This article originally appeared in the summer 2015 Harker Quarterly.
Varsity A (grades 7 and 8) girls volleyball, coached by Stephanie Coleman and Diana Melendez, finished the season 5-1, taking second place in the West Bay Athletic League (WBAL) Gold Division. The team awards went to Allison Cartee, grade 8 (MVP), Srija Gadiraju, grade 8 (Eagle) and Lauren Beede, grade 7 (Coaches).
Varsity B (grades 7 and 8) girls volleyball, coached by Sarah Prudencio, finished undefeated at 7-0, taking first place in the WBAL South. The team awards went to Allison Jia, grade 7 (MVP), Lilly Anderson, grade 8 (Eagle) and Laura Wu, grade 8 (Coaches).
Varsity B2 (grades 7 and 8) girls volleyball, coached by Mandy Schroeder, finished 6-1, taking second place in the WBAL South. The team awards went to Cindy Wang, grade 8 (MVP), Rashmi Iyer, grade 7 (Eagle) and Mina Stojanovic, grade 7 (Coaches).
Junior Varsity A (grade 6) girls volleyball, coached by Vonda Reid, finished undefeated at 7-0, taking first place in the WBAL Gold Division. The team awards went to Julia Yusupov (MVP), Michelle Ning (Eagle) and Vidya Jeyendran (Coaches).
Junior Varsity B6 (grade 6) girls volleyball, coached by Tina Mai, finished 3-3, taking third place in the WBAL. The team awards went to Katerina Fenner (MVP), Annamma Vazhaeparambil (Eagle) and Aria Wong (Coaches).
Varsity A (grade 7 and 8) baseball, coached by Dan Pringle, Matt Arensberg and Tim Hopkins, finished 2-4, taking fifth place in the WBAL. Team awards went to Logan Frank, grade 8 (MVP), Andrew Skrobak, grade 8 (Eagle), and Jared Anderson and Jack Dawson (Coaches), both grade 8.
Junior Varsity A (grades 6 and 7) baseball, coached by Jeff Paull, Matt Haberli and Joe Newman, finished 4-1 in league and 6-2 overall, taking second place in the WBAL. Team awards went to AJ Escobar (MVP), Luke Wancewicz (Eagle) and Ricky Wardenburg (Coaches), all grade 6.
Varsity A (grades 7 and 8) boys volleyball, coached by Pete Anderson, went 10-0 in league and 11-0 overall, taking first place and the tournament championship in the ADAL. Team awards went to Chris Gong (MVP), Charlie Molin (Eagle) and Zachary Wong (Coaches), all grade 8.
Junior Varsity A (grades 6 and 7) boys volleyball, coached by Diana Melendez and Kurt Schwartz, went 4-4, taking fourth place in the Art David Athletic League (ADAL). Team awards went to Utkarsh Priyam (MVP), Andrew Lee (Eagle) and Anish Kilaru (Coaches), all grade 6.
Coed water polo (grades 6-8), coached by Ted Ujifusa and Peter Blume, went 4-0 at the WBAL championships. Team awards went to Bobby Bloomquist, grade 8 (MVP), Matthew Hajjar, grade 8 (Eagle), and Leah Anderson, grade 6 and Rohan Sonecha, grade 7 (Coaches).
Middle school track (grades 6-8), coached by Allison Burzio, Margaret Huntley, Kelcie Lai and Karriem Stinson, took first place at the WBAL track meet in the 4 X 100 grade 8 girls relay (Alex Janssen, Sara Min, Alycia Cary and Julia Amick) the 400 and 800 (Amick) and the long jump (Janssen). Team awards went to Amick (MVP), Anton Novikov and Arya Mahesh- wari (Eagle), both grade 6, and Rosh Roy and Elizabeth Fields (Coaches), both grade 6.
Varsity A tennis (grades 6-8), coached by JP Fruttero and John Fruttero, went undefeated at 7-0 in the WBAL and took first place in the WBAL and in the WBAL tournament. They finished 4-4 in the Mid-Peninsula Tennis Patrons Junior Tennis League (MTP) and will be competing in the MTP tournament next week. Team awards went to Joshua Valluru, grade 7 and Neil Ramaswamy, grade 8 (MVP), Gina Partridge, grade 7 and Anjay Saklecha, grade 8 (Eagle), and Jack Hansen and Simar Bajaj, both grade 7 (Coaches).
