At the National Economics Challenge finals in New York City, Harker’s team took fourth place overall in the Adam Smith division, narrowly missing the top two and a chance to appear on CNBC. Nevertheless, the students performed admirably to place in the top four nationwide. Congratulations!
Update May 1, 2017:
Harker’s National Economics Challenge team received word on Friday that it had qualified for the 2017 National Finals, set to take place in New York City May 20-22. The team – made up of Arindam Ghosh, Sumer Kohli, Adriano Hernandez and Praveen Batra, all grade 11 — previously won the state-level competition, placing it among the top four teams in the country. More than 10,500 students participate in the competition each year.
The final competition will consist of three multiple choice exam rounds, a case study presentation and a quiz bowl round.
April 4, 2017
Harker has qualified two teams for the national semifinals of the 2017 National Economics Challenge, which tests students’ knowledge of economics using real-world scenarios. Following qualification, competitions are held at the state, national semifinal and national final levels for high school students in two divisions: the Adam Smith Division for advanced placement, international baccalaureate and honors students; and the David Ricardo Division for semester general economics students. Harker competes in the Adam Smith Division.
After qualifying the maximum of two teams per school via the initial online test, both Harker teams qualified at state finals for the next round, the national semifinals. Harker teams finished first and second at state finals, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco on April 3. The first place teamcomprised Praveen Batra, Adriano Hernandez and Sumer Kohli. Arindam Ghosh is also on the team but missed this round due to the flu. All are grade 11.
The second place team is Alex Lam, grade 12; and Eric Jeong, Derek Kuo and Alex Wang, all grade 11. The national semifinals are a proctored exam held at each team’s school on April 25. Scores will be tallied nationwide and the four top-scoring teams will then meet in New York City on an all-expenses-paid trip to compete for the championship.
Congratulations to Vivian Wang, grade 11, and Ethan Hu, grade 9, each of whom placed fourth at the CIF State Swimming Championships. Wang competed in the 100 breaststroke and Hu in the 100 butterfly. Congratulations!
Boys Tennis
Harker sent two doubles teams to compete in CCS last week. Ed Tischler, grade 12, and Ram Vegesna, grade 9, defeated Monterey in the first round before falling to Cupertino in the second round. Juniors Neil Bai and Randy Zhao lost their first round matchup with Pioneer. Congrats on a great season!
Track and Field
Over the weekend, Davis Dunaway, grade 12, represented Harker at the CCS track prelims in the pole vault. Although Dunaway did not make it to the finals, he had a great season!
Alumni Golf
On Monday, Maverick McNealy ’13 made his third trip to the Ben Hogan Award ceremony, and this time he was named the top men’s collegiate golfer. McNealy is one of only two golfers in the award’s history to be a finalist three times, and he is currently one of only two golfers to be ranked in the top 10 in all four major college and amateur ranking systems. Check out the full story and video from the event:
Lower and middle school results provided by Theresa “Smitty” Smith.
VA (Grades 7-8) Baseball: The Varsity A team, coached by Jeff Paull, Matt Arensberg and Richard Amarillas, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 5-0. This is the first lower or middle school baseball team to win a league title since the league started back in 2008! Team awards went to Marcus Anderson, grade 8, and Nicholas Coulter, grade 8 (co-MVPs), Levi Sutton, grade 8 (Eagle) and George Wehner, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVA (Grades 4-6) Baseball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Jon Cvitanich, Tim Hopkins and Jeff Martarano, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-4. Team awards went to Drew Diffenderfer, grade 4 (MVP), Jack Ledford, grade 5 (Eagle) and Wyatt Cote, grade 6 (Coaches).
Intramural (Grades 4-5) Baseball: Team awards went to Nathan Wilcox, grade 4 (Eagle) and Anderson Chung, grade 4, and Advay Monga, grade 4 (Coaches). The team was coached by Ken Allen, Tobias Wade and Justin Sullivan.
