The football team picked up a well-earned 27-25 victory over Santa Cruz High last Friday. Will Park, grade 12, rushed for 118 yards and Nate Kelly, grade 11, threw three touchdown passes, including two to Anthony Contreras, grade 11. The defense also stepped up as it forced six Santa Cruz turnovers, three interceptions and three fumbles. Check out some of the game highlights here: http://www.hudl.com/v/krSEW
Next up for the Eagles is a trip to Vallejo this Friday for a matchup with St. Patrick-St. Vincent.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team has stayed very busy, competing in four matches over the past week. Last week, the Eagles fell to Menlo by just nine strokes, but rebounded with convincing victories over Mercy Burlingame and Sacred Heart Prep. In the victory over the SHP Gators, the girls golf team set the school record for the lowest score ever shot by a girls team (183). On Monday, the Eagles also defeated Castilleja, their first victory over the defending league champions since 2008. Katherine Zhu, grade 11, and Katelyn Vo, grade 9, continue to lead the Eagles. The girls golf team will rest up this week and return to action next week against Notre Dame San Jose and Menlo.
Girls Volleyball
The girls volleyball team continued its difficult schedule against some of the best teams in the Bay Area last week. The Eagles fell to Menlo in three games, then dropped a tough five-game battle with Sacred Heart Prep. Lindsey Trinh and Rachel Cheng, both grade 12, led the Eagles with six kills each in the Menlo loss. Lauren Napier, grade 11, led Harker with 15 kills in the loss to SHP. On Tuesday, the Eagles travel to Mercy San Francisco.
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team continued its winning ways as it picked up a 15-3 win over Cupertino and a 13-3 win over Milpitas. The Eagles are now 9-4 on the season. This week, the Eagles face off with Fremont High on Thursday at 6:45 p.m. at Harker.
Girls Tennis
The girls tennis team opened its league season with a 6-1 loss to Menlo. Rachel Broweleit, grade 9, picked up a win at No. 3 singles. Later in the week, the Eagles defeated Crystal Springs Uplands 4-3. This week, the girls tennis team will face Castilleja on Tuesday and Pinewood on Thursday.
Girls Water Polo
Last week, the girls water polo team fell 7-3 against Wilcox, getting two goals from Meghana Karinthi, grade 11. Later in the week, the Eagles defeated Milpitas 12-2, with Karinthi, Alicia Xu, grade 9, Nina Levy, grade 12, and Cas Ruedy, grade 9 each scoring two goals. Finally, over the weekend the Eagles went 1-3 at the Watsonville Tournament led by four goals each from Xu and Karinthi. The girls water polo team plays at home twice this week: Tuesday at 7 p.m. against Homestead and Thursday at 4:30 p.m. against Monta Vista.
Cross Country
The cross country team returns to action this weekend as it competes in the Stanford Invitational.
In early September, synchronized swimming enthusiast Kate Chow, grade 11, helped team USA win the gold at the UANA Pan-American Synchronized Swimming Championship in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The team faced international competition from many South American countries, as well as from Canada.
“I actually began synchro because I didn’t make a dance team, and I needed something to do,” said Chow, who has been involved with synchronized swimming since the fifth grade. “It combined gymnastics, dance and swimming, and previously, I participated in all three separately.”
In the last six years, Chow has been a member of three U.S. nationals-winning teams. She plans to continue swimming with her club, the Santa Clara Aquamaids, and also would like to compete in college.
Last month, upper school Spanish teacher Diana Moss’ classroom was visited by author D’Anne Burwell, who discussed her book, “Saving Jake.” Moss organized the visit as part of Harker’s ReCreate Reading program, which encourages students to read independently for their own pleasure.
“Saving Jake” deals with Burwell’s son Jake’s addiction to OxyContin, which began during his first year at college. “During the Recreate Reading talk with Harker students, she shared about how Jake, though now successfully finishing college and having received great job offers, will live with his addiction for the rest of his life,” Moss said. “Educating about addiction has become D’Anne’s life work and the experience has profoundly altered the relationships between all members of their family.”
