The sports season is in full swing, with girls golf rocketing past previous team records thanks to an onslaught of career-best performances. Meanwhile, two cross country runners sped past their competition at the Stanford Invitational, the football squad racked up 400 yards of offense on the gridiron, the girls tennis team blanked Fremont and the girls water polo team grabbed their first win of the year. Let’s get to it!
Golf
The girls golf team kicked off league play brilliantly, shooting a Harker team best of 197 to beat Notre Dame San Jose last week in a game that saw numerous career bests. Junior Ashley Zhong (38), freshman Vanessa Tyagi (41), senior Madelyn Wang (45) and sophomore Alexis Gauba (50) all broke their best-ever marks, while junior Daphne Liang (39) tied hers. The best score of the day went to freshman Katherine Zhu, who earned medalist honors with a par performance of 34. The team record bested the previous record set just last week of 205 strokes and catapulted the team into a tie with rival Sacred Heart Prep the very next day, 228-228.
Cross Country
Senior Corey Gonzales and sophomore Niki Iyer ran blisteringly fast races in the Stanford Invitational Cross Country Race on Saturday. Gonzales’ fiery run was a personal best and placed him 11th out of 260 runners from throughout the state. Iyer, meanwhile, beat out 252 other runners to place fifth in her Division 4 race. Both Gonzales and Iyer will look to defend their times from last year’s league championship in the first WBAL meet of the year this week.
A number of runners also had big days on Saturday at the Westmoor High School course. Both senior Rahul Balakrishnan and sophomore Andrew Rule ran personal bests by nearly one minute over their races last year. Junior Alex Dellar ran a strong 16:30, while freshman Aria Coalson pushed hard for a great finish and a 20:12 time.
Football
The Eagles dropped their game against the Mt. Pleasant Cardinals on Friday night despite racking up 400 yards of offense thanks to great performances by seniors Keanu Forbes and Christian Williams, junior JK Keller, sophomore Will Park, and freshmen Nate Kelly, Anthony Escobar and Dominic Cea. Two freshmen defensive players, James Pauli and Anthony Contreras, also had standout games.
Volleyball
The girls volleyball squad’s record now stands at 3-6 after the team went 1-3 at the Presentation Tournament, where it fell to highly ranked teams from Rocklin, Los Gatos and Valley Christian.
Tennis
The girls suffered their first defeat of the season against Milpitas before bouncing back convincingly with a dominant 7-0 victory over Fremont.
Water Polo
The boys team lost its first game of the season when Wilcox stunned the Eagles with a come-from-behind victory, erasing the memory of a dominant 16-3 trouncing of Santa Clara earlier in the week. Both the varsity and junior varsity teams are now 3-1 in league play. Meanwhile, the girls defeated Wilcox for their very first league win of the season, 16-9, behind goals from seniors Delaney Martin, Anushka Das and Sheridan Tobin, junior Yasemin Narin, sophomores Meghana Karinthi and Sarah de Vegvar, and freshman Emma Brezoczky.
Andrew Jin, grade 12, recently donated a beautifully crafted enclosed bulletin board he built himself for his final Eagle Scout project. The bulletin board, about 4 ft x 4 ft., features a solid wood frame, cork posting surface, wood-framed plexiglass doors and a lock, and was completed with funding assistance from Home Depot. It will be hung on the upper school campus, to the right of the main entrance, just outside the office of Kevin Williamson, upper school dean of students. Many thanks to Jin for the effort that went into crafting this beauty, and for his kind contribution, which will no doubt be of service to thousands of students who will follow him at Harker.
Harker Debaters were busy this past weekend, earning great results at two events!
Greenhill Round Robin and Invitational The debate team had a great weekend at the Greenhill Round Robin and Invitational in Dallas. Senior Pranav Reddy was the first place speaker in Lincoln-Douglas debate in both the round robin and the invitational. The round robin is for the top 16 Lincoln-Douglas debaters in the country, so a first place finish is quite an accomplishment. Reddy also made it to the quarterfinals of the invitational. Senior Ayush Midha was the second place policy speaker at the invitational (out of 232 competitors). Midha and junior Panny Shan made it to the octofinals of the invitational. All three students earned one of the two required qualifying bids for the Tournament of Champions.
Yale Debate Invitational Nine Harker debaters traveled to New Haven, Conn., to compete at the Yale Debate Invitational. Alumni coaches Arjun Kumar ’14 and Aneesh Chona ’13 coached public forum debate and served as judges.
Sophomore Michael Tseitlin earned a bid to the prestigious Tournament of Champions by making it to the semifinal chamber in congressional debate. Tseitlin also was nominated by the judges to be considered for the final round and missed advancing by a single vote! This is a very strong showing by a sophomore at such a tough competition; he competed against last year’s national champion in preliminaries!