VA (Grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity A team, coached by Theresa Smith and Stephanie Coleman, and assisted by Lindsey Trinh, grade 12, and Lauren Napier, grade 11, finished in fourth place in the WBAL with a record of 5-3. Team awards went to Julia Yusupov, grade 8 (MVP), Emma Dionne, grade 8 (Eagle), and Shreya Srinivasan, grade 8, and Anvitha Tummala, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (Grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity B team, coached by Xiaofeng Foret, finished in first place in the WBAL with a record of 7-0. The team did not lose a single set all season! Team awards went to Catherine Feng, grade 7 (MVP), Alivia Li, grade 7 (Eagle) and Brooklyn Cicero, grade 7 (Coaches).
VB2 (Grades 7-8) Girls Volleyball: The Varsity B2 team, coached by Josh Miller, finished tied for third place in the WBAL with a record of 5-2. Team awards went to Maria Vazhaeparambil, grade 8 (MVP), Sarah Leafstrand, grade 7 (Eagle) and Lucy Ge, grade 7 (Coaches).
JVA (Grade 6) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Sara Pawloski, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 2-4. Team awards went to Allison Zhu (MVP), Sonya He (Eagle) and Austina Xu (Coaches).
JVB6 (Grade 6) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B6 team, coached by Belle Carley, finished in fifth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-4. Team awards went to Riya Gupta and Amruta Dharmapurikar (Eagle) and Shea Bryden (Coaches).
JVB1 (Grade 5) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B1 team, coached by Ellie Pereira, finished in second place in the WBAL with a record of 5-1. Team awards went to Kate Grannis (MVP), Michelle Wei (Eagle) and Alice Tao (Coaches).
JVB2 (Grade 5) Girls Volleyball: The Junior Varsity B2 team, coached by Sydney Voss, finished in eighth place in the WBAL with a record of 1-5. Team awards went to Ava Pakravan (MVP), Emily Kwan (Eagle) and Claire Bauschlicher (Coaches).
Intramural (Grade 4) Girls Volleyball: Team awards went to Saira Ramakrishnan (MVP), Angelina Burrows (Eagle) and Menaka Aron (Coaches). The team was coached by Allison Pereira.
VA (Grades 7-8) Boys Volleyball: The Varsity A team, coached by Pete Anderson, finished in third place in the ADAL with a record of 6-2. The team went 7-2 overall. Team awards went to Marcus Page, grade 7 (MVP), Avery Young, grade 8 (Eagle) and David Gong, grade 8 (Coaches).
JVA (Grades 6-7) Boys Volleyball: The Junior Varsity A team, coached by Julie Meline, finished in third place in the ADAL with a record of 6-2. Team awards went to Sam Boucher, grade 7, and Sujith Pakala, grade 7 (Co-MVP), Jack Lyon, grade 6 (Eagle) and Carlo Banzon, grade 6 (Coaches).
VA (Grades 6-8) Water Polo: The Varsity A water polo team, coached by Ted Ujifusa and Allie Lamb, finished the season with a league tournament. Although the team went 0-2 in that tournament, the scores were very close and the team improved tremendously over the course of the season. Team awards went to Bayden Yazalina, grade 8 (MVP), Elizabeth Fields, grade 8, and Daniel Fields, grade 7 (Eagle) and Anna Arnaudova, grade 8 (Coaches).
VA (Grades 6-8) Tennis: The Varsity A tennis team, coached by JP Fruttero, John Fruttero and Mike Nguyen, finished in second place in the WBAL at 3-1 and third place in the MTP at 3-1. The team finished the MTP tournament in third place and had an overall season record of 8-3. Team awards went to Santoshi Tirumala, grade 8, and Gowtham Irrinki, grade 8 (Co-MVP), Dhruv Saoji, grade 7, and Sachi Bajaj, grade 8 (Eagle) and Dawson Chen, grade 7, and Tuhin Chatterjee, grade 8 (Coaches).
VB (Grades 6-8) Tennis: The Varsity B tennis team, coached by JP Fruttero, John Fruttero and Mike Nguyen, finished tied for first place in the WBAL with a record of 4-1. Team awards went to Anishka Raina, grade 7 (MVP), Madeleine Hansen, grade 7, and Victoria Han, grade 7 (Eagle), and Samuel Jonker, grade 6, and Kailash Ranganathan, grade 7 (Coaches).