The National Scholastic Press Association recently named upper school journalism teacher Ellen Austin one of this year’s Pioneer Award winners. Considered the NSPA’s highest honor awarded to journalism educators, the Pioneer Award recognizes “individuals who make substantial contributions to high school publications and journalism programs outside of their primary employment,” according to the NSPA website.
Austin, a journalism teacher for more than 15 years, has served on the national board of directors for the Journalism Education Association as well as on the regional board for Northern California. In 2006, she was among the first winners of the JEA’s Rising Star Award, and was named Educator of the Year in 2011 by the California Journalism Education Coalition.
Key among Austin’s accomplishments are diversity initiatives meant to bring more voices to student journalism that have traditionally not been represented. These initiatives have been featured in collegiate research and textbooks covering the topic of diversity in student journalism.
The girls golf team competed at the Helen Lengfeld Memorial Tournament last week and placed seventh out of 18 teams. Katherine Zhu, grade 11, took fifth out of 108 golfers. Later in the week, the Eagles picked up big wins over Palo Alto and Notre Dame Belmont with Katelyn Vo, grade 9, earning her second medalist honors in as many tries. The girls stay busy this week as they take on Menlo on Monday, Mercy Burlingame on Tuesday and Sacred Heart Prep on Wednesday.
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team defeated Santa Clara 13-4 and Saratoga 13-5 last week to pick up two big league wins. The Eagles will host Cupertino on Tuesday and then travel to Milpitas on Thursday.
Cross Country
The cross country team competed at the De La Salle Invitational over the weekend, led by some younger runners in their second cross country meet of the year. Anika Rajamani, grade 10, placed 24th out of 150 in the frosh-soph girls race. She was followed closely by classmates Lilia Gonzales and Aneesha Kumar.
Peter Connors, grade 11, had Harker’s fastest time in the varsity division. Freshmen Rishi Dange, Martin Bourdev, Mihir Sharma and Richard Hu finished within 30 seconds of each other in the 224-runner frosh-soph race. Michael Wang and Andy Koonmen were the top sophomore finishers. Next up for the Eagles is the Stanford Invitational on Oct. 1.
Football
The Eagles were dealt another home loss last Friday as visiting Encinal High defeated Harker 49-12. Next up for the football team is a trip to Santa Cruz High this Friday.
Girls Volleyball
Last week, the girls volleyball team lost to Saint Francis in three games. Melissa Kwan, grade 11, led the Eagles with 16 assists, while seniors Rachel Cheng and Lindsey Trinh each had a team-high six kills. The Eagles host Menlo on Tuesday at 5:45 p.m., then travel to Sacred Heart Prep on Thursday.
Girls Water Polo
Last week, the girls water polo team dropped a 10-2 match to Santa Clara and a 9-3 match to Saratoga. The Eagles will host Wilcox on Tuesday and then travel to Milpitas on Thursday.
Girls Tennis
The girls tennis team opens its league season on Tuesday as it hosts Menlo at the Santa Clara Tennis Center at 4 p.m. On Thursday, the girls will travel to Crystal Springs Uplands for another league match.
Congratulations to Harker sophomore Rose Guan, who recently won first place in Imagine magazine’s Creative Minds Poetry Contest in the “ages 13 and under” category. Imagine, published by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth, acts as a resource for young talents, and publishes work by both students and experts in various fields. Rose’s poem, titled “Requiem,” is available to read on the Imagine website.
Over the summer, senior Alexis Gauba secured an internship with The Hive, a company that “incubates, funds and launches data-driven business,” Gauba said. It was her second time interning for the company, the first being in summer 2015 as a data science intern. She was invited back this past summer for a paid position as a data engineering intern.
