Arusha Patil and Alexander Kumar, both grade 9, were recently honored in the 2017 Promising Young Writers Program, organized by the National Council of Teachers of English. Patil was awarded a certificate of recognition and Kumar received a certificate of participation. Each year, the Promising Young Writers Program recognizes grade 8 students nominated by their schools for their writing abilities; Patil and Kumar were eighth graders when they were nominated by middle school English teacher Patricia Burrows. Of the 163 students nominated in this year’s program, 67 received certificates of recognition. The remaining 96 were awarded certifications of participation.
This press release was prepared by Radhika Jain, grade 10, DECA director of communications.
From Aug. 21-22 more than 50 students attended Harker DECA’s fourth annual DECA Launch, a program designed to introduce students to DECA and Harker’s business and entrepreneurship programs and to prepare potential members for the upcoming DECA year. This two-day event consisted of various challenges, presentations, guest speakers and workshops hosted by the Harker DECA officer team.
“DECA Launch is an event that introduces students to not only the business and entrepreneurship program but also the upper school as a whole since most attendees are incoming freshmen or new students,” said Shreyas Chandrashekaran, grade 12, Harker DECA’s co-CEO. “This event is a great way to give these students a head start on their first year at this campus.”
The first day began early in the morning in Nichols Hall atrium, where students mingled with the chapter advisors, guest speakers and officers while enjoying fresh bagels from Noah’s. Everyone then went into the auditorium where co-CEOs Ashna Chandra, grade 12, and Chandrashekaran began the Opening Ceremony with a brief introduction to DECA.
Then the first two speakers were announced. The first was past Harker DECA co-CEO Riya Chandra ’17, who shared her DECA journey through high school; afterward, former California DECA president Moksh Jawa spoke about the impact of DECA in his own life and how he will carry that into college.
Afterward, the officers led a fun icebreaker to get everyone excited for the activities they would participate in during the next couple of days. The Introduction to Events lecture followed, with each member of the competitions team presenting on their respective positions: role-play, examinations and written event. Students also got to see a live role-play performed by sophomore Phil Han, director of role-play events.
Then everyone went to the Innovation Center to learn and begin the Idea Challenge, in which students grouped up in teams of six to come up with an innovative idea using popsicle sticks. Students received 100 DECA Dollars to buy supplies to build their product. An additional part of the challenge was to create a presentation to pitch to a panel of judges at the closing ceremony.
“Seeing the students share their ideas with their teams was very surprising since not a lot of freshmen show this kind of teamwork and all the groups ended up combining their ideas and interests into a product they were all passionate about,” said Shania Wang, grade 11, Harker DECA’s vice president of public relations.
After getting started on their projects, everyone enjoyed Chipotle burritos for lunch. The Scavenger Hunt was next, in which students were to find the Harker DECA officers who were spread out around the campus. When found, each officer asked the students a question about DECA to educate them more about the chapter. This also gave participants a chance to explore the campus and learn more about the officer team. The students then attended lectures on the different clusters: business management and administration, hospitality and tourism, marketing and finance.
At the end of the day, students had another chance to work on their Idea Challenge products before they went home.
The next day, students arrived early in the morning to attend the DECA Debrief, a presentation about conferences and leadership in DECA. Everyone then learned more about written events with by rotating through six different lectures. Afterward, student entrepreneurs, including Mahi Kolla, grade 10, of The Minty Boutique and Nirban Singh, grade 12, from Xpress Chef presented their own experiences as a high school entrepreneurs (Read more about these two entrepreneurs here).
After having lunch from Pizza My Heart, participants were given more time to work in their Idea Challenge groups. “It was really interesting to see all the officers talk to us, educate us and ensure all the freshmen were understanding the material and having a great time,” said attendee Ashley Gauba, grade 9. “Their hard work really paid off.”
One of the last events of DECA Launch was the Role-play Tournament. Officers and associate mentors worked with small groups of students to help prepare them for role-plays. Then, they paired up and prepared case studies before presenting to a judge.
Following this, the students received some time to finish up their products and presentations for the Idea Challenge. Parents arrived to watch their children present their projects, have dinner and recap the conference in the Closing Ceremony. Students presented their Idea Challenge final products and were judged on innovation, sustainability, and teamwork and presentation. As the judges calculated the scores, parents and students were shown a Launch recap video highlighting the main events of the conference.
Finally, the winners of the Role-play Tournament and Idea Challenge were announced. Chandra, Chandrashekaran and chapter advisor Juston Glass gave closing remarks, concluding the event.