VA (Grades 6-8) Golf: The Varsity A golf team, coached by Ie-Chen Cheng, took first place in the WBAL spring tournament, held at a tough Crystal Springs Golf Course. The team shot a 164 on the front nine. They beat the rest of the field by 21 strokes! The top four golfers were Natalie Vo, grade 8 (39), Aditya Tadimeti, grade 8 (39), Bowen Yin, grade 8 (42) and Marcus Page, grade 7 (44).
LS (Grades 4-5) Boys Track: The lower school boys team took second place overall at the WBAL track meet. The top fifth grade performance was turned in by Veyd Patil (second place in the 800). Top fourth grade performances were turned in by Vyom Vidyarthi (first place in the 400 and 800 and second place in the 200), Ori Muramatsu (second place in the 800), Robert Fields (second place in the 400) and Oskar Baumgarte (second place in the long jump).
LS (Grades 4-5) Girls Track: The lower school girls team took second place overall at the WBAL track meet. Top fifth grade performances were turned in by Katherine Fields (second place in the 800) and Mira Goodwin (second place in the 400). Top fourth grade performances were turned in by Chiling Han (first place in the 800), Claire Anderson (second place in the softball throw) and the 4×100 relay team (third place with Claire Anderson, Chiling Han, Genieve Malinen and Sidak Sanghari)
MS (Grades 6-8) Boys Track: The middle school boys track team took first place overall at the WBAL track meet for the first time ever! Top eighth grade performances were turned in by Anton Novikov (first place in the 100 and 200 and anchored the first place 4×100 relay team with Bayden Yazalina, McCoy Buchsteiner and Rosh Roy) and Arya Maheshwari (first place in the 1200). Top seventh grade performances were turned in by Justin Fung (first place in the 50, 100 and 200 and anchored the first place 4×100 relay team with Ishaan Mantripragada, Muthiah Panchanatham and Harsh Deep) and Harsh Deep (first place in the 400). Top sixth grade performances were turned in by Rigo Gonzales (first place in the 100, 200 and 400) and Siddharth Selvakumar (first place in the softball throw).
MS (Grades 6-8) Girls Track: The middle school girls track team took fifth place overall at the WBAL track meet. Top eighth grade performances were turned in by Anna Vazhaeparambil (first place in the long jump) and Anna Weirich (second place in the 800 and 1,200). The top seventh grade performance was turned in Ashley Barth (third place in the long jump).
Two Harker students won awards at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, held last week in Los Angeles.
Junior Amy Jin’s project, titled “Deep Learning-Based Automated Tool Detection and Analysis of Surgical Videos to Assess Operative Skill,” won her a Second Award in the robotics and intelligent machines category. She also won a First Geno Award, which included a $1,000 cash prize, from the Samvid Education Foundation.
Recent graduate Manan Shah ’17 won a Second Award in the computational biology and bioinformatics category for his project, titled “Deep Learning Assessment of Tumor Proliferation in Histopathological Images for Categorical and Molecular Breast Cancer Severity Diagnosis.” The project also earned him an honorable mention from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
Both students won their trips to Intel ISEF at the Synopsys Science & Technology Championship in March, where they each received grand prizes.
The Harker boys golf team took the Northern California Championship yesterday, driving its way into the Harker record books as the first boys varsity team to win a championship since Harker opened its high school in 1998. Congrats to Daulet Tuleubayev, grade 11; Ryan Vaughan, grade 12; Sandip Nirmel, grade 12; Victor Shin, grade 11; Jin Kim, grade 11; Avi Khemani, grade 12; and coaches Ie-Chen Cheng and Tom Vaughan!
“This has been an outstanding year athletically,” said Dan Molin, upper school athletic director, “capped off by our boys golf team earning the school’s first boys Northern California Championship. The boys have worked extremely hard and are all about team and supporting each other. Coach Ie-Chen has had a plan and philosophy, which has been paying dividends as shown by four straight league championships, two CCS second place finishes and now a NorCal title. From the golfers to coaches, they’ve earned every bit of their success.”
Cheng was thrilled by the boys’ performance but saw the team’s potential early on. “To be honest, I felt very confident entering this postseason,” Cheng said. “In the beginning of the season, I challenged the team to shoot even par as a team for every one of our matches and tournaments. I told them if we can do this, we can win NorCals. That was our goal – win the NorCal Championship – and that is exactly what happened. We struggled throughout the season to put together a round where each shot their best.
