The boys remain in first place in league thanks to a big victory over Pinewood last week. Senior Shrish Dwivedi led all golfers with a 34 while sophomore Sandip Nirmel shot a 36. They face King’s Academy on Tuesday and league rival Sacred Heart on Friday
Track and Field
Sophomore Winnie Li and freshmen Aria Coalson, Gloria Guo and Grace Koonmen won the sprint medley and set a Harker record at the DeAnza Invitational! Sophomore Niki Iyer followed that up by setting a new Harker record in the 3200-meter at the prestigious Arcadia Invitational. The team has a league meet Tuesday and a big invitational next Saturday in San Mateo.
Softball
Softball had a dramatic 6-5 win over Saint Francis Watsonville thanks to a tremendous game-saving catch in the top of the seventh by junior Tong Wu. The Eagles got big hits from seniors Briana Liang and Sarah Bean, sophomore Vivian Isenberg and freshman Kristin LeBlanc. They host Mercy on Tuesday.
Lacrosse
The girls walloped Aragon 14-6 last Wednesday, with goals by seniors Hannah Bollar, Allison Kiang, Priscilla Pan and Leeza Kuo, junior Natasha Mayor and sophomore Taylor Iantosca. Sophomore goalie Meilan Steimie had nine saves in the win. The Eagles play Sequoia on Wednesday.
Tennis
Boys tennis now has a 12-2 overall record after a 6-1 victory over Pinewood last week. The team travels to Priory on Tuesday and hosts Crystal Springs on Thursday.
Volleyball
The boys beat Monterey and Live Oak at the Bellarmine Tournament over the weekend to go 2-3 overall in the competition. Their record now stands at 6-12 overall. They’ll look to improve that mark when they hit the road to play in Mountain View and Los Gatos this week.
Baseball
The Eagles dropped to 6-7 overall after a 9-4 loss at Fremont last week, but junior Miles DeWitt was featured in the Mercury News Highlight Reel for his huge two home run performance against Trinity Christian. Learn more here:
Come support our swimmers this Friday at the Singh Aquatic Center as they compete in their second home meet of the season!
Moving On
Last but never least, Shreya Dixit, grade 12, has been noted by the Yale women’s volleyball coach as an incoming athlete for the class of 2019. Read her write up, here!
Last week, Harker’s Team Hurrikeynes – made up of seniors Aaron Huang, Rohith Kuditipudi (not pictured), Ashwath Thirumalai, Steven Wang and Leo Yu and advised by economics teachers Sam Lepler and Damon Halback – qualified for the national semifinal round of the National Economics Challenge. The April 7 competition, which took place at the San Francisco Federal Reserve, consisted of a testing round in which five participating teams (three of which were from Harker) closely matched. Team Hurrikenes’ runaway success in the quiz bowl round was the deciding factor in their victory. Next week’s semifinal exam will determine if Team Hurrikeynes travels to New York City for the televised national finals. Wish them luck!
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education, can hardly believe a decade has gone by since the upper school launched its exchange program with students from the Collège de Gambach in Fribourg, Switzerland.
“The first one occurred in the school year 2004-05!” enthused Walrod.
Mid-February heralded the beginning of this year’s program, with the arrival of 11 Swiss exchange students and their two chaperones.
“New friendships formed quickly between the grades 10 and 11 Harker students and the Swiss buddies they hosted,” recalled Walrod.
The Collège de Gambach is a secondary school under the authority of Switzerland’s department of public education and cultural affairs. The school is located near an important economic and cultural border between German and French Switzerland.
While visiting here, the Swiss students lived in homestays with their Harker hosts and their families, allowing them to become fully immersed in American life. They enjoyed observing various classes, as well as exploring sights locally and beyond the Bay Area.
After going on a tour of the upper school with their Harker pals, the exchange students observed and participated in such classes as dance, debate, art, chemistry, drama, poetry and American history. They also made Native American dream catchers with Keith Hirota, middle school social studies teacher and K-8 department chair. Another highlight for the Swiss students was taking an American cuisine cooking class at Cucina Bambini, a local hands-on cooking school.