Middle school golf (grades 6-8), coached by Ie-Chen Cheng, finished in second place at the spring WBAL golf tournament at Crystal Springs Golf Course. Par was a 36. Competitors were: Alexander King, grade 7 (41), Aditya Tadimeti, grade 6 (42), Jaimin Bhagat, grade 7 (45), Ronit Gagneja, grade 7 (45), Abhinav Joshi, grade 8 (46), Katelyn Vo, grade 7 (52), Natalie Vo, grade 6 (54) and Elvin Chen, grade 6 (56).
Since launching the Capri Sun Recycling Program in March 2014, the middle and upper school campuses have collected and shipped a combined total of about 70,000 Capri Sun containers for recycling.
The middle school’s Green Club began the program to keep Capri Sun drink containers out of landfills by using a service called TerraCycle, which collects and recycles materials that are difficult to recycle. The money generated from the effort was donated to environmental programs.
Points earned through the program by the middle school campus were used to make donations totaling nearly $1,000 to help fund 360 miles of trails built in national and state parks, eight acres of wildlife land adopted, 8 tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere and various green school initiatives, according to middle school mathematics teacher Margaret Huntley.
“We still have a bit left to donate,” she said. “Or we can use this money to further fund our own school-based green initiatives if we wish.”
Meanwhile, at the upper school, members of the Student Council took on Capri Sun recycling efforts. Council representatives reported that collections during the last school year had been going well, with at least several hundred dollars’ worth of funds now slated for future green efforts at Harker.
The Capri Sun Recycling Program is part of Harker’s recent overall schoolwide effort to “go green.”
In May some 29 grade 6 students boarded a Tokyo-bound plane for the much-anticipated annual trip to Japan. There, the students reunited with their buddies from Harker’s sister school, Tamagawa Academy.
“This was one of the biggest groups yet! The trip went really well and all the students had such a wonderful time in their homestays,” recalled Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education.
Joining this year’s trip as a chaperone was Gayle Calkins, the middle school’s assistant to the counseling and global education departments. “After working on sending students and chaperones to Japan over the last nine years, it was great to actually experience the welcoming and friendly students and staff of our sister school Tamagawa! Japan and all its sites, people and experiences will be something I will cherish always,” said Calkins.
The Harker contingent first headed to Tokyo’s oldest temple, the Asakusa Sensoji Temple. Legend has it that two brothers, while out fishing one day, caught a statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy. Although they put the statue back in the water, it continued to return to them, so the temple was built nearby in her honor.
Next up was a scenic drive was to Kamakura, a coastal town an hour south of Tokyo. The group’s first stop was at the Kotokuin (Great Buddha) Temple to see an enormous bronze statue of Buddha. From there, they drove to Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shinto Shrine.
The following day, the group arrived at Tamagawa Academy, where they were greeted by their buddies and host families, who waved signs and cheered while the school band played in the background. “After the students were introduced to their homestay parents and siblings, we were ushered into the auditorium for the morning’s entertainment, an energetic Taiko drum performance by their upper school students. The kids loved this! A group of sixth grade students then sang before our kids performed their speeches in Japanese. They did a great job!” recalled Walrod.
The Harker students accompanied their Tamagawa buddies to a number of classes, including math, Japanese, science and P.E. They also had an opportunity to venture over to the lower school, where they did some activities with the younger students. Later, they met with Yoshiaki Obara, president of Tamagawa, to share their experiences so far during the trip.
A highlight of their time at Tamagawa was visiting the Future Sci Tech Lab. Here the kids learned about Tamagawa’s research into developing horticulture technologies to provide food in outer space without soil or natural lights.
When it was finally time to say goodbye, the Harker group was led out to the bus by the Tamagawa students, teachers and parents. Their farewell was filled with hugs, photos and tears. As they departed, they passed many students lining the sidewalk waving goodbye.
On their last full day in Japan, the group visited Hiroshima. Their first destination was the Peace Memorial Park, where they visited the Atomic Bomb Dome, which marks the spot where the first atomic bomb landed in Japan. The ruins at the site (also known as “ground zero”) are dedicated to those who died at the site.
Continuing through the park, the group stopped briefly at the Flame of Peace, which has burned continuously since 1964. “This flame continues to burn as a symbol of the Japanese anti-nuclear resolve to burn the flame until all nuclear weapons are gone from this earth,” said Walrod.