“This was an amazing experience. We came all the way here from another state, and DECA was the first event that we attended at Harker,” said Sid Biswas, parent to attendee Sayon Biswas, grade 11. “It was great to see this organization and event that the school put together, and all the students really did well.”
Harker DECA is thrilled to welcome all the new and recurring members and looks forward to another successful year as a community and chapter.
“Seeing what they have accomplished in the last two days, just imagine what these students will accomplish throughout the year. They truly are #limitless,” said Glass.
Students that won awards are as follows:
WWW.HARKERDECA.ORG
Role-play Tournament:
First place: Karan Bhasin (9), Billy Fan, both grade 9
Second place: Andrew Sun (9), Aditya Singhvi (9)
Third place: Benjamin Gicqueau (9), Sayon Biswas (11)
Overall: Jacqueline Au (9), Luisa Pan (9), Michelle Si (9), Aditya Singhvi (9),
Andrew Sun (9), Bryan Zhang (9)
About The Harker School DECA
Harker DECA is an international competitive business organization that prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in four fields of business: marketing, finance, hospitality and management. Our DECA chapter integrates classroom instruction, applies learning, connects to business, and promotes competition in order to prepare the next generation to be academically prepared, community oriented, professionally responsible and experienced leaders.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2017 issue of Harker Magazine.
Pat Walsh is a legend at Harker. The lower school math teacher has been at Harker since 1976, first as a summer camp coach, then dorm houseparent, and is retiring this year. He’s done it all, including driving a bus, coaching sports and organizing Harker’s Thanksgiving food drive for most of his career here. Students who went through his classroom remember him forever, and it’s clear from his interview that the passion he has for teaching, for his family, for volunteer work (and, oh yes, his obsession for the San Francisco Giants) is why his students love him so dearly. Walsh’s wife, Terry, whom he calls “the rock of our family,” worked at Harker for 35 years, and their three sons, Matt, Danny and Kevin, all attended Harker through grade 8.
What is something one of your parents said that you will never forget?
My mother was a teacher, and she told me a teacher’s No. 1 job is to be an advocate for all of their students. And in order to be an advocate, one has to focus on a kid’s good qualities … and every kid has plenty of good qualities.
What was one of your funniest classroom moments?
It’s embarrassing. Years ago while teaching third grade, I let my room mom, Melody Moyer, talk me into wearing a cupid outfit for the Halloween party. The kids were absolutely howling when they saw me. Now on Valentine’s Day, we play “Pin the Diaper on the Cupid.” It gets pretty silly, and they love it.
What is the one thing in the world you would fix if you could wave a magic wand?
Childhood poverty and lack of opportunity. It breaks my heart. This is something I emphasize with
my kids, too. I believe that those of us who have been blessed with abundance have a duty to
give back to those who are less fortunate.
Where in the world are you the happiest?
Family gatherings. I love to lay low and watch my sons talking with my friends and their other relatives. I learn a lot about them just by watching. All three of them are good men and interesting people.
What’s one of the favorite things you do in the classroom?
One of the things all of my students comment on when I see them years later is the “letter.” Each year I have taught, I have my kids write a letter to themselves. The first part of the letter is a summary of their year in grade 5. For the second part of the letter, I ask them to look into the future and predict how they think their lives will change over the course of the next three years. I mail these out the week they are wrapping up eighth grade.
This article first appeared in the summer 2017 issue of Harker Magazine.
The words, scrawled neatly in reddish-brown, rest solemnly on a rectangular piece of construction paper: “How dreadful is the dawn.” “I walk burdened and irritated,” reads the line on the next piece. Two additional pieces complete the grim stanza: “My heart beats as though with hammers/Everything around me begins to weep.”
They are not the words of students in a creative writing course, but the echoes of long silenced voices, pieced together from the discovered writings of Holocaust victims. Many of the sources were not old enough to attend high school at the time they composed these writings.
It’s an example of a “found poetry” exercise conducted by upper school teacher Roxana Pianko’s world history students. The exercise is based on one she participated in during a weeklong conference held by Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit educational organization based in Los Angeles.
Pianko attended the conference as part of her work in the Raju and Bala Vegesna Foundation’s Teacher Excellence Program, a grant program that funds professional development opportunities for Harker teachers.
“[The Vegesnas] so value the importance of a good teacher,” said JenniferGargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs. “They know the difference a good teacher can make.”
Raju Vegesna said the program was started largely due to the continuously evolving nature of education and the increasing integration of technology into teaching methods. “In my mind, education is a continuous thing,” he said. “Technology is evolving and the tools are changing. The ways and methods of teaching have to be different.”