Grade 11 Harker student and program participant Daphne Yang shared that it was the little things that she remembers most fondly about time spent with her Swiss buddy. Things like hanging out at the mall and talking over coffee at Starbucks.
“The Swiss visit was really a learning experience. I got to interact with people from a different background and culture than I am used to, and I had fun picking up bits and pieces of their lifestyles as they were immersed in mine. It made me realize how much I enjoy learning not only other languages but the culture that comes with it, and with all the fun we’ve had, I can’t wait to visit Switzerland in the summer to learn more!” said Yang.
One thing that really interested Yang was that the Swiss buddies had never seen a school bus before. She found it “very cute” that they were awed by the yellowness of the vehicle and took pictures and selfies in front of it.
At the end of their special time together, Harker students and their new Swiss buddies said their goodbyes over a farewell party in the campus bistro. Come June, they will be reunited, this time in Switzerland, with the same buddies paired up once again. The upcoming adventure will afford the Harker contingent the opportunity to immerse themselves in Swiss culture, brush up on their language skills and explore the country’s vast natural beauty.
Ken Barber, an upper school substitute teacher who assisted Walrod during the Swiss visit, said the best thing about watching the interactions between the Harker and Swiss students was the development of close relationships. “Their interactions seemed to be warm and genuine,” he recalled.
Diana Moss, upper school Spanish teacher and Class of 2015 dean, “loved hosting the Swiss chaperones, Cyril and Ole. They were enthusiastic about experiencing every aspect of American culture, including vinyl records, old cars, motorcycles and country music. They were particularly excited to see my husband’s ‘man space’ garage packed full of tools and choice gadgets, saying it was exactly the image they had of a typical American home. We engaged in long and lively discussions about culture, language and schools, and our home felt very quiet after they’d left. I know we’ve established a friendship that will endure – exactly the goal of a cultural exchange!” said Moss.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
For nearly a decade, Harker’s speech and debate program has given students the invaluable skills they need to present and persuade. In the past five years, Harker students have won multiple national championships in nearly every speech and debate event they have entered. The department’s profile has continued to grow as more people realize the critical importance of clear, persuasive communication.
Before department chair Carol Green joined Harker in 2006, the speech and debate program consisted of only a few dozen students at the upper school. “Now I myself teach about 70,” Green said. She attributes the heavy growth over the past several years in part to the program’s expansion into more types of events.
“When I first got here, the only two events we did were policy debate – which is a very technical two-person debate – and Lincoln-Douglas debate, which is a very technical one-person debate,” Green recalled.
These events have students debating a single topic year-round, requiring intensive research. They are judged by experts in the chosen topic who are keenly aware of how nuances of speech can affect how a message is received.
The judges’ expertise in the chosen topics means students must demonstrate considerable knowledge of the subject area when arguing their sides.
In her second year at Harker, Green added public forum debate to the program. In contrast to the more research-heavy debate events, public forum changes topics every month, and is evaluated by citizen judges.
“Citizen judges are anyone off the street – lawyers, doctors, moms, dads. People you’re going to have to persuade in everyday life,” Green explained. “So you’re looking at a different type of persuasion, because they don’t know necessarily the most technical jargon, but you’re still looking at the human elements of persuasion.”
In addition to public forum, the department added individual speech events and congressional debate, which fit better with the schedules of most Harker students. “So if a child takes a month off to go do robotics, they don’t lose out on a competitive edge because they just skip,” Green said. “And so when we introduced these other activities that still taught oral communication skills, taught research skills, but maybe weren’t as intense, we had a greater retention level.”
Once more students began entering these events, “the students became successful and success breeds success,” Green explained. The program’s growing profile and the reputation it developed for building strong communication and presentation skills attracted more students to the program.
Senior Nikhil Kishore, who in the fall semester earned a trip to the National Speech & Debate Association’s Tournament of Champions, found that he enjoyed debate because it gave him more control over how far he progressed in comparison to other competitive events, such as sports.
“It’s a lot more student driven,” he said. “If you actually do more work yourself, that’s a lot. It really dictates how well you do, how much research you’ve done, how much prep you’ve done.”