“The students took time to read personal stories of survivors and take some photos. We then walked along the river to the Children’s Peace Monument built to commemorate all the children who had died. We stood in a circle and talked about peace and what we personally could do to make the world a better place,” remembered Walrod.
They also had the opportunity to hear from the daughter of a woman who had survived the bombing. She talked to the students about the lead up to the fateful day and then shared her mother’s story. This marked the first time Harker students had an opportunity to listen to such a personal story in Hiroshima.
The group then headed off to the scenic Arashiyama monkey park, a popular tourist spot located just outside of Kyoto. At the top of the mountain, the students fed Japanese snow monkeys by going onto a special cage and giving them chestnuts through wired windows. Shortly after, everyone headed back to the airport for the long flight home, which gave them plenty of time to reflect and reminisce on all they had seen and done in Japan.
In an effort to educate the middle school community about the importance of “wellness,” the campus held its first Wellness Week just before spring break.
From March 23-25 (a short week that included parent-teacher conferences), the students learned about health and wellness, and participated in the annual cancer walk, held on the middle school campus. Prior to the walk, the students engaged in various activities to learn about different forms of cancer and cancer prevention strategies, such as learning about “cancer-fighting foods.”
The wellness initiative also focused on reducing stress through meditation and yoga, as well as the importance of diet and exercise to both physical and emotional well-being. The students enjoyed participating in yoga and meditation workshops. They were also given free-dress days and encouraged to wear clothing that allowed for freedom of movement.
“The student council president and vice president brought the idea (of relieving stress) to the school after attending a Challenge Success conference. We then expanded that idea to also include community wellness, and acceptance and appreciation of diversity and empathy,” noted Cindy Ellis, middle school head.
To that end, the students held lunch “mixers” around such topics. At the end of the day, parents were invited to come early to participate in their own activities around the same communal outreach themes.
The Wellness Week was unique in that it incorporated both physical wellness and outreach-oriented facets. Many middle school teachers and staff assisted in the week by supervising, participating in or leading various activities. Wellness Week proved so successful that it is now slated to become an annual tradition.
The American Scholastic Mathematics Association recently published the results of its annual mathematics contest, and Harker earned first place in the senior division (grades 9-12) and first place with special merit in the junior/intermediate division (grades 7-9). The contest is done by mail during the fall semester. Each participating school receives packages of question sets, which are opened on designated dates over a period of months. Students have 35 minutes to answer each question. Answers are scored once the last examination is administered. Schools from all around the world participated, including China, Czech Republic, Bahrain, Vietnam, Kenya, Kuwait, Indonesia, Austria and Poland.
Kudos to the Harker Quiz Bowl Team, which won first place at the 2015 Bellarmine Middle School Invitational on May 24. The event was organized by National Academic Quiz Tournaments (NAQT).
Earlier in the year, the team had advanced to NAQT’s Middle School National Championship Tournament, held in Dallas on May 9. There, the team competed with 128 teams from all over the country, advancing to the elimination round and finishing 29th in the nation.
The Harker team comprised grade 8 students Nishka Ayyar and Jack Dawson, and grade 7 students Kyle Li, Arun Sundaresan and Jin Tuan.
Sixth grader Srinath Somasundaram came in third place in the inaugural Zeidman Awards for his engineering research project titled “A Novel Design and Evaluation of an Air Cushioning Mechanism for Helmets to Minimize Impact Acceleration on the Head.”
The awards were created to recognize students for their advanced knowledge and outstanding achievement in the fields of electrical engineering and computer science. Engineer-scientist-entrepreneur Bob Zeidman, president and founder of Zeidman Consulting, a contract research and development firm based in Cupertino, presented six Bay Area middle school students with the awards during the Santa Clara Valley Science & Engineering Fair Association’s Synopsys Science & Technology Championship at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.
The competition was stiff, with students from middle schools throughout the region presenting original solutions designed to address serious issues, including Alzheimer’s disease, autism, diabetes and visual impairment.Awards included cash prizes and signed copies of Zeidman’s latest book “Just Enough Electronics to Impress Your Friends and Colleagues,” based on his popular seminar “Electrical Engineering for Non-Electrical Engineers.” Hurrah to Srinath!
Seventh grade cellist Rachel Broweleit has accomplished so much in such a short time.