Pianko was among the first round of Harker teachers to be selected for the grants in 2015. “I knew coming into this community that I wanted to figure out a way to bring in the things that I was very passionate about, and I was already getting to kind of scratch the surface with the Holocaust and genocide just because I teach World History 2,” Pianko said. “I had this hope that at some point it would eventually be a little bit more than just two days in my classes.”
In addition to the LA conference, the grant also enabled Pianko to travel to Europe to expand her expertise, visiting the sites of several concentration camps, as well as museums and institutions located in Germany, Poland and the Netherlands. The many people she met at various institutions were very accommodating, she recalled: “They were just throwing resources at me. They were giving me things that were not yet published, but that they wanted to share with me to build my understanding of the work that was being done.”
Pianko’s research fed into other areas of teaching as well. In her World History 2 Honors class, students are given assignments that combine biographical writing and research with visual media. They are tasked with selecting a figure from the Holocaust based on their role (survivor, victim, resister or collaborator) and writing a profile of the person, as well as creating a photo collage spanning the person’s life. One of Pianko’s hopes is that students will absorb the lessons of the Holocaust and develop a keener sense of the warning signs that led up to it.
“There is a social justice component to it, and I want them to have these experiences inside my classroom, to get to learn about genocide, to get to learn about the Holocaust,” she said. “I wanted to do [this project] because I wanted to gain the necessary knowledge in order to create something that could potentially be transformative.”
Her research also led to the formation of an elective class focused on the Holocaust and other examples of genocide throughout history, which is set to start in the fall. The class will culminate in a collaborative project to be presented as a historical lesson to the greater Harker community. “These 17-year-old kids are no longer seeing themselves as voiceless or powerless or incapable of changing things,” Pianko said.
Elsewhere in Europe that same summer, upper school music teacher Susan Nace was honing her skills as a conductor. Nace traveled to Oxford, England, to study at the Choral Conducting Institute at St. Stephen’s College, under the direction of Grammy-nominated conductor James Jordan and James Whitbourn, formerly of the BBC and co-director of the Choral Institute at Oxford.
The intensive course consisted of master classes, lectures and private tutoring intended to help conductors master their craft. In the process, Nace was introduced to the work of Rudolf von Laban, a German dance artist notable for the dance notation system he published in 1928. This notation developed further over time, and incorporated what are known as “efforts,” or actions that change the dynamics of movement. Words such as “glide,” “slash,” “punch” and “dab” (not to be confused with the popular dance move) “are descriptions of a movement that is in dance, and it has to do with the time, the space and the weight,” said Nace. “So, for example, dab is a very specific time, it has a light weight, and the space is very small,” she explained. “Something like a glide has an indeterminate time, and it’s sort of an indeterminate space too, and it has a little more weight.”
Using efforts based on the Laban method has opened up a range of conducting techniques that allow Nace and her students to interpret and perform music in unique and interesting ways. “When I’m talking to my students and we’re working on a choral piece, I will say, ‘OK, what kind of gesture does this need?’ and they’ll say, ‘This feels like a dab to me, we’re just tapping. This one feels like we need to punch it, it needs some more weight.’”
Talking through interpretations in this way also opens up more possibilities for analyzing the music itself, as it may provide clues to the kinds of efforts that may enhance the performance of the material. “Notation is not the music. It’s only a representation of what music can be, but it’s not the actual music. And there are so many things that cannot be placed into a score,” Nace said.
Laban efforts, she added, are another way to “take what is represented on that page to make it come alive.” It has also provided another way for Nace to connect with her students, which she considers crucial. “The more you incorporate students’ input, the more you ask them to draw out of themselves, I think then you have more buy-in in what goes on in performing a piece.”
Back in California, Scott Kley Contini , middle school learning, innovation and design director, initially planned to use his grant to attend a design thinking workshop held by Stanford University’s d.school. Unfortunately, the course was in such high demand that Kley Contini likely would have been waitlisted several times before he was able to take the course.
He met with Jennifer Gargano to discuss how to move forward with the project, and they agreed to use the funds to bring a d.school instructor to Harker to hold a design thinking workshop for Harker teachers. “Every single person who came would be expected to implement and report on how they’re using design thinking, and that went off so well,” Kley Contini said.
Design thinking, Kley Contini explained, is “a user-centered design process” for creating products that incorporate knowledge of users’ needs as the main guideline. “If you are going to make this product, who is the end user? Who is the person who’s actually going to experience this product? Design thinking says you need to spend some significant time upfront getting to know who that user is, just as a person,” said Kley Contini.