He has also found the environment highly collaborative, which has been key to his success. “It’s really good because you can bounce ideas off of [peers] and you’re working with some of the smartest people, which helps you create all these good ideas and things that you can work with in a debate.”
“If you get eliminated [from a tournament], you immediately turn around and become a member of the coaching staff and continue to help until Harker is eliminated as a whole,” Green said. “Because even though you’re an individual competitor, you’re still part of a team.”
In summer 2010, Harker’s middle school debate squad traveled to the National Junior Forensic League’s national championship, where it took both first and second place in public forum. The addition of Karina Momary to the faculty later that year bolstered the middle school debate program. Momary quickly sought to expand the middle school program by adding more events.
Having come from a larger debate program in her previous job, Momary wanted to enhance the middle school program by offering more than public forum, which focuses on current events. “Not everyone likes talking about current events. Some people want to talk about moral values and some people want to talk about policy issues,” she said.
Since then, the middle school program has won at the national level in every debate event it has entered. “A lot of parents ask me which style of debate are we better at, and we are just as good at all of them,” Momary said. “Part of the reason is we encourage students to find their passion and to research something that interests them, and with that comes the passion to excel.”
When she joined Harker, there was a scarcity of local middle school debate competitions, which made preparation for national tournaments a challenge. Momary took the bold step to start entering her students into high school-level tournaments, which drew criticism from some in the debate community. “And then our kids started beating the high school kids,” Momary said. “And now all the middle school programs out here do the same thing.”
Green attributes much of Harker debate’s success to the resources available to students. “Honestly, I think the Harker community’s a large part,” she said. In a recent example, upper school debate teacher Greg Achten’s students were to debate on environmental issues, which prompted Achten to invite science teacher Kate Schafer to speak with his students on the topic. “Being able to draw from the rest of the Harker resources and the Harker community really allows our students to take it outside of the text,” Green said.
Green added that students also learn how to argue from both sides of the debate, “forcing students to question their own beliefs, to understand and build stronger foundations in their beliefs, because they know what the opposition’s going to say and they know how build a response to that.”
Middle school students also get help from upper school debaters, who offer support and guidance at after-school practice sessions and workshops. Momary noted that middle school team captains are in near-constant contact with upper school captains to coordinate and prepare arguments. When middle and upper school students travel to tournaments together, they are set up as buddies. “Everyone supports each other and really works as a team,” she said.
“Harker debate is really like a huge family,” said Cindy Wang, grade 8. “The shared love of debate connects all of us and we help each other in difficult or stressful situations. Being on the team is an amazing experience; the support I have received from the parents, coaches and peers has really helped me work hard toward improving.”
A large part of debate’s popularity with Harker students can be attributed to the skills its students develop, which can be applied to many disciplines, including academics or future careers. “They’re learning how to construct an argument, which is really helpful when they’re doing things like writing persuasive essays or writing research papers and things like that, for social sciences and for STEM,” said Green.
“There’s nothing that would prepare them for the boardroom better than being able to stand up and deliver their ideas,” said Momary. “A few of the parents have come back and told me they watched their students talk to VCs in a boardroom and couldn’t believe that they had the ability to do that.”
Debate also gives students the opportunity to perform extensive research on a wide variety of topics. While researching a debate topic, students may immerse themselves in global economics, environmental sciences, current events or even the nature of debate tournaments themselves.
“We focus a lot on current events. So it encourages you to keep up with the world and see what’s going on, which is pretty interesting because often you learn a lot of things that you wouldn’t have otherwise known,” Kishore said.
As students frequently travel to tournaments, time management also becomes an important tool of the trade, which Wang found especially important. “I’ve learned to do my homework faster and more efficiently so I can leave time for debate, and I can apply this skill everywhere to do as much as possible in a given timeframe.”
Harker’s golf and track and field teams performed spectacularly over spring break, while the baseball squad upped its record to .500. Let’s get to the results!