“The team started the season well, winning their first tournament at Lone Tree” and followed with some decent scores, Cheng continued, “but we certainly weren’t playing our collective best. Our first sign of impending success was against Menlo at their home course. They played their best, and we went 2-under as a team; that put a lot of life back into the team,” she said.
Cheng went on to put together a very strategic schedule that tested the boys in many different environments. They played as many tournaments as possible, going to Las Vegas, Palm Springs, the East Bay and Marin, playing against the best possible competition she could find. “I knew this would help us in the long run, especially during the postseason,” Cheng added. “We talked consistently about getting each other’s backs and playing for each other.”
Cheng looked at the postseason as five stages. “We won the first stage by winning our league tournament,” she said. “Then, we went on to win the CCS Regionals, a first for us. Then we came in second for the second straight year at the CCS Championships. The fourth phase was winning NorCals.
“We were 2-over as a team at the turn. We had a long wait to start the back nine, and I was concerned it would ruin our rhythm,” she continued. “But we made sure the boys stayed loose, refueled to prepare for a very hot afternoon and back nine. They responded. I know we were the most prepared team. So yes, I had a quiet confidence we could pull this out. However, I think most teams there were surprised we played this well. The boys were absolutely phenomenal yesterday on the biggest stage.
“And now this is the final step for us, State Championships. Historically, Southern California has dominated the golf championships, but we’re going to give it our best shot,” Cheng stated.
Naturally, the boys were excited. “I realized we had a good chance to win when I came in with a good score and heard from the coaches that my teammates were playing well,” said Nirmel. “I have a ton of confidence in my teammates, because they always play hard and are strong competitors. However, in golf, you never really know who will be the winner until all the players have completed their rounds, and so we all cheered on our teammates as they came in on the final hole; after all, every shot counts!
“When I saw that we had won the tournament, I felt proud of all the work we had put in this year,” he continued. “Winning NorCals is no easy feat. We celebrated the occasion by high-fiving each other and taking a few pictures by the 18th green.”
As a graduate, Nirmel is going out on a high note. “It sure feels satisfying to clinch the NorCal Championship. This is what we’ve worked so hard for these past four years, slowly inching closer to the top of the leaderboard each and every time. Winning is nice, but what I’ve really enjoyed is hanging out with my team – a genuine, classy group of awesome people.”
Harker’s middle school speech and debate team, coached by Christopher Thiele, had a successful trip to the Middle School Tournament of Champions in Lexington, Ky., this past weekend. Harker students earned numerous awards at the event, in which 33 schools representing 145 of the best middle school debate/speech entries across 15 states participated.
Policy: First place, Deven Shah, grade 7, and Julia Biswas, grade 8; second place, Andy Lee and Jason Lin, both grade 8; third place, Akshay Manglik and Aditya Tadimeti, both grade 8; and fifth place, Helen Li and Deven Parikh, both grade 8. Manglik got eighth speaker, Lee got fourth speaker, Biswas got third speaker and Shah got first speaker.
Lincoln-Douglas: Akhilesh Chegu and Rishi Jain, both grade 7, and Aditi Vinod, grade 8, all placed fifth. Chegu got eighth speaker, Jain got seventh speaker and Krishay Mukhija, grade 8, got fourth speaker.
Public Forum: Second place, Anshul Reddy and Sascha Pakravan, both grade 7; Reddy got fifth speaker.
Congress: Third place, Andrew Sun, grade 8.
Dramatic Interpretation: First place, Rhea Nanavati; second place, Arusha Patil, both grade 8.
Original Oratory: Fourth place, Arusha Patil, grade 8.
To culminate their study of Hispanic food and restaurants, Spanish 1 students visited the home of the Meissner family (Anthony, grade 10; Nicholas, grade 8). Ivette Meissner emigrated from Cuba as a child and is now a professional chef/caterer. She prepared Cuban specialties, including “congri” (black beans and rice), “ropa vieja”(beef in tomato sauce), “tostones”(fried plantains) and “pasteles de coco y guayaba”(coconut and guava pastries), among other delicious dishes ¡Muy rico! Meissner also shared about her family’s history coming to the United States from Cuba. ¡Olé!