Broweleit’s interest in orchestral music began to surface at The Harker School at the tender age of six, when Louis Hoffman, after-school instrumental program director, who studied alongside legendary television and film composer Henry Mancini, encouraged her to try her hand at various instruments. After taking Hoffman’s advice, Broweleit settled on the cello, participating in both the lower school orchestra and after-school music lessons. In time, her accomplishments on her instrument of choice became perfectly suited for solos, chamber music ensembles, and string and symphony orchestras.
Broweleit went on to join the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra (PACO), an award-winning youth orchestra for regional string musicians of high school age and younger. She is now in her second year as co-principal cellist in PACO’s Sinfonia ensemble, which rehearses once a week at Cubberley Community Center. Most recently, she became a part of California Music Preparatory Academy’s chamber music program for musicians.
At just 13 years of age, Broweleit already has won several major international competitions, including first place at both the American Fine Arts Festival – where she gave a solo performance at Carnegie Hall on Valentine’s Day 2015 – and the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition. She then returned to Carnegie Hall for an encore performance on Easter Sunday 2015. She also was named the grand prize winner at this year’s United States Open Music Competition.
Now a proud participant in the middle school orchestra, conducted by David Hart, Broweleit says her early success is due in large part to her educational experience – and the dedicated, caring faculty – at Harker: “Dr. Hart has been a great encouragement, providing a really exciting atmosphere and creating opportunities for me and my classmates to explore our interests in music.”
What’s next for the bright young star? Later this year, Broweleit will perform “Kol Nidrei,” a composition for cello and orchestra written by German composer and conductor Max Bruch, at PACO’s Annual Concerto Competition, where she will be accompanied by her fellow Sinfonia members.
Varsity-A Boys volleyball beat Jordan this afternoon in the ADAL Championship at Blackford Gym, finishing in first place, the most recent triumph for middle and lower school athletes!
Varsity-A tennis defeated Hillview 7-2 in the WBAL championship match this week. The team went undefeated for the fourth year in a row in the WBAL with a 5-0 record, and then won both their semifinal match vs. Sacred Heart 7-2 and their championship match vs. Hillview 7-2 to take the league title.
Varsity-B (grades 7 and 8) girls volleyball, coached by Sarah Prudencio, finished undefeated at 7-0, taking first place in the WBAL South.
Junior Varsity-A (grade 6) girls volleyball, coached by Vonda Reid, finished undefeated at 7-0, taking first place in the WBAL Gold Division.
Junior Varsity-B1 (grade 5) girls volleyball, coached by Ellie Pereira, finished 5-1, tying with Sacred Heart for first place in the WBAL.
Varsity-A (grade 7 and 8) boys volleyball, coached by Pete Anderson, went 10-0 in league and 11-0 overall, taking first place and the tournament championship in the ADAL.
Co-ed water polo (grades 6-8), coached by Ted Ujifusa and Peter Blume, went 4-0 at the WBAL championships.
Lower school track (grades 4 and 5), coached by Allison Burzio, Margaret Huntley, Kelcie Lai and Karriem Stinson, took first place at the WBAL track meet in the 4 X 100 grade 4 boys relay (Rohan Gorti, Andrew Fu, Lorenzo Martinelli and Rigo Gonzales) and first in the the 100, 200 and 400 (Rigo Gonzales).
Middle school track (grades 6-8), coached by Allison Burzio, Margaret Huntley, Kelcie Lai and Karriem Stinson, took first place at the WBAL track meet in the 4 X 100 grade 8 girls relay (Alex Janssen, Sara Min, Alycia Cary and Julia Amick) and the 400 and 800 (Julia Amick) and the long jump (Alex Janssen).
Three students were honored for their submissions to the Growing Up Asian in America Awards. Freshman Emily Chen’s essay, “Airplane Dreams,” was named best in class; Angela Kim, grade 10, received an honorable mention for her art submission, “The Game of Immigration;” Katrina Liou, grade 8, also received an honorable mention for her art submission, “Waving Goodbye.”
“I think it is wonderful that three talented students from Harker are part of this year’s GUAA Awards,” said Andrea Yamazaki Williamson, advisory committee member. “It is GUAA’s 20th anniversary, so it’s a special year and milestone for the program.”
The contest solicits works of art, essays and videos from students in grades K-12 that show what it’s like to grow up both Asian and American in the Bay Area.
“There were close to 800 submissions this year and a total of 20 winners and 30 honorable mentions from throughout the nine-county Bay Area,” noted Williamson. The awards ceremony took place May 3 at the Asian Art Museum.