Golf
The boys golf team competed at the Champions Tournament in Palm Springs over spring break, finishing 11th out of 47 teams from throughout the United States! Senior Shrish Dwivedi led the way, placing sixth out of 256 individuals. The boys are currently in first place in league, and will aim to keep it that way when they faced Pinewood on Thursday.
Track and Field
The Eagles posted 25 personal bests in the Firebird Relays at Fremont High School over spring break! The girls distance medley relay team not only won its event, but also set a new meet and school record. Junior Alex Dellar, sophomores Winnie Li and Nikki Iyer, and freshman Grace Koonmen won in style as Iyer made up a 140-meter gap on her final leg, posting a personal record of 5:01 for her mile run. Iyer later set a school record in the 800m with 2:20.64.
Koonmen also ran the No. 3 all-time mark for a Harker freshman in the 100m and 200m races. Freshman Anthony Contreras, meanwhile, improved on his No. 2 all-time Harker 200m race with a 24.01. Sophomore Davis Howard posted the No. 5 all-time mark for a Harker sophomore in the shot put and discus, while sophomore Davis Dunaway became the No. 2 all-time Harker sophomore in the 65m hurdles.
Junior Arthur Ye also had a strong day with a personal record of 33’ 6” in the shot put, ranking him among Harker’s top 10 all-time shot put efforts at No. 7. Freshman Ananya Krishnan’s personal record of 17’ 9” – the best-ever shot put effort by a female Harker freshman – moved her into eighth position on the top 10 list.
Baseball
The Eagles held on for a tight 14-13 victory over Trinity Christian last week to bump their record up to .500 at 6-6 overall. Freshmen Nate Kelly and Dominic Cea led the way with three hits apiece, including Kelly’s four RBIs.
Last week, the final piece of a new kiosk outside the upper school library was attached. Freshman Peter Connors designed and built the structure for his Eagle Scout project. Maintenance director J.R. Del Alto used a forklift to place the roof, which was then fastened, completing a campus feature that upper school division head Butch Keller had wanted to see added for some time. Located at the busy intersection of the walkways outside Manzanita Hall, the upper school library and the main building, the kiosk will provide another way to keep the upper school community informed.
Connors received help in building the kiosk from fellow freshmen Vinny Vu and Amitej Mehta, of whom Connors said, “Without them, this project would never have been completed.”
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
In January, Student Directed Showcase put on its 14th show, further cementing its status as one of the Harker Conservatory’s key programs.
The class, available to students who are selected after a thorough review process, puts students in the director’s chair and charges them with handling all aspects of putting on a show, including casting, blocking (positioning and movement of the actors on stage), visual elements, promotion and everything in between.
“The college counselors tell me it’s up there with one or two APs in terms of the load that a student will have when they choose to direct,” said performing arts department chair Laura Lang-Ree, who runs the class. “If a student chooses to direct, they often will know [of their interest by] seventh or eighth grade. They’ve been coming to SDS or they’ve heard about SDS and they have this passion for leading something, though they may not really know what it is.”
Lang-Ree got the idea for SDS while in graduate school. “I’ve always had a passion for all different types of performing, from dance to instrumental to theater, but when I took [a] directing class, all the light bulbs went on,” she recalled.
After earning a master’s in acting with an emphasis in directing, Lang-Ree began teaching performing arts at the upper school, where she set the wheels in motion for the first Student Directed Showcase. “Too often, in schools and in colleges too, the focus is on one area. Usually it’s performance, and there isn’t a whole lot of attention given to all of the other many, many areas of art that you can not only fall in love with but have a career in,” she said.
Like Lang-Ree, many Harker students have discovered their interest in directing through acting. “I remember my freshman year experience in SDS so clearly,” said senior Caroline Howells, who directed “Almost, Maine” at this year’s SDS and was one of four directors in the class. “I have such fond memories of it, and I’ve done it every year since, and when it came meme to apply to be a director I said, ‘Sure, let’s do this.’”
“I loved my directors, I loved the shows and I loved my characters,” said Zoe Woehrmann, grade 12, director of “Exit” at the most recent SDS. “All of my [fellow] directors ended up becoming huge role models for me.”