“Product,” he added, can also be loosely defined. “This could be a physical product that you’re trying to sell. Or from a school standpoint, this could be products like a project or an essay or some kind of end assessment.”
In the workshop, teachers from all four campuses learned principles of design thinking that they could apply to their classroom instruction. Andy Gersh, middle school math teacher, began asking his students how they best learn the concepts he was teaching in class. He then had them create posters and infographics to explain to their classmates how they absorbed the lessons. Middle school science teacher Kathy Peng ’05 used design thinking to create lab exercises that were tailored to different student needs.
“It kind of opens students’ minds to the big [question] of, why are we learning this? What does it apply to? Do I need this outside of the four walls of this classroom? What’s the real application?” Kley Contini said. “I think that gets answered when you make kids think about who the end users are and their wants and needs.”
Although Harker offers many professional development opportunities, the Vegesna Teacher Excellence Program is unique in that it requires grant applicants to delineate how their proposed project will benefit students as well as the wider Harker community. To this end, grant awardees are frequently asked to speak at events such as all-faculty meetings. “We’ll create time for them to talk to other teachers and do other things so that it can have an effect beyond them,” Gargano said.
Teachers also are required to prepare presentations for the Vegesnas to show the results of their work. So far, they have been quite pleased with the work coming out of the program. “I see great progress made,” said Raju Vegesna. “I see the best results are coming out. I think we still have a long way to go, since we just started, but I’m very pleased with the progress Harker made with respect to this.”
For a complete list of Vegesna grant recipients, visit www.harker.org/teacher-professional-development
This article originally appeared in the summer 2017 issue of Harker Magazine.
Creativity and storytelling run through the veins of Andrew Shvarts ’03. Much of his childhood was spent dreaming up, jotting down and narrating elaborate stories.
At Harker, Shvarts performed in countless plays and musicals – highlights include sinking his fangs into a fake rat during the production of “Dracula” as well as sliding off of the stage and into the orchestra pit during opening night of the upper school’s first musical revue – and produced an outlandish martial arts film as part of a video and motion graphics class.
“I think on some fundamental level, I view the world through the lens of fiction and narrative,” said Shvarts, who is quick to credit three former Harker English teachers – Stephen Wells, Sylvia Harp and Sharron Mittelstet – with furthering his love of language, literature and composition. “It’s just hard-coded into how I think and who I am.”
An English and Russian double major at Vassar College, he frequently videotaped student films – from comedies to crimes – and workshopped his own creative writing. Following college, where he had enjoyed lazy weekends playing video games with his friends, a job ad for a video game writer practically called his name. The position would entail creating weekly episodic content for Electronic Arts’ “Surviving High School,” thus beginning Shvarts’ foray into the world of young adult (YA) fiction. He would go on to serve as a producer for the video game company before assuming his current post at another, Pixelberry Studios, where he has been working as a designer for the past five years.
While he sees merit in both, the writing of fiction, Shvarts acknowledged, remains quite different from the writing of video games. In his case, most of the games he has written, produced and designed fall under the category of interactive narrative. He essentially develops ways for players to create their own storylines.
“If being a fiction writer is being an artist, being a game writer is being an architect,” he said. “You’re creating a space for someone to move into and make their own.”
Shvarts is celebrating the springtime release of his debut YA novel, “Royal Bastards,” which he describes as “‘Game of Thrones’ meets ‘The Breakfast Club,’” comprising key elements that are characteristically associated with both the Primetime Emmy Award-winning fantasy television series and the quintessential 1980s coming-of-age film.
“I think the book is about that precise moment in adolescence when you discover that your parents aren’t the idols you believed them to be, when you’re caught between a loyalty to the values you were raised with and the new perspectives that come with being exposed to the larger world,” Shvarts said.
The first draft took him roughly seven months to write and two months to edit, with plenty of pacing and pots of coffee along the way.
Contributor Jared Scott Tesler is based in Rochester, N.Y.
This article originally appeared in the summer 2017 issue of Harker Magazine.
Judge John Byron Owens MS ’85 earned his first paycheck, for $180, from Harker in 1985. He rode his bike from Cupertino to campus every day that summer to work as a camp counselor. It was the beginning of a journey distinguished by hard work, intellect and honor.
“No one at Harker is surprised by John’s success,” said Pat Walsh, Owens’ fifth grade teacher. “It’s not just that he’s brilliant, which he is, but that he’s filled with integrity.”