Junior Sorjo Banerjee and sophomore Emaad Raghib won five of their six preliminary rounds in public forum debate. Their sixth preliminary was against last year’s elite national champions and, while they lost the final vote, they tied for overall speaker points in the debate! Banerjee and Raghib advanced to the first round of eliminations where they were defeated on a 2-1 decision.
School has begun, and the fall sports season is underway! Harker tennis is off to a scorching hot start, while underclassmen are making big impacts already. Let’s get to it!
Tennis
The girls tennis team opened up its season by going 5-0 to become the Division 6 champs at the prestigious California Tennis Classic in Fresno, battling 100 degree heat to finish unbeaten! This week, they extended their hot start with victories over Santa Clara and Wilcox, to make them 7-0. The team will look to improve to 8-0 against King’s Academy on Thursday.
Golf
Freshman Katherine Zhu made her Harker debut a day to remember, finishing third in a 90-golfer field at Poplar Creek. Zhu shot an even par 71, leading the Eagles to an eighth place finish. Juniors Ashley Zhong and Daphne Liang also chipped in with scores of 85 and 87, respectively. Zhu continued her sizzling play by shooting a 3 under par 31 at Los Lagos to pace the Eagles to a 205-230 win over Evergreen High School. Meanwhile, Zhong’s 41 and freshman Vanessa Tyagi’s 42 contributed to Harker’s best team score ever at Los Lagos since scoring changed from four to five scores in 2010. Zhu’s performance is the best girls Harker round in history. Furthermore, on Monday, Zhu shot an even par 72 to finish tied for third at the Poppy Ridge Classic. The lady linksters finished in 12th place out of 22 teams. Liang and Zhong carded 83 and 84 respectively. With the pre-season tournaments and matches concluding this week, the Eagles are ready to start the WBAL season against Notre Dame San Jose on Monday at Los Lagos.
Cross Country
Last year’s rookie standout Niki Iyer, back now for her sophomore year, began the fall 2014 season with a strong second place finish at the Toro Park cross country meet on Saturday. Juniors Alex Dellar and Maya Jeyendran and junior Mary Najibi all ran around 23:00 for the girls, who finished in eighth, while senior Corey Gonzales, junior Jack Rothschild and senior Rahul Balakrishnan all ran well for the boys. Gonzales’ run was a highlight for the men, as his eighth-place finish landed him firmly in the top 10.
Water Polo
Both the boys and the girls opened up the year with tournaments, with the boys going 1-3 at the Lynbrook Tournament and the girls going 1-2 at the Wilcox Tournament last week. The girls’ performance included an 11-5 victory against San Lorenzo Valley. On Tuesday, the boys defeated Lynbrook 16-8. This marks the first time Harker has defeated Lynbrook in at least eight years! Congratulations, boys! The girls squad lost to Lynbrook 8-5. Anushka Das, grade 12, scored three goals.
Football
The football squad is off to an 0-2 start. Senior quarterback Keanu Forbes threw for two touchdowns and ran for another in a 38-21 loss to Overfelt in the season opener. Senior Christian Williams and freshman Nate Kelly each caught a touchdown, and senior kicker Alyssa Amick added an extra point in the loss. The team then fell in its second game to Del Mar High, despite touchdowns by Forbes, Williams, junior Johnathon Keller and sophomore Will Park. They’ll look for their first victory of the year this Friday at Swett High School.
Volleyball
This season started off with two challenges for the girls, who were pitted against top teams in their first two matches. They lost to a strong Homestead team one game to three in the season opener, then dropped their second game to St. Francis despite 12 kills from senior Shreya Dixit and seven from junior Shannon Richardson. This week, girls varsity volleyball defeated visiting Carmel on Tuesday 23-25, 26-24, 25-13, 25-12 behind 28 kills for Dixit. The girls host Willow Glen Thursday night.
A total of 59 students from Harker’s Class of 2015 were named semifinalists in the 2015 National Merit Scholarship Program, matching the all-time Harker record set in 2012. These students, comprising 32 percent of the senior class, scored in the top 1 percent nationally on the Preliminary SAT, which was taken last year by approximately 1.4 million grade 11 students. In total, 65 percent of Harker seniors scored in the top 3 percent of test takers nationwide.