The process of selecting directors begins early in the spring semester, when Lang-Ree finds students who are interested in directing a play. “Around March or April, I’ll send them a series of questions to answer in written form and they’ll come and meet with me and we just talk,” she said. After taking a close look at every candidate’s work in the Conservatory, as well as “all the classes that they’ve taken here, leadership that they’ve done inside and outside of Harker,” she receives feedback from school administrators and selects the following year’s directors.
Once the students accept their role as directors, they are given the summer to choose a play, which can be a lengthy but extremely important process. “When you’re going to work on something that intensely and that deeply every single day and you literally can’t stop thinking about it, you’ve got to love it,” said Lang-Ree. “It really has to speak to them.”
Selecting a play proved time-consuming for Howells, who looked at about 50 plays before settling on “Almost, Maine,” a romantic urban fairy tale set in a fictional town. “I read the first scene, the prologue scene, which is very iconic for the show, and I just knew I had to do it,” she said.
“I didn’t actually know what I wanted, but I knew what I didn’t want,” Woehrmann said. “I realized I wanted a heavy ensemble show. I didn’t want one protagonist.” “Exit,” which examines five characters who awaken to find themselves in a theater with no memory of how they arrived, was a perfect fit.
Once the plays are chosen, Lang-Ree meets with the directors to analyze and dissect their plays, which helps them discover what they will be looking for when choosing cast members.
“I think the lion’s share of the academic work is taking these scripts and breaking them apart into the specific acting unit,” said Lang-Ree. “What’s the point of attack? What is the protagonist’s goal? Where is the climax for the production? How does it arc?”
Directors also read one anothers’ plays and offer their own insights. The thorough analysis process gives students “plenty of room to play with their casts and get their interpretation and their feedback,” Lang-Ree said.
About 50 students audition for each play, and the directors work with one another and Lang-Ree to decide who will appear in each production. The entire process takes place in a single evening. “We discuss who is going to be in which production and why, what’s best for the student who’s auditioning, what’s best for the production, and because we know each other so well, usually it’s a pretty collaborative night,” said Lang-Ree.
For some students, the transition from acting to directing can be daunting at times. “It was completely weird for me,” said Woehrmann. “Honestly, when I walked into the first rehearsal and I was the only one there and I was setting everything up and sitting in the director’s chair, I was like, ‘What am I going to say to them?’”
“I always knew that it took a lot to put on a play, but I never realized how much thought and planning goes into every moment. Every scene, every blocking choice, every rehearsal is carefully thought out,” said Grace Hudkins ’08, who directed “The Importance of Being Earnest” in the 2008 production. “You never know what an actor is going to need and you have to be prepared with a ton of tools in your back pocket ready to support whatever gets thrown at you.”
Not surprisingly, the nature of each director’s play results in different directing styles, which can include taking some creative risks. When Woehrmann revealed “Exit’s” surprise ending to cast members after keeping it from them for a period of time, she was relieved that they liked it.
After callbacks with her cast, Howells replaced an entire scene with another one from the play she was directing, which led to some worry about how her actors would handle it. “The first rehearsal I had with them, I actually breathed such a sigh of relief because they actually had pretty good chemistry on stage,” she said. The changes didn’t end there. “If you look at the script of my show, it has very, very specific stage directions, and I pretty much ignored most of them.”
The first-time directors also experienced other challenges that directors face on a project. “With some people in my cast, I wasn’t always quite sure how to communicate with them,” said Howells. “Like, what does this person need in order to get them to the point that I want them to be at? And so definitely with some people it took me longer to find that point, but they all got there in the end.”
Scheduling was another issue. “When you have 10 different people who all have different days where they’re not available, it’s very hard to find time,” Howells said. “And we have our own lives too.
This wasn’t the only thing that I was doing after school.” Because Woehrmann’s “Exit” did not utilize any scenery, she had to get creative with blocking to keep the action from looking too static. “I kind of didn’t want them to be walking aimlessly,” she said. “Because I wanted them to focus on the important parts, but I didn’t want them to be standing still in the middle of the stage not doing anything.”
