The girls tennis doubles team of Sachi Bajaj and Fonda Hu, both grade 10, defeated the duo from Soquel 6-0, 6-0 in its first round CCS matchup, but fell to the pair from Los Altos 6-3, 6-0 in the second round. Congrats on a great season ladies!
Girls Golf
Natalie Vo, grade 10, represented Harker at the state championships last week and shot a 7 over and finished the day tied for 28th. Great work Natalie and the whole girls golf team!
Cross Country
Ryan Adolf, grade 12, and Ritika Rajamani, grade 9, competed at the CCS finals over the weekend, which was rescheduled twice because of poor air quality. Ritika finished 35th out of 91 D4 runners and Ryan wrapped up his high school career with an 87th place finish out of 102 D4 runners. Congrats on a great season runners!
Winter Sports
The winter athletic season is quickly approaching, with basketball, soccer and wrestling beginning their seasons very soon. The varsity girls basketball team gets things going as it opens its season at University Prep on Nov. 21, with its first home game on Dec. 14 against San Lorenzo Valley. Girls soccer takes on The King’s Academy at Davis Field at 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 27 to open its season. Varsity boys soccer hosts South San Francisco on Nov. 28 at 3 p.m. to kick off its regular season. Varsity boys basketball gets its season going at the James Lick Tournament on Nov. 28 and will play at home for the first time on Dec. 29 against Woodside. Wrestling will compete at the Los Gatos Tournament in early January. Go Eagles!
July 9, 2019
Update: Over the last year, Alag has received numerous kudos for his research, including having his work published in both Smithsonian Magazine and PLOS, a professional research journal:
Nov. 29, 2018
Over the summer, senior Ayush Alag received a $10,000 grant from genetic research company Illumina to continue his research into food allergies, which led to the creation of his own company, Allergezy. The company aims to develop a safe and accurate means of genetic testing for allergies. Alag’s original research, which he pursued due to his own experiences with food allergies, was the basis for the project he submitted for the 2018 Synopsys Science & Technology Championship, which won a first award in the bioinformatics category. Recently, Alag was selected to give a poster presentation at the American Medical Informatics Association’s 2019 Informatics Summit in March, an opportunity typically reserved for medical professionals and graduate students. More information about Allergezy, its team and its mission can be found on the company’s website, which is maintained by Alag’s brother, Shray, Allergezy’s VP of marketing and web design.
Last week, upper school students headed to San Francisco for a field trip organized by English teachers Charles Shuttleworth and Jen Siraganian. At the legendary City Lights bookstore, the students received a tour courtesy of event programmer Peter Maravelis. Students also visited The Beat Museum, dedicated to the work of Beat Generation authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. There they were given a tour by Jerry Cimino, who co-founded the museum with his wife, Estelle. Students in Shuttleworth’s class on Kerouac and the Beat Generation also met with Dennis McNally, author of the Kerouac biography “Desolate Angel.” Meanwhile, students in Siraganian’s “Art of Poetry and Fiction” class visited with the directors of the Litquake Foundation, which organizes Litquake, a yearly 10-day literary festival that spans much of San Francisco.
“I knew that many values we have today (gender equality, environmental awareness, etc.) spread during the hippie movement and originated from the Beat movement, but I didn’t truly understand to what extent the cultural shifts of the mid-1900s influenced our society until we talked to Mr. McNally,” said Sophia Angus, grade 12.
“I was fascinated by City Lights bookstore and its dedication to its origins,” said senior Katrina Liu. “In the tours, the guides at both the museum and the bookstore emphasized the Beats’ contributions to the counterculture and hippie movements of the ’60s, and City Lights bookstore has faithfully remained true to their roots. For example, the basement level of the store is filled with books primarily concerned with global and local social and political issues, helping to raise awareness and expand readers’ world views.”
Last week, upper school students headed to San Francisco for a field trip organized by English teachers Charles Shuttleworth and Jen Siraganian. At the legendary City Lights bookstore, the students received a tour courtesy of event programmer Peter Maravelis. Students also visited The Beat Museum, dedicated to the work of Beat Generation authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. There they were given a tour by Jerry Cimino, who co-founded the museum with his wife, Estelle. Students in Shuttleworth’s class on Kerouac and the Beat Generation also met with Dennis McNally, author of the Kerouac biography “Desolate Angel.” Meanwhile, students in Siraganian’s “Art of Poetry and Fiction” class visited with the directors of the Litquake Foundation, which organizes Litquake, a yearly 10-day literary festival that spans much of San Francisco.
“I knew that many values we have today (gender equality, environmental awareness, etc.) spread during the hippie movement and originated from the Beat movement, but I didn’t truly understand to what extent the cultural shifts of the mid-1900s influenced our society until we talked to Mr. McNally,” said Sophia Angus, grade 12.
“I was fascinated by City Lights bookstore and its dedication to its origins,” said senior Katrina Liu. “In the tours, the guides at both the museum and the bookstore emphasized the Beats’ contributions to the counterculture and hippie movements of the ’60s, and City Lights bookstore has faithfully remained true to their roots. For example, the basement level of the store is filled with books primarily concerned with global and local social and political issues, helping to raise awareness and expand readers’ world views.”
