Track and Field Freshmen Alexa Lowe and Andrew Chen each had outstanding performances in their 100-meter and long jump events on Saturday. Both set personal bests in their long jumps. Frosh Brittany Shou threw a lifetime best in the discus, improving by four feet to 64’7″. Zoey Rosa, grade 11, ran both the 100- and 300-meter hurdles, in which she set a new personal best. The team competes in its last WBAL meet this Tuesday at Menlo.
Boys Tennis After a few weeks off, the boys tennis team is back in action against Menlo on Monday and Pinewood on Wednesday to finish up the regular season.
Boys Golf The boys golf team defeated Sacred Heart Prep 199-215 last week with Bradley Lu, grade 12, earning medalist honors with a 35. This week, the Eagles face off with Menlo on Friday.
Boys Volleyball The boys volleyball team continued its winning ways last week with a 3-0 win over Mountain View. This week, the Eagles travel to Saratoga on Friday.
Lacrosse Last week, the lacrosse team picked up its fifth and sixth consecutive wins as it defeated Mercy Burlingame 14-5 and Sacred Heart Prep 9-8. The 8-2 Eagles travel to Presentation on Tuesday and Woodside on Friday.
Swim The swim team took on The King’s Academy in the last dual meet of the season last week. Highlights included:
The JV girls, varsity girls and varsity boys won their 200 medley relays. In the 200 free relay, the JV and varsity girls took second and the varsity boys took first.
Alyssa Huang, grade 10, and Katie Li, grade 10, went 1-2 in the 200 free and Alex Yu, grade 12, won his 200 race.
Nikela Hulton and Ysabel Chen, both grade 9, went 2-3 in the 200 IM.
Sinaya Joshi, grade 9, set a personal record (PR) and took first in the 50 free.
Ethan Hu, grade 11, Rhys Edwards (PR), grade 10, and Matthew Chung, grade 10, went 1-2-3 in the 50 free.
Nikela Hulton and Sinaya Joshi went 1-3 in the 100 fly. Arnav Joshi (PR), grade 11, took first in the 10 fly as well.
JV and varsity 100 free was dominated by Harker swimmers: first Elizabeth Fields (PR), grade 10; first Jay Thilking (PR), grade 9; second Nicky Kriplani, grade 10; first Ysabel Chen; first Cassandra Ruedy (PR), grade 11; and second Andrew Lu, grade 10.
Harker went 1-2-3 in the 500 free with Matthew Chung, Alex Yu and Andew Chang (PR), grade 10.
Jay Thilking (PR) was first in the 50 back.
Arnav Joshi, grade 11, took first in the 100 back.
Andrew Chang (PR) took first in the 50 breast.
Baseball Last week, the baseball team split a two-game series with South San Francisco. Early in the week, the Eagles lost a tough 10-11 matchup with the Warriors, with Mark Hu, grade 9, driving in three runs. Later in the week, Harker got its revenge with an 11-8 win over SSF, this time with Max Lee, grade 11, and Nick Coulter, grade 10, each driving in three runs. This week, the Eagles travel to Terra Nova on Tuesday, Westmoor on Thursday and Harbor on Saturday.
Softball The softball team won both of its games last week against league opponents. First, the Eagles defeated Notre Dame San Jose 13-5 with Cameron Zell, grade 12, exploding for four hits and five RBIs. Later in the week, the Eagles took down El Camino 14-11, this time led by Natasha Yen, grade 10, who drove in three runs on four hits. This week, the girls host Gunn on Monday before traveling to Menlo Atherton Tuesday and Palo Alto on Thursday.
Track and Field Freshmen Alexa Lowe and Andrew Chen each had outstanding performances in their 100-meter and long jump events on Saturday. Both set personal bests in their long jumps. Frosh Brittany Shou threw a lifetime best in the discus, improving by four feet to 64’7″. Zoey Rosa, grade 11, ran both the 100- and 300-meter hurdles, in which she set a new personal best. The team competes in its last WBAL meet this Tuesday at Menlo.
Boys Tennis After a few weeks off, the boys tennis team is back in action against Menlo on Monday and Pinewood on Wednesday to finish up the regular season.