Moreover, the live setting of a theater production always presents uncertainty. “I was terrified that they were going to forget a line, or that a costume was going to go missing or that a cue wasn’t going to happen. All of these things were constantly going through my head,” Woehrmann said.
“One of the most challenging things about SDS is that you’re not just the director; you’re the stage manager, the set designer, the costume designer, the publicist, the entire production team,” said Hudkins.
Thankfully, the actors’ growth during rehearsals and the confidence they had in the directors were a constant source of inspiration. “When you see people place their trust in you, it makes you care in such a different way than I ever have doing a show,” said Howells. “Having them place so much trust in you, it made make me work harder for them. They’re all my best friends now.”
During discussions with her cast, Woehrmann was pleased to discover that they had thrown themselves fully into their roles and had spotted aspects of their characters’ development that she hadn’t noticed.
Despite the challenges that come with directing a show, the directors find the experience to be highly rewarding. “The Thursday before we had an audience, when we ran through the whole show, I started crying,” Woehrmann said. “Because after it ended, it was just such a relief and we were so proud of our casts and that everything had come together.”
“Being a student director was challenging, it was exhausting, and it pushed me to my breaking point and beyond,” said Hudkins. “But it was also probably my favorite thing I did at Harker, and one of my proudest accomplishments.”
SDS also develops skills that extend far beyond the theater and into a wide range of careers. “Of course it’s a highly artistic process,” said Lang-Ree, “but everything that they’re doing, they’re literally going to use from now on: how to plan a meeting, how to handle a hard conversation, how to organize advertising for your event and make it successful, how to build a team that respects and likes you, how to make phone calls, how to put in receipts, how to go shopping for things.”
“It makes me more confident going forward in college and if I want to do auditions during college, then I’ll be able to handle all of that,” said Woehrmann.
Howells felt similarly. “In the college program I’m going to, I know I’m going to have a lot of different opportunities to act and sing and direct and other things like that, and so I hope that this is just the first show of many,” she said.
Hudkins, who graduated from Mount Holyoke College and now teaches drama at an international school in South Korea, attributes her trajectory since graduation to her time as an SDS director. “When I got to Mount Holyoke, I was already poised in my first year to take on major roles in production teams in our student theater organization, and I became involved practically by accident,” she recalled. Upon graduation, she became an intern at the school where she now works. “I truly believe that you can draw a straight line from SDS to my extensive college theater experience to my current career,” she said.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
Harker’s DECA program hit on all cylinders this winter, achieving new milestones!
First off, Harker DECA president Savi Joshi, grade 12 and advisor Juston Glass were named student of the year and advisor of the year, respectively. The winners were chosen by nomination and no chapter has ever had both a student and advisor named in the same year. Joshi was chosen from more than 5,000 student members in California, and Glass was chosen out of more than 100 advisors in California.
State DECA Conference In late February and early March, 98 students from Harker’s DECA chapter traveled to the Marriott Hotel in Santa Clara to attend California’s State Career Development Conference. This four-day business conference and competition included workshops with renowned speakers, events with tough opponents and experiences for a lifetime.
“Our students did very well in competitions,” said junior Shannon Hong, Harker DECA director of communications and executive vice president of Silicon Valley DECA. The group took home three first-place awards, two third-place awards and 21 other top 10 awards.
Attending the state conference “was [not just] my final competition prior to the International Career Development Conference (ICDC) last April,” said Joshi, who took home a fourth-place award for her community service project. “It meant seeing my family in its element. That’s what DECA has become for me: a family. It’s the place and people I can go to when I need help, comfort or a challenge.
“ICDC is definitely a bittersweet event, as it signifies the end of a life-changing four year journey. I am DECA. We are Harker DECA. Welcome to our family,” added Joshi.
Along with competitions, students attended workshops, competed in role play and written events, had fun at Great America and sang karaoke. They also attended a formal dance, and the mini and grand awards ceremonies.
Advocacy Video Competition DECA’s “I am DECA” theme is the cornerstone of its 2014-15 marketing and membership campaign, and the video by Ankur Karwal, grade 11, and Alexis Gauba, grade 10, was named one of the top three in the DECA Advocacy Video Challenge. DECA challenged its members to produce a short video during Career and Technical Education Month that expressed their own stories and shared how career and technical education has impacted their high school experience so far.