Last week, upper school students headed to San Francisco for a field trip organized by English teachers Charles Shuttleworth and Jen Siraganian. At the legendary City Lights bookstore, the students received a tour courtesy of event programmer Peter Maravelis. Students also visited The Beat Museum, dedicated to the work of Beat Generation authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. There they were given a tour by Jerry Cimino, who co-founded the museum with his wife, Estelle. Students in Shuttleworth’s class on Kerouac and the Beat Generation also met with Dennis McNally, author of the Kerouac biography “Desolate Angel.” Meanwhile, students in Siraganian’s “Art of Poetry and Fiction” class visited with the directors of the Litquake Foundation, which organizes Litquake, a yearly 10-day literary festival that spans much of San Francisco.
“I knew that many values we have today (gender equality, environmental awareness, etc.) spread during the hippie movement and originated from the Beat movement, but I didn’t truly understand to what extent the cultural shifts of the mid-1900s influenced our society until we talked to Mr. McNally,” said Sophia Angus, grade 12.
“I was fascinated by City Lights bookstore and its dedication to its origins,” said senior Katrina Liu. “In the tours, the guides at both the museum and the bookstore emphasized the Beats’ contributions to the counterculture and hippie movements of the ’60s, and City Lights bookstore has faithfully remained true to their roots. For example, the basement level of the store is filled with books primarily concerned with global and local social and political issues, helping to raise awareness and expand readers’ world views.”
Over a score of upper school girls from the Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (WiSTEM) club traveled to Harker Preschool to do science activities with the littlest Harker students.
The visitors, 23 upper school students and 15 preschool parent volunteers, worked with 75 preschoolers on a variety of fun tasks, including exploring milk paint, which involves using soap to move color through milk. Other activities included generating static electricity with wool and plastic rods to attract paper bits; using a microscope and digital imager to look at leaf structures; using filter paper and marker ink to separate colors; making giant bubbles; and looking at preserved octopi, bats, birds, snakes, insects, sea shells and a sea star. The students also collaborated in a Lego Engineering math game. “The children had a great time,” noted Robyn Stone, STEM specialist for the preschool. “Preschool parents were very impressed by the Women in STEM’s passion for science and their ability to communicate with our young scientists,” she added.
The girls golf team ended its historic season placing seventh out of 12 teams in the NorCal finals last week. Natalie Vo, grade 10, finished in a tie for third and qualified for the state finals, which will be held on Wednesday at the Victoria Club Golf Course in Riverside.
Girls Tennis
The girls tennis team fell to Mountain View High 3-4 last week in the opening round of CCS. The doubles team of Sachi Bajaj and Fonda Hu, both grade 10, will face off against Soquel to start the doubles tournament on Wednesday at Bay Club Courtside.
Girls Volleyball
The girls volleyball team was defeated by Vanden High 3-1 in the first round of the NorCal tournament last week. Congrats on a great season!
Cross Country
Ryan Adolf, grade 12, and Ritika Rajamani, grade 9, will compete at the CCS finals on Nov. 17 at the Crystal Springs Cross Country Course. The meet was was rescheduled because of poor air quality.
Last month, Alice Feng, grade 9, and Sriram Bhimaraju, grade 7, were announced as winners in this year’s Broadcom MASTERS competition. Feng won a STEM Award in the engineering category for her project, “The Effect of Mushroom Species and Substrates on the Properties of a Novel Biodegradable Material: Mycelium,” which earned her an iPad and $3,500 to attend a STEM summer camp of her choice. Bhimaraju’s project, “Low-Cost Archery Assistant with an Interface for the Visually Impaired,” won the Rising Star Award, which netted him a trip to Phoenix to attend the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in May of next year as a Broadcom MASTERS International Official Observer. In recognition of their hard work and achievements, each student also received a certificate of recognition from U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris.
Last month, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) announced that two 2017-18 Harker journalism publications would receive Crown awards, the organization’s highest honor. The Winged Post was named a finalist in the High School Print News category, and the Talon yearbook was announced as a finalist later in the month. In March, the finalists will find out which level of Crown award they’ve received: gold or silver.
Upper school journalism teacher Ellen Austin noted that this will be “the first time that Harker journalism will receive multiple Crowns from CSPA in the same year, and it’s the first time that I, as an advisor, will have two publications that I advise getting Crowns at the same time.”
The girls volleyball team steamrolled its way through the first three rounds of CCS, defeating Marina, Mercy Burlingame and Santa Cruz all in straight sets, which led to a matchup with Notre Dame Belmont in the D4 championships. It was a tight match, but the Tigers defeated the Eagles in five games, winning the decisive game 16-14, giving Harker the second place finish. However, this qualified the Eagles for a trip to the NorCal tournament. The girls travel to Fairfield on Tuesday to take on Vanden High in the D2 brackets.
Cross Country
The cross country team competed at the WBAL finals last week, with Ryan Adolf, grade 12, and Ritika Rajamani, grade 9, qualifying for the CCS finals on Sunday at the Crystal Springs Cross Country Course.
Girls Water Polo
The girls water polo season came to an end last week as the team fell 4-11 to Aptos in the opening round of the CCS playoffs. Congrats on a great year!
Girls Tennis
The girls tennis team opens up CCS on Monday as it travels to Mountain View High. On Nov. 13, the doubles team of Sachi Bajaj and Fonda Hu, both grade 10, will face off against Soquel to start the tournament.
Girls Golf
After a second place CCS finish, the girls golf team heads to Lodi today to begin its quest for a NorCal championship. Check out results throughout the day at https://www.golfgenius.com/pages/1288547
Scholastic Teams
Harker once again made its presence felt on the Fall Scholastic Championship Teams list. Boys cross country (3.9 GPA) and boys water polo (3.728) earned the top spots in their sports, while girls golf (3.786) finished second in their sport. Congrats to our wonderful student athletes!