Gauba’s primary responsibility at The Hive was to work on Synapse, “the company’s large-scale architecture for data processing applications that all of the startups use,” Gauba said. “A typical day consisted of coding, meeting with my boss, the CTO, lunch with co-workers on University Avenue, and the occasional UX or marketing meeting when I was working on side projects for different teams at the company.” She also had the opportunity to attend Think Tank meetups and hear from industry leaders on a variety of topics.
In addition to providing valuable industry experience, the internship gave Gauba the chance to see how the concepts she learned at school apply to the business world. “Having the opportunity to experience a work environment while still in high school provided truly valuable exposure into how CS processes function in industry, and of the workplace in general,” she said. “Working on my main project, I had to take the strong base of concepts I learned in AP CS and Data Structures and build upon that, learning about new ideas and technologies quickly, and then applying them.”
The internship was also a great networking opportunity, and helped Gauba grow her understanding of the funding process from the perspective of both the venture and the startup. “Working over the summer not only gave me a unique perspective into the world of CS, as I was able to work with cutting-edge technologies, but also insight into the workplace environment, allowing me to understand the career path I might want to pursue in college and beyond,” she said.
A total of 45 Harker seniors, 24 percent of the class of 190, were named semifinalists in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. (NMSC) announced on Sept. 14. They are among 16,000 semifinalists out 1.6 million students who entered the program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) in their junior year. National Merit semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of U.S. high school students.
Additionally, Harker had 65 students who placed in the top 3 percent of test takers nationwide, whom the NMSC has recognized as Commended Students. This number, combined with the number of semifinalists, brings the number of Harker seniors recognized by National Merit to 110, or 58% of the Class of 2017.
This year’s semifinalists are:
Sana Aladin, Kai-Siang Ang, Steven Cao, Cuebeom Choi, Aditya Dhar, Trisha Dwivedi, Ria Gandhi, Rishab Gargeya, Catherine Huang, Zhuoying Huang, Neymika Jain, Preethi Kandappan, Soham Khan, Angela Kim, Winifred Li, Lauren Liu, Rishi Maheshwari, Sanjana Marce, Colt McNealy, Connie Miao, Anuva Mittal, Kshithija Mulam, Sandip Nirmel, Judy Pan, Srivatsav Pyda, Divya Rajasekharan, Elizabeth Rensin, Alayna Richmond, Andrew Rule, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Vedaad Shakib, Amrita Singh, Scott Song, Meilan Steimle, Arjun Subramaniam, Arnav Tandon, Andrew Tierno, Molly Wancewicz, Peter Wu, Albert Xu, Raymond Xu, Austin Zhang, David Zhu and Tiffany Zhu.
To become finalists, semifinalists must submit a scholarship application that details their academic record, community involvement, leadership qualities and another criteria. Winners of National Merit scholarships will be notified in spring 2017.
In June, Harker students Michael Kwan, Jimmy Lin, Sahana Srinivasan, Justin Xie, Shaya Zarkesh, Randy Zhao and Jerry Chen, now all grade 11, were named the best team in the country at the Test of Engineering, Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) National Conference in Nashville.
TEAMS is a STEM-based competition in which high school students apply their knowledge to solve current and upcoming challenges. Each year, a theme is chosen, and students compete at various regional events before the top-ranking teams meet at the National Conference to vie for the title of Best in Nation. At the state level, teams first submit a thoroughly researched essay. At the competitions, they take a multiple-choice exam and are tasked with completing a design challenge using provided materials.
This year’s theme was space exploration, and at the Nashville event the Harker team gave a presentation on space colonization. Their essay covered the field of optogenetics (controlling cells in living tissue through the use of light), which they studied in preparation for the exam portion of the competition.
“We all researched different topics in our spare time and then gathered once a week over the summer to pool everyone’s research together and discuss our strategy going forward,” Lin told the Winged Post. “Our whole team learned a lot through working together on the group events, and it was definitely exciting to see our hard work pay off when we ultimately came out on top.”