More than 30 videos were submitted from high school and collegiate DECA members.
Finish Line Finalists Glenn Reddy, grade 12, and Logan Drazovich, grade 11, traveled to Indianapolis as one of three finalist teams nationwide competing in the DECA Finish Line Challenge. The teams advised Finish Line Inc. executives on how the company can best utilize and improve upon its omni-channel retailing strategy and company branding. Reddy and Drazovich submitted a video as part of the competition, and they received the winning accolades, coming in ahead of the other two finalist teams.
CareerConnect CareerConnect is Harker’s mentorship, career panel and professionalism program, featuring speakers from across a spectrum of professions. Recent CareerConnect guests have included Jag Kapoor, president of Golden State Restaurants Inc.; Cammie Dunaway, CEO of KidZania United States; Gigi Kelly, adjunct professor at the McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia; and Gary Gauba, president of Cognilytics-CenturyLink.
“CareerConnect’s panels were a great success in their second year,” said Shannon Hong. “Many students came out to hear from professionals in the fields of medicine, law, computer science, engineering and business. The panels provide a platform for students to learn from these professionals to gain an idea of a potential career path and build their network. We are now launching our second year of mentorship, a program that pairs students with professionals in their specific fields of interest so they can learn more about that specific niche and even shadow their mentors at their workplaces.”
Lead On More than 30 girls attended the Lead On Silicon Valley Conference for Women, along with more than 5,000 women from various industries, including technology, business, entrepreneurship and more. CareerConnect, part of Harker’s business and entrepreneurship program, sponsored the event with the help of Riverbed Technology Inc., which funded the entire Harker contingent to the event. Many, but not all, of the Harker attendees were from the B.E./DECA program.
Stock Market Game Harker DECA won its region with a final amount of $179,387.65. The next highest winner in the Western region scored $150,333.92; those were also the two highest scores nationwide. Team members Safia Khouja and David Lin, both seniors, are eligible to travel to Orlando, Fla., in April to participate in the Stock Market Game at the 2015 DECA International Career Development Conference. At that event, they will defend their investment decisions for a chance to be recognized at the ICDC Grand Awards Session.
The year isn’t over, but seniors are beginning to look back on their time with DECA with nostalgia and appreciation. “Of all my years of participating in Harker DECA, this year has certainly been the most enjoyable and rewarding,” said Jonathan Lee, grade 12, Harker DECA vice president of operations. “I felt that the spirit, camaraderie and mutual support reached an all-time high this year. Personally, I think DECA taught me what it means to be a leader. It means that I have to put my team and my chapter before myself whenever I make a decision. Of course this lesson of leadership, loyalty and commitment has extended into every aspect of my life.”
Harker DECA is an international competitive business organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in four fields of business: marketing, finance, hospitality and management. The chapter integrates classroom instruction, applies learning, connects to business, and promotes competition so the next generation will be academically prepared, community oriented, professionally responsible and experienced leaders.
This article originally appeared in the spring 2015 Harker Quarterly.
Basketball Teams Leave Their Mark; Wrestlers Qualify; Boys Tennis Kicks off Season with a Big Win
Basketball
The gents went 16-10 this year, finishing in fourth place in the league, winning a CCS academic championship and reaching the CCS quarterfinals. Their biggest win of the year, a 71-38 crushing of Del Mar High School at home in front of a raucous crowd in the second round of the CCS championships was punctuated by senior Sriv Irrinki’s 20 points and senior Eric Holt’s breakaway dunk!
Holt racked up 315 points and 162 rebounds, averaging a team-high 17.5 points per game. Irrinki, meanwhile, led the team with 330 points, averaging 13.2 points and a team-high nine rebounds per game. He also was named the San Jose Mercury News’ Santa Clara County Boys Athlete of the Week earlier in the year for his 35-point performance against King’s Academy, which included eight 3-pointers and a perfect record from the free-throw line. Senior Dylan Patel led the team with 80 assists, while junior Elijah Edgehill averaged 10.1 points and 8.6 rebounds per game.