Boys Golf The boys golf team defeated Sacred Heart Prep 199-215 last week with Bradley Lu, grade 12, earning medalist honors with a 35. This week, the Eagles face off with Menlo on Friday.
Boys Volleyball The boys volleyball team continued its winning ways last week with a 3-0 win over Mountain View. This week, the Eagles travel to Saratoga on Friday.
Lacrosse Last week, the lacrosse team picked up its fifth and sixth consecutive wins as it defeated Mercy Burlingame 14-5 and Sacred Heart Prep 9-8. The 8-2 Eagles travel to Presentation on Tuesday and Woodside on Friday.
On March 3, team GetVexed, made up of Harker seventh graders Joe Li, Jordan Labio, Nathan T. Liu, Ramit Goyal and Sriram Bhimaraju placed second in the Robot Skills category in the California VEX Robotics Middle School State Championship in San Jose.
Their Robot Skills score is the 10th highest in US (15th in the world) since the VEX Turning Point season began in July of 2018, and qualifies them to attend the VEX World Championships, to be held April 24-27 in Louisville, Ky. Only three percent of all middle school teams qualify for the VEX World Championships. GetVexed credited team Paradigm – composed of eighth graders graders Nidhya Shivakumar and Amrita Pasupathy – and their coach for helping them in their first season.
In addition, GetVexed also won the Amaze Award, which is given to the team with a consistently top-performing robot. Earlier in the season, the team won a Judges Award at the Gael Force Battle of the Bay High School tournament, and placed second at a tournament at Sacred Heart Middle School.
Six grade 8 students recently won recognition in the 2019 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Nearly 1,700 works were submitted for this year’s contest, each of them evaluated by a team of novelists, editors, journalists, teachers and other professionals in various literary fields.
Students who earned recognition in this year’s contest are:
Brian Chen: Honorable mention (humor)
Connie Jiang: Silver Key (short story), two honorable mentions (short story, personal essay/memoir)
Saavi Kumar: Silver Key (critical essay)
Johnathan Mo: Honorable mention (short story)
Nicholas Wei: Silver Key (personal essay/memoir), honorable mention (short story)
The Harker speech and debate team had excellent results in all four divisions it entered at the Western JV and Novice National Championship this past weekend. The tournament, hosted by San Francisco State University on March 9-10, attracted 32 schools from three states.
In JV Lincoln-Douglas debate, Harker students set a record! Harker was the first school in the history of the tournament to have the top six finishers in any event.
Deven Shah, Akhilesh Chegu, Karoun Kaushik and Arnav Dani, all grade 9, along with Krish Mysoor and Ansh Sheth, both grade 7, closed out two quarterfinals and all of the semifinals, making them co-champions. Shah was also the top speaker in the division.
Angela Gao, grade 9, was the champion of the novice Lincoln-Douglas debate. Freshmen Ayan Nath and Dhruv Saoji were in the finals of JV public forum debate, where they lost on a close 2-3 decision. Aimee Wang and Alina Yuan, also both grade 9, were in the quarterfinals of JV public forum. As the higher seeded Harker team, they were walked over Arjun Gurjar and Kabir Buch, both grade 7. In novice public forum, Caden Lin and Vedant Kenkare, both grade 9, made it to semifinals. The tournament was also special because so many upperclassmen attended as mentors and judges. The middle school and upper school coaches were very proud of the extraordinary work of all of the students!
On March 5, nearly 330 middle school students from 15 schools attended the 18th annual Diana Nichols Math Invitational. In addition to the 14 South Bay schools participating in the event (including Harker), Las Vegas’ Coral Academy of Science made the trip from out of state for the third consecutive year.
The high level of competition was evident throughout the event. A four-way tie in the grade 6 team event led to a tiebreaker that resulted in Harker’s team (Audrey Cheng, Juliana Li, Angela Liu, Katerina Matta, Kashish Priyam, Aarush Vailaya and Jonathan Xue) taking first place. Harker’s grade 8 team (Arjun Barrett, Brian Chen, Amruta Dharmapurikar, Alex Lan, Krish Maniar, Stephen Xia and Annli Zhu) also took first place, while the grade 7 team (Emma Gao, Angelina Hu, Ansh Sheth, Julie Shi, Michelle Wei, Aniketh Tummala and William Zhang) placed second.