Upper school Japanese language students received a special visit from musician Baisho Matsumoto on May 17. Wearing a black kimono, Matsumoto played a series of musical pieces on the shamisen, a traditional Japanese instrument resembling a guitar, and the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese flute.
“We learned a lot of interesting information on these instruments,” said Japanese language teacher Yumiko Aridomi. “For example, shamisen has been played for about 800 years in Japan, and tsugaru shamisen artists are expected to play their original pieces of music for their customers.”
Matsumoto played traditional Japanese folk, pop and jazz music, among other styles.
“It was really fun watching the shamisen player play different instruments that you do not get to see in the United States,” said Scout McNealy, grade 10.
“It was an interesting aspect of Japanese culture that I never took the time to investigate before,” added junior Liana Wang. “I have heard of the shamisen before, but I didn’t know it was such a complex instrument. I was quite impressed.”
Harker business and entrepreneurship student Roma Gandhi, though only in grade 9, is set to manage a household budget, having won a $20,000 scholarship from H&R Block in its annual Budget Challenge. Gandhi was one of only 10 winners out of 180,000 students nationwide who participated in the challenge. Gandhi collected her oversized check from H&R Block district general manager Marilyn Raisor in front of her cheering classmates in mid-May.
“This is very, very impressive,” said Raisor. “This challenge teaches you how to set aside money for the monthly things, and also for the fun things.”
Gandhi allotted 15 minutes per evening and more time on weekends to keep up with the challenge. “I did put in a lot of effort,” she said.
“The first thing I learned is the value of money, how to budget and how to manage your money,” said Gandhi. “I feel like that is really useful. Before, I didn’t really have a grasp on that. Every time I’d go shopping, my parents would tell me to have a budget and I’d be like, ‘yeah.’ Now I’m more aware of costs, and self-conscious about having a budget every time I go out.”
This article prepared from a report by Roma Gandhi, grade 9.
The business and entrepreneurship department’s CareerConnect program hosted a mentorship banquet in early April, offering rising sophomores and juniors the opportunity to work with a mentor in their field of interest.
This year, 19 students were paired with mentors. During the banquet, each mentor offered advice, and discussed their field of work and their professional journey with their mentee. As part of a mentee/mentor activity, each mentee wrote three of his or her goals on a mug and presented it to his or her mentor, to help mentors gain a better understanding of how they can best help their mentees.
Students gained a lot of invaluable knowledge from their mentors in fields such as medicine, business, computer science, engineering and law. Enya Lu, grade 10, described her experience as “a really fun opportunity where I was able to learn a lot and connect with many different people.”
Mentors included Dr. Jerald Wisdom, an ophthalmologist at Kaiser Permanente; Bill Stevenson, a software engineer at Apple; Fabio Marino, an intellectual property lawyer at McDermott Will & Emery; and Archana Baldwa, Senior Finance Manager at Juniper Networks.
Students will continue to meet with their mentors outside of school in the upcoming months and may have the opportunity to visit them at their workplace.
Overall, the CareerConnect Mentorship Banquet was an exciting opportunity for students to gain advice, inspiration and mentorship from an industry professional in their field of interest!
Congratulations to the three upper school students who qualified to represent Harker at the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions (NIETOC)! Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 10, and Nikki Solanki and Avi Gulati, both grade 9, competed at Liberty High School in Kansas City, Mo., May 12-14.
Dharmaraj and Gulati competed in original oratory and Solanki in dramatic interpretation. Qualification was based on excellence at invitational tournaments. Harker is especially proud of Dharmaraj for making it to finals for the second year in a row. He ultimately placed fifth in the nation.
Coach Marjorie Hazeltine said, “The NIETOC brought out the best in our students. In the opening ceremony, the president of the organization encouraged the students to find ‘the why behind their what,’ or the reason why they are doing this activity and presenting their speeches. All three Harker students embodied this idea, speaking with conviction and heart.” Gulati noted that the NIETOC left him “encouraged, motivated and inspired.”