The girls also reached the CCS playoffs after finishing with a 12-12 record, losing in the first round. They also had a Senior Night for the ages; when Crystal Springs forfeited, the girls played an intrasquad scrimmage in which Team Green defeated Team White!
Jordan Thompson, grade 10, led the team with 451 points, 20.5 points per game, seven rebounds per game and a free-throw percentage of 66. She also was honored by the San Jose Mercury News after she scored 38 points with 11 rebounds against Woodside Priory and then followed that performance up with 28 points against Crystal Springs. Senior Lekha Chirala led team with 53 assists.
Wrestling
For the second year in a row, Davis Howard, grade 10, qualified for CCS after finishing in fifth place at the league wrestling championships. He represented Harker with two tough loss against talented opponents. Anthony Contreras, grade 9, finished in eight place at the league wrestling championships and was named a second alternate for CCS. Contreras is only the fourth freshman in Harker history to place at the varsity level in league finals. Senior Ryan Palmer had one of the most memorable weeks of the year, going 2-0 by winning by pin against Homestead on his Senior Night and then winning again by pin against Lynbrook on their Senior Night.
Soccer
The girls just missed qualifying for the playoffs after finishing 7-8-1 overall. Sophomore Joelle Anderson had an amazing season, racking up 31 goals with 12 assists. She was recognized in the San Jose Mercury News twice: once for scoring five goals with two assists in an 8-3 win over Priory, and once for scoring three goals against Mercy-Burlingame and then three again versus Crystal Springs. Kailee Gifford, grade 10, scored 14 goals and led the team with 13 assists this year.
For just the second time in school history, the boys soccer team defeated Menlo this season, beating them 3-1 on Harker’s Senior Day. They finished with a 10-4-2 record. Overall, junior Omar Hamade led the team with 15 goals. Senior Jeremiah Anderson had seven goals and seven assists, while senior Alan Guo tied for the team lead with seven assists.
Volleyball
This winter, senior Shreya Dixit was named to the All-Mercury News second volleyball team for her performance in the fall. This recognition honors her as one of the best players in the section.
Tennis
Harker’s varsity boys tennis team went an amazing 5-0 (6-0, 5-1, 5-1, 5-1, 5-1) to earn the Division 4 championship at the California Tennis Classic. It is “the most prestigious preseason tennis tournament in the state,” according to Dan Molin, upper school athletic director.
Last week, Harker sophomores Sneha Bhetanabhotla, Trisha Dwivedi, Neymika Jain and Kshithija Mulam traveled to San Diego to present their research project at the annual meeting of the Society of Toxicology. Their project, on alternative breast cancer treatments, was one of eight high school projects chosen from around the country. On March 24, the students presented it for the first time to toxicology professors and experts.
That same day, the students met with researchers from Paris and toured the San Diego Convention Center. The following day, they were chosen to present at the poster session where toxicology experts were showing their research.
“Our research considered alternative treatments to breast cancer by using sodium bicarbonate to counteract acidity and enhance alkalization in the body in order to inhibit the invasion and metastasis of the cancer tumor,” said Mulam. “This experiment was conducted in vitro on mammary carcinoma cell line 4T1 using known anti-cancer supplement epigallocatechin gallate (green tea extract) as a comparison point to sodium bicarbonate.”
“Our project was accepted to the poster presenting session in which other professionals and researchers were presenting their works,” said Dwivedi. “On both days, we had a lot of professors and experts on the cancer cells and experiments we tested, so we received both commendations as well as feedback on how we can improve our project and take it to the next level. We are pleased to see that many experts who had been researching what we did were interested by what we had done, and our team is hopeful to expand upon our project to hopefully be able to present at next year’s conference in New Orleans.”
The professors in attendance were happy to offer advice to the students, who jumped at the opportunity to receive feedback from notable people in the field. “The chance to network with professionals and to present our findings to a larger audience at the conference was definitely an unforgettable experience for all of us,” said Mulam, “We hope to encounter more opportunities that help us further explore and appreciate the merits of research in the future.”