This year’s semifinalists, listed in alphabetical order by last name, are:
Zabin Bashar, Aadyot Bhatnagar, William Bloomquist, Thyne Boonmark, Stacey Chao, Jason Chu, Anushka Das, Kacey Fang, Vamsi Gadiraju, Eugene Gil, Richard Gu, Arden Hu, Aaron Huang, Allen Huang, Matthew Huang, Vivian Isenberg, Rishabh Jain, Alex Jang, Rahul Jayaraman, Jaewon Jeong, Andrew Jin, Allison Kiang, Rohith Kuditipudi, Hemant Kunda, David Lin, Patrick Lin, Cindy Liu, Shiyu Liu, Suzy Lou, Ethan Ma, Shreya Maheshwari, Nitya Mani, Ayush Midha, Neil Movva, Juhi Muthal, Maya Nandakumar, Nori Madhuri, Sachin Peddada, Archana Podury, Apoorva Rangan, Sahana Rangarajan, Pranav Reddy, Vasudha Rengarajan, Sriram Somasundaram, Agata Sorotokin, Vivek Sriram, Shannon Su, Neha Sunil, Kelly Wang, Madelyn Wang, Serena Wang, Steven Wang, Felix Wu, Helen Wu, Menghua Wu, Stanley Xie, Samyukta Yagati, Andrew Zhang and Kevin Zhang.
Harker debate students competed at the Robert Garcia Memorial Invitational Tournament, held Sept. 13-14 at Saint Francis High School.
Six policy debaters and eight public forum debaters represented the Eagles in Harker’s first regional tournament of the school year.
In policy debate, Arya Kaul, grade 12, took fourth overall in individual speaking. Kaul and his partner, Anika Jain, grade 10, won four of their six preliminary rounds, narrowly missing the elimination rounds.
In public forum debate, individual speaking awards were won by sophomore Emaad Raghib (fifth overall), junior Abhinav Ketineni (sixth overall) and sophomore Alex Lam (seventh overall).
Raghib and partner, David Jin, grade 11, as well as Ketineni and his partner, junior Jasmine Liu, made it to elimination rounds where they finished in the top eight overall.
Next weekend the public forum and congressional debaters will head to Yale University to compete, while policy and Lincoln-Douglas debaters will head to Dallas to compete at The Greenhill School.
The 2014-15 school year officially began for upper school students on Aug. 22 during the annual matriculation ceremony. Each grade filed into the neatly arranged seats in the upper school quad. As is now standard practice, the newly minted high schoolers of the Class of 2018 were greeted by a rousing ovation from the students of grades 10, 11 and 12.
Head of School Chris Nikoloff delivered the opening remarks, largely inspired by a TED talk by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Nikoloff discussed the “experiencing self,” which lives in the moment, and the “remembering self,” which ponders the course of one’s life. “If you go on vacation, the self that is enjoying each moment is the experiencing self,” Nikoloff said. “The self who is planning the vacation beforehand and recalling it fondly while looking at pictures afterwards is the remembering self.”
Nikoloff explained that both selves are necessary to fully live our lives. “If we only had the experiencing self, we would live like a piece of music in which each note has no relation to the note that went before or the note that comes after,” he said. Later he added that living too much in accordance with the remembering self “can remove us from the life all around us.” Nikoloff ended his speech by communicating his hope that the students will be able to find the right balance between the two selves.
The women’s vocal group Cantilena then gave a stirring performance of “Dancing Singing” by Hans Leo Hassler, followed by remarks from Butch Keller, upper school division head. He challenged the students to discover the things that matter to them and gave them principles to follow to pursue their goals. “Have you put enough effort necessary into what really matters to you to be successful?” he asked the audience. “It’s really that simple. Even the person who won the lottery had to make the effort to buy the ticket.”
He also touched on commitment, saying, “There’s nothing worth chasing that’s not worth committing to. It means do what it takes at the cost of other things.”
Next, ASB president Sarah Bean, grade 12, welcomed the students to the new year and reflected that “time flies whether or not you’re having fun.” Bean reminisced about her previous three years, particularly the friends she grew to know and cherish. “When I look back on my freshman, sophomore and junior years, I remember the highs and lows of pretty much everything. I also remember the people I was with.” She encouraged the Class of 2018 to seek out new friends of their own and to seek the ASB’s help with any issues they may encounter. “There’s always something that can be better, and that’s what we’re here for,” she said.
ASB vice president Jessica Chang, grade 12, then led the students in the recitation of the matriculation oath, after which the freshmen signed the matriculation book as the Harker String Quartet, directed by Chris Florio, played a stunning version of the Led Zeppelin classic, “Stairway to Heaven.”
The ceremony closed with “Freshman 101,” in which the student council officers introduced to cornerstones of upper school life – including student clubs, time management and academic honesty – by way of hilarious parodies of the Kardashians, Kanye West and reality TV programs such as Master Chef.
