Niki Iyer, grade 11, and the boys golf team finished off their impressive seasons last week by each placing at the state championships.
Iyer ran one of the top upsets at the California State Track Championships, where she placed third. Coming off of her CCS title run a week before, she was ranked 10th in the 3200-meter state meet run. Iyer placed 17th in last year’s state meet. She ran a 5:12 first mile, then a 5:12 for the second mile. The race took place in Clovis last Saturday in 93-degree weather at 10 p.m. Her third place finish was the best among all CCS runners at the competition.
The boys golf team made it to the state finals for the first time in Harker golf history and finished as the sixth best high school team in California! Please congratulate our boys golf team on a historic season. The team has every reason to be proud of its accomplishments and most team members will return next year, so we’ll look for more of the same! Season highlights also include the league championship, second place in CCS and third place at NorCals. Congratulations to both the boys golf team and Iyer for on a great year! Go Eagles!
Harker’s Future Problem Solving Team – ninth graders Kelly Shen, Sara Min and Tiffany Wong, and seventh grader Elaine Zhai – has advanced to the Presentation of Action Plan finals at the international competition! A celebration was in order, and with temperatures on the rise, the destination seemed obvious. “We celebrated by hitting up the Michigan State University on-campus Dairy Store for some homemade ice cream!” reported upper school debate teacher and team advisor Carol Green. The team competes in the final around on June 4. Wish them luck!
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Future Problem Solvers Taylor Lam, Kelly Shen, Sara Min and Tiffany Wong, all grade 9, are headed to internationals! In their division, the team placed first in presentation of action plan and second in global issues problem solving at the recent California Future Problem Solving championship. They will compete as California representatives at the international competition, which will be held at Michigan State University in June.
In the MAGIC competition –in which students meet their teammates for the first time on the day of competition – Evani Radiya-Dixit, grade 11, took first place in the middle/senior division, while Elaine Zhai, grade 7, took second. Earlier this semester, eighth graders Vishnu Jaisim and Jack Hansen took second and third, respectively, in the FPS scenario writing competition.
Last week, sophomore Shaya Zarkesh – via his company, Polyup, which he co-founded last fall – held an event at the upper school campus to help students develop computational thinking skills. “We were holding a workshop for students to explore searching algorithms through a presentation and a set of problems that they worked on in teams,” Zarkesh said.
Polyup teaches students “how to design efficient algorithms to solve computational problems,” he explained. “These are the sort of problems that engineers, physicists and data scientists face every day.” The company achieves this by using chatbots designed to suit the learning needs of each student. Polyup also employs what it calls “playgrounds” on mobile devices to allow users to apply computational thinking concepts to solving a variety of problems.
The company was co-founded by Zarkesh, renowned math professor Yahya Tabesh and entrepreneur Shahin Hedayat. Workshops similar to the one held at Harker have been held by Tabesh at The Nueva School, which Zarkesh said were a “huge success.” More info is available at the company’s website.
The 2016 Physics Bowl wrapped up in May, and Harker placed second in its region in Division II (for second-year physics students) and was ranked 122 worldwide. Each year, about 10,000 students participate in the competition, which consists of a 40-question timed test. Harker students who tested for this year’s Physics Bowl were Akshay Ravoor, Ayush Pancholy, Cindy Wang, Enya Lu, Katherine Tian, Kaushik Shiavakumar, Mathew Mammen, Nishant Ravi and Rithvik Panchapakesan, all grade 9; Edgar Lin, Jimmy Lin, Neelesh Ramachandran, Shaya Zarkesh and Swapnil Garg, all grade 10; and David Zhu, Manan Shah, Misha Ivkov, Peter Wu and Steven Cao, all grade 11.
The final unit of study for upper school Spanish 1 students is learning language related to food and restaurants. Upper school Spanish teacher Diana Moss tries to expose her students to cuisine from Spanish-speaking countries other than Mexico, which is already very popular in California. In previous years, her students have enjoyed lunch at local Peruvian, Salvadoran and Cuban restaurants to learn about Hispanic cuisine in an authentic setting.
This year during parent conferences, Moss learned that Harker parent Ivette Meissner (Anthony, grade 9) was born in Cuba and was raised learning to cook traditional Cuban cuisine by her grandmother. After years of experience, she now has her own cooking business (www.cookingbyivette.com) and offered to prepare a luncheon for the Spanish 1 students featuring a variety of Cuban dishes.
On May 11, Meissner hosted all 28 students at her home in Willow Glen, where she prepared ropa vieja (shredded beef in a savory tomato sauce), roast pork, arroz con gris (black beans cooked in white rice), croquetas de jamón (ham croquettes), tostones (fried plantains) and pasteles (pastries of guava and coconut) along with non-alcoholic mojitos. She also shared with students the story of how her father ended up working in sugar cane fields in Cuba when the government had him fired because he wanted to come to the U.S. He eventually was able to immigrate to the U.S. when Ivette was 11 months old.