Owens, who attended Harker from grades 3-8, has remained in touch with Walsh. In 2014, Owens even invited Walsh to his swearing-in ceremony as a Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Before being nominated by President Barack Obama, Owens had a successful career as an attorney, served as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and graduated first in his class at Stanford Law School. All these successes came with a lot of hard work, one of Owens’ core values, along with honesty and kindness.
“There is no substitute for hard work, especially when you are in high school and college. Hard work now makes the rest of your life much easier,” is advice he has shared with Harker students in the past and regularly shares with his two daughters.
And Owens definitely walks the talk. Last season he coached his eldest daughter’s club basketball team, which made the playoffs. He stressed to the team to work hard at practice but also at home on shooting and dribbling. He realized that a coach cannot ask his players to work hard if he also isn’t willing to put in the time, so he spent hours reviewing game films and statistics, and designed a new offense for the team. They won both playoff games by nearly 20 points.
“So it may seem crazy – a federal judge is spending hours watching youth basketball games – but it was an important lesson for our players and especially my oldest daughter to understand that success only happens through hard work,” said Owens. “It is not fair to have hard-working players led by an unprepared coach.”
Owens has always loved sports and even worked as a marketing assistant for the Golden State Warriors when he was an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. But his love of the law prevailed. His law career includes serving as an assistant U.S. attorney for both the central and southern districts of California, as well as a partner at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP.
Owens, a big science fiction fan, was lauded by “Above the Law” for “nerding out.” The legal website referenced Lone Star Security & Video v. City of Los Angeles, where he incorporated “a Monopoly analogy and a reference to ‘The Twilight Zone’ to urge the Supreme Court to reconsider its holdings.” Other opinions have referenced “Game of Thrones,” “Star Trek” and the horror movie “The Thing.”
His lighter, nerdier side often peeks through when he returns to Harker, from sharing his experience as a judge with third graders to discussing honors and ethics with upper school students. He earned the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007 and serves on Harker’s Board of Trustees.
“He is well-respected regardless of his role on campus,” said Sarah Leonard, Owens’ third grade teacher and now primary division head. “He has a wonderful way with the third grade students, really driving home his message about hard work, determination, setting goals and perseverance, but he does so in a manner that captures the children’s attention and holds them almost spellbound.“
Owens and his family live in San Diego. In their free time, they enjoy going to the boxing gym on Saturday mornings, where they hit the bags while the youngest takes karate. A perfect day would include a 5-mile run for Owens, followed by a relaxing afternoon and watching the Warriors play in the evening (he’s still a big fan).
Owens values time with his family and, when asked what his proudest accomplishment was, he replied, “That’s easy – my two girls. They both learned at an early age from my wife and me that success in life – academics, sports, the arts – requires hard work.”
Contributor Vikki Bowes-Mok is also the executive director of the community nonprofit Compass Collective.
The Eagle football team executed another dominating performance Friday as it defeated visiting Cupertino 35-0 in front of a packed Davis Field crowd. Dominic Cea, grade 12, connected on two field goals and hit his three extra points; Nate Kelly, grade 12, rushed for a touchdown and passed another to Floyd Gordon, grade 12; Aaron Smith, grade 11, rushed for 160 yards and two touchdowns; and the Harker defense once again played huge! Check out highlights from 49ers Cal-Hi Sports starting at 3:58: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NOhVhkPss
Next up for the 2-0 Eagles is a trip to Santa Clara High this Friday.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team opened its season last week with a 64-stroke win over Notre Dame San Jose. Katherine Zhu, grade 12, led all golfers with a 35, followed closely by Katelyn Vo, grade 10, and Natalie Vo, grade 9. The Eagles travel to San Mateo on Tuesday to compete in the Helen Lengfeld Memorial Tournament, followed by a date with Menlo on Wednesday.
Last month, Zhu traveled to China where she competed in the China LPGA Beijing Heritage Tournament. This was Zhu’s first professional golf tournament as an amateur and she was the only American golfer in the field. After shooting 72-76-74 over the three-day event, Zhu ended in a tie for 41st out of 65 golfers. Congrats, Katherine!
Cross Country
The cross country team took on runners from St. Francis, Palo Alto and Gunn last week, in runs by class. The top Harker runners were seniors Gloria Guo and Peter Connors; juniors Ryan Adolf and Lilia Gonzales; sophomores Rishi Dange and Annabelle Ju; and freshmen Anna Weirich and Arya Maheshwari, with Weirich finishing first overall among freshman. The runners travel to San Francisco this Saturday for the Lowell Invitational.