Avni Barman, grade 12, has founded a successful art therapy program designed to bring the joy of art to local hospitals and homeless shelters.
To date, she has implemented her Art for Recovery Project at My Friends (a pediatric health care center), Regional Medical Center, Family Supportive Housing, as well as the shelters StandUp For Kids and Abode Services.
Barman, who has spent her life immersed in art, made cards for hospital patients and senior homes as a lower and middle school student. She first began to work with patients at Kaiser Hayward in the summer following her sophomore year and typically works with children ages 4-15, who have come to look forward to her visits and special one-on-one time.
Now, Barman is looking to expand the Art for Recovery Project to include more volunteers and implement the program in many Bay Area hospitals and shelters. Her long-term goal is to find other art students who would like to join her in teaching art to the sick and needy in the Bay Area.
“After personally seeing the therapeutic effects of art on patients in hospitals and troubled children in homeless shelters, my goal is to reach every needy shelter in the Bay Area. I welcome like-minded students from the Harker student body (artistic or not) to join me in scaling this program. Harker’s enriching environment has driven me to start something that leverages my passion, while serving the community,” she said.
Barman’s innovative art therapy endeavor was featured in the San Jose Mercury News. To read that story: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_26462913/harker-student-avni-barman-shares-her-passion-art.
Oct. 28, 2014: On Oct. 21, Daniela Lee, grade 12, and Sadhika Malladi, grade 11, were honored by San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and the San Jose City Council with mayoral commendations for their success in the Google Science Fair. The students received the commendations at a meeting of the city council where they met both Mayor Reed and councilmember Ash Kalra.
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Sept. 23, 2014: The 2014 Google Science Fair has ended, and senior Daniela Lee and junior Sadhika Malladi have finished as global finalists in the 17-18 age group. Congratulations to these students for reaching this stage of this worldwide competition!
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Daniela Lee, grade 12, and Sadhika Malladi, grade 11, have been named finalists in the 2014 Google Science Fair in the 17-18 age group! The two entered as a team and their project is up for the Voter’s Choice Award. Voting is open until Sept. 13, so be sure visit the Google Science Fair website to cast your vote! Lee and Malladi also will compete at Google headquarters on Sept. 22 for a grand prize package that includes a National Geographic Expeditions excursion to the Galapagos Islands, a visit to the Virgin Galactic Spaceport and a $50,000 scholarship.
Adding an international flair to summer at Harker, students from countries around the globe have come to the lower and upper school campuses to participate in Harker’s increasingly popular English Language Institute (ELI).
ELI provides overseas students with an opportunity to learn and practice their English skills. Many participants go on to attend top American and international schools. This summer, 57 students enrolled for the secondary division and 42 are attending the primary division.
First-time ELI student Hui-Hsuan (Maggie) Cheng, a rising grade 6 student from Taiwan, said that the best thing so far about the program has been “going to visit the tide pools and making new friends.” Cheng recalled that in a lesson prior to the field trip, her teacher had explained the importance of gently handling the tide pool animals.
ELI initially began as a year-round boarding school program, which closed in 2001 due to Harker’s upper school expansion. It evolved into the current summer program, which launched in 2004.
New to the program this summer is an optional “Very Interesting Places” (VIP) tour. Available to all ELI students (ages 6-16), the six-day VIP tour will take place at the conclusion of the program’s regular five-week academic session. The trip promises to take learning on the road, with California as the classroom. Come mid-August, 21 students will board a classic yellow school bus, setting off for an adventure. After visiting local theme parks, museums, various school campuses and tourist attractions, the trip will culminate with an overnight stay in Yosemite National Park.
According to ELI director Anthony Wood, all destinations have been carefully chosen to elevate historical and cultural awareness; allow students to create closer relationships with their peers and teachers; and provide enormous opportunity for continued English language development.
Additionally, older students interested in attending American boarding schools or universities will have the opportunity to visit and meet with staff at some of the area’s best schools.
Highlights of the VIP trip will include whale watching in Monterey, a Jelly Belly factory tour, educational visits to UC Berkeley and Stanford University, a Giants (versus Chicago White Sox) game, a scavenger hunt at Huddart Park and a day of fun at Great America theme park.
In Yosemite National Park, ELI students will view the majestic Yosemite Falls as well as visit the area’s museum and cultural center, with educational activities led by a park ranger. A short hike to the lower falls will provide inspiration for a writing assignment and picture journal.
“A specially designed instructional component will make each day’s adventure a learning experience catered to individual proficiency levels. Students will write, speak and read about their destinations, learn new vocabulary related to each new site, and have daily challenges involving English interaction in real-life situations. A travel journal will be kept to document their learning … and of course all the fun!” said Wood.