The students greatly enjoyed their off-campus outing, but even more the opportunity to experience a new cuisine and learn about Cuban culture.
Swapnil Garg, grade 10, won a gold medal in this year’s U.S. Physics Olympiad, sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). Although he did not make the team that will participate in this year’s International Physics Olympiad, Garg was one of only 35 students (out of about 400 who qualified to take the USA Physics Olympiad Exam) to earn a gold medal.
Peter Wu and David Zhu, both grade 11, received silver medals in the contest, while sophomore Jimmy Lin, and seniors Jonathan Ma and Michael Zhao received honorable mentions.
After an impressive athletic year, Harker has a chance to bring home two state titles this week.
The boys golf team finished third in NorCals last week, earning a spot to play for a state championship this Wednesday at the San Gabriel Country Club in Southern California. Niki Iyer, grade 11, won a CCS championship in the women’s 3200m last Friday and will race for a state title this weekend at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
In April, senior Natalie Simonian (second from left in the photo) attended the Watermark Conference for Women on a scholarship she received from the Armenian International Women’s Association – San Francisco (AIWA-SF). She was one of three students to receive the award.
At the conference, Simonian had the opportunity to attend breakout sessions by speakers including Emily Greener, co-founder of the organization I Am That Girl, who “taught me that acknowledging and ultimately embracing our inner vulnerabilities is key for allowing us to successfully pursue our own happiness,” she wrote in a blog post on AIWA-SF’s website.
She also attended a panel discussion featuring successful women in traditionally male-dominated fields and was inspired by their tales of perseverance. “Their remarkable life stories that culminated in unlikely success despite incredible adversity – both personal and patriarchal – inspired me to pursue my dreams and goals with more conviction and determination,” Simonian wrote.
The boys golf team took second place in the CCS finals last week, with Dakota McNealy, grade 12, leading the way for the Eagles as he finished tied for fifth overall. The top three CCS teams moved on to the NorCal Championships at Corral De Tierra Country Club this past Monday, where the Eagles continued their impressive run as they placed third to qualify for the state tournament to be held Wednesday at San Gabriel Country Club in Southern California. Ryan Vaughan, grade 11, led the Eagles, shooting a 1-over-par.
Girls Golf
Katherine Zhu, grade 10, played at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Tournament in Florida this past week. After two days of stroke play, Katherine and her partner shot an 8-under-par, earning the No. 3 ranking out of 64 teams from around the world. We will bring you results of her play on Monday as soon as they come in.
Track and Field
The CCS track semifinals were held this past week with four Harker athletes competing. Anthony Contreras, grade 10, finished fifth in his 200-meter heat and sixth in his 400m heat, but did not qualify for the finals. Demonte Aleem, grade 9, the only freshman competing in the semis, finished 28 out of 32 throwers, setting a school record in the process. Davis Dunaway, grade 11, finished seventh in his 300m hurdle heat. Finally, Niki Iyer, grade 11, took first in the 3200m semifinals, beating the second fastest runner by 13 seconds! She will compete in the CCS finals this Friday at Gilroy High School.
Swimming
Vivian Wang, grade 10, competed at the State Swimming & Diving Championships in Fresno over the weekend and did Harker proud! The sophomore finished fourth in the state in the 200 IM and seventh in the state in the 100 freestyle. Congratulations, Vivian!
Grade 9 students Natasha Maniar and Kelsey Wu won first place at the DECA State Career Development Conference in March for a product they designed called CardioBand. “CardioBand is an innovative three-in-one personal medical and fitness device which will revolutionize the way people monitor their heart health,” said Maniar. The proposed device will function as an electrocardiogram, emergency alert and a fitness monitor. Utilizing a Velcro harness and an app, CardioBand would be able to detect irregular heartbeats and prevent deaths related to sudden cardiac failures.
The students drafted a five-page plan that includes a marketing and sales strategy. They also conducted a survey of potential customers to learn more about what features they would like, preferred colors, a possible price point and when they would be most likely to wear the device.
Maniar and Wu recently had their plan reviewed by venture capitalists and financial analysts, and are happy with the feedback they received. “CardioBand is a huge step up,” said Alex Antebi of Connective Capital Management. “It leap-frogs the competition with its continuous monitoring and proactive notification system. I believe CardioBand is a best-in-class biometrics service.”
“We looked into FDA regulations and what similar companies in the wearables space, like Kardia and Qardio, had gone through to decide the time it would take us to introduce CardioBand in the market,” Maniar said, adding that research also has been done on target markets, creating “a more detailed and accurate analysis of each potential demographic of customers comparing it to other health wearable device companies such as Fitbit to defend our plan.”