Girls Volleyball
Last week, the girls volleyball team defeated Lynbrook in four games, led by a 10-kill performance from Lauren Napier, grade 12. Later in the week, Harker defeated Westmont in three games to bring its season record to 4-4. Check out highlights from the Lynbrook game on 49ers Cal-Hi Sports starting at 34:16: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5NOhVhkPss
Next up, the Eagles travel to Saratoga on Tuesday and host Valley Christian on Thursday.
Girls Water Polo
The girls water polo team opens its season on Tuesday as it hosts Santa Clara before traveling to Milpitas on Thursday.
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team hosts Los Gatos Tuesday at the Singh Aquatic Center and travels to Gunn High on Thursday.
Girls Tennis
The girls tennis team opens up its 2017 season this weekend in the Central Valley by competing in the prestigious California Tennis Classic.
Harker Recognized by CCS
CCS recently recognized The Harker School Athletic program with a Sportsmanship Citation for having zero sportsmanship infractions for the 2016-17 school year. Way to go Eagles!
Last week, upper school technical theater teacher Brian Larsen and his Re-Create Reading group enjoyed a visit from Harker alumnus Andrew Shvarts ’03, who discussed his latest work, “The Royal Bastards.”
“Andrew was a great speaker. We discussed themes within the book, character development, the business of getting published as an author and what may lie ahead in his series,” Larsen said. “The kids definitely enjoyed the book and shared their favorite characters and parts of the story.”
Gargeya is one of only 20 students nationwide to recieve the award; he will use it toward his education at Stanford University. Gargeya earned several awards for the development while at Harker, including a first prize in the RRI physical science and engineering category at the 2016 Synopsys Championships. He was a semifinalist in the 2016 Siemens Competition and a regional finalist in the international Google Science Fair 2016. Here is an article about that accomplishment from the Merc: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/10/saratoga-harker-senior-a-google-science-fair-finalist/)
In his official bio, Gargeya had some nice things to say about his time at Harker:
“Rishab attributes his time at The Harker School for having given him an amazing opportunity to push himself in a highly academic environment. Rishab has been fortunate to have worked with many intellectually driven people throughout his high school career, including his science teacher Mr. Chris Spenner, who has been very influential in shaping his research.”
Read Gargeya’s full bio here: http://www.davidsongifted.org/Fellows-Scholarship/2017-Davidson-Fellows/Rishab-Gargeya
Harker students competed in various events over the summer and two attended the 2017 USA Fencing National Championships in Salt Lake City in July.
Nerine Uyanik, grade 10, took a pair of top medals in all-ages events. Her first event was fencing in Division II women’s foil (fencers must be rated C or lower; the scale runs from A, at the top, to E, and U for unclassified), against 147 other women of all ages. Uyanik took the silver medal, improving her rating from a “D” to a highly sought after “B.” She won most elimination bouts decisively, 15-7, 15-9, 7-6 (tough one!), 15-7 and 5-4 (another tough one!). Then a bit of luck, her opponent in the semifinal withdrew, leaving Uyanik fighting in the final, where she succumbed 12-4.
The next day, Uyanik improved on her win to take top honors, the gold medal, in Division III (fencers, age 13 and up, rated D and lower, but Uyanik qualified as a D so was able to fence). In the field of 140 fencers, Uyanik won five out of six pool bouts, had a bye in the first elimination round, then took off, winning 15-5, 15-11, 9-8, 14-12, and, finally, 15-9.
Three days later, Uyanik fenced in the highly competitive Y-14 women’s foil category, and finished No. 59 out of 219 entries. She is ranked No. 54 in the nation in the Y-14 category. Division II and III categories are not nationally ranked.
Meanwhile, Jerrica Liao, grade 12, an A-rated fencer, competed in two tough events, taking 78th out of 185 fencers in junior women’s foil (up to age 19), where she started off winning four out of six pool bouts, earning a bye in the first elimination round, but losing in round two to the eventual 16th place winner.
Two days later, Liao finished her season fencing in Division I (which also requires qualification) among 96 competitors, where Olympians qualify. She finished 78th, a very respectable finish considering the hundreds of fencers who didn’t even qualify for the event. Liao is ranked 66th in the nation in junior women’s foil and 94th in the nation in senior women’s foil. Please congratulate these hard-working swordswomen when you see them!
This year’s National Championships, held July 1-10 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, hosted more than 4,000 fencers from across the United States who competed in more than 80 events.