Harker students also were successful in the individual event, with Stephen Xia, Arjun Barrett and Alex Lan taking first, third and fourth, respectively, at the grade 8 level. At the grade 7 level, Heidi Lu placed third, Aniketh Tummala took fourth and William Zhang finished fifth. Angela Liu placed second in the grade category.
The object of this year’s estimation contest was a “HMI 2019” sign made of plastic googly eyes. Contestants guessed at the number of googly eyes in the sign, with Megan Brezlin of Sunnyvale’s Peterson Middle School winning the contest with her estimate of 2,596, remarkably close to the actual number of 2,603.
Last weekend, a team composed of Harker eighth graders Nidhya Shivakumar and Amrita Pasupathy, known as Paradigm, allied with team Black Jaguar of Redwood City to win the California VEX Robotics Middle School State Championships in Sunnyvale.
At this state competition, Paradigm won every qualifying match and ranked first in the qualifying rounds. They allied with team Black Jaguar going into the elimination rounds, proving formidable as they cruised through the elimination rounds and won the Tournament Champions Award.
VEX Robotics is the leading and fastest growing robotics program for middle school and high school level students. VEX Robotics competitions are held in cities, states and countries all over the world. In addition to providing a platform to learn engineering and programming, a VEX Robotics project encourages teamwork, leadership and problem solving.
Earlier, on Feb. 17, Paradigm allied with team Inobotics from Palo Alto and won the Google California Signature VEX Robotics championship hosted at the Google campus in Sunnyvale in a field of nearly 75 teams from across the country.
Paradigm will next go on to compete at VEX World Championships, held April 24-26 in Louisville, Ky. The World Championships hosts over 180 middle school teams and 600 high school teams from many states across the country, as well as teams from South America, China, Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Approximately 3 percent of middle school teams and 6 percent of high school teams competing at regional events move on to the World Championships.
At last month’s Carrender Robotics/COIL VEX IQ Tournament, held in Fremont, seventh grade robotics enthusiasts Zachary Blue, Adrian Liu, Vivek Nayyar, Kabir Ramzan and Om Tandon received the VEX IQ Challenge’s Excellence Award, the highest honor awarded by the competition. Potential recipients of the award are judged by criteria such as performance in event challenges, robot design and the ability of the team’s robot to drive autonomously. The “Dream Team,” as the students call themselves, have secured a spot at the CREATE U.S. Open Robotics Championship, set to take place in April.
The team also entered the STEM Project competition, winning first place for an app that helps students manage their time while simultaneously informing teachers about how much time is required to finish homework assignments. In developing the project, the students sought insight from professionals at Google, Khan Academy and Stanford University.
Middle school math students had a great showing at a the Santa Clara chapter Mathcounts contest, held Feb. 16 at the upper school campus. A team of four grade 8 students – Riya Gupta, Ashley Hu, Connie Jiang and Sally Zhu – took first place in the team portion of the event, repeating last year’s success. They will appear at the state-level competition, to be held March 23 at Stanford University.
In individual competition, eighth grader Rohan Bhowmik took second place overall, winning a tiebreaker over Ashley Hu, who placed third. Both had a score of 44 out of 46 points. Other notable placers were Sally Zhu in fifth place with 43 points, seventh grader Ethan Liu in seventh place with 42 points, Angelina Hu in 10th place with 41 points, Riya Gupta in 12th place with 40 points, Connie Jiang in 13th with 40 points (after a tie-breaking decision based on which problems each student solved) and seventh grader Emma Gao in 16th with 38 points. Bhowmik and Liu also qualified for the state competition.
A total of 112 students from 14 schools were present at the contest, which is believed to be one of the toughest chapter-level competitions in the country. “This is a highly competitive chapter as can be seen … with every point differential,” said middle school math department chair Vandana Kadam. “It is commendable that eight Harker students placed in the top 16.”
Last month, the middle school hosted some special guests during the Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy’s annual visit to Harker! The guests – 18 students and three chaperones – spent a week experiencing Harker and learning more about the daily lives of students by observing classes and conducting group activities, such as crafts and cooking, with their Harker buddies.
The SWFLA visitors also took the opportunity to see more of California during their trip, visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.