Harker alumnus Ayush Midha ’15 is still winning debate awards – now as a Harvard student! He and his Harvard debate partner won the Rex Copeland Award, which is presented to the top college debate team in the nation.
Midha and partner won several invitational tournaments, giving them the best overall record of the year. The award was announced at the National Debate Tournament, held March 24-27 at the University of Kansas. Other teams in the top five included Georgetown University, Wake Forest University and two teams from U.C. Berkeley.
Harker debate coaches Greg and Jenny Achten attended the tournament and were very proud to see Midha receive the Copeland and to make it to the quarterfinals of the tournament. “It is a ton of fun to watch our alums debate so successfully at the collegiate level,” said Jenny Achten. Greg Achten added that Midha’s debate achievements are especially laudable alongside his rigorous premed course of study.
Last week, 150 dancers lit up the stage at the Blackford Theater for the middle school performing arts department’s annual Dance Jamz production. Directed by Gail Palmer, who also acted as a choreographer along with Kimberley Teodoro, Kento Vo, Jessalyn Espiritu, Alexandra Venter, Rachelle Haun and Brianna Alday, the show featured 18 routines performed to songs by Ciara, Imagine Dragons, David Guetta and The Black Eyed Peas. Check out the accompanying photos for a look at the excitement!
Lower, middle and upper school vocalists performed together at this year’s United Voices concert, held March 16 at the Blackford Theater. The groups featured included the grades 4-5 Bucknall Choir, the grade 6 choir Dynamics, the grades 7-8 choir Vivace and the upper school’s show choir Downbeat. As in previous years, all participants appeared on stage for the finale, a performance of Rollo Dilworth’s “Everlasting Melody.”
Congratulations to Coach Raul Rios on being named the 2016-17 CCS Softball Honor Coach. Coach Rios was nominated and then selected by his peers to receive this well-deserved honor. He will be presented with the award at the CCS Softball Championships on May 27 at the PAL Sports Center.
The Central Coast Section’s Honor Coach Award program honors one coach each year, in each sport, for his/her contribution to that sport at the interscholastic level. Rios earned the award, among other reasons, for to his professional standards of conduct, outstanding coaching accomplishments and for being a great role model and inspiration to the team.
It was a good week for the boys golf team! The Eagles started the week with a second place finish at the Marin Catholic Wildcat Invitational. It was Harker’s best-ever finish at the event, just three strokes behind the overall winner. The best individual Harker finisher was Daulet Tuleubayev, grade 11, in fourth place. Later in the week, the Eagles defeated Menlo 191-210, with a trio of Eagles finishing with the three best scores of the day. Tuleubayev led all golfers shooting a 35, with Jin Kim, grade 11, just one stroke behind and Ryan Vaughan, grade 12, shooting a 38. To finish off the week, Harker defeated Sacred Heart Prep 193-215. The Eagles once again finished 1-2-3 in scoring, with Victor Shin, grade 11, shooting a 36, Vaughan shooting a 37 and Tuleubayev tying for third with a 39. The Eagles take this winning momentum to Southern California as they compete in the Champions Invitational this weekend.
Boys Volleyball
Last week, the boys volleyball team dropped matches against Homestead and Saratoga before going 2-2 at the Campbell Classic, defeating Prospect and Willow Glen. The 9-6 Eagles host Los Altos on Wednesday and Mountain View on Friday before competing in the Aptos Tournament this weekend.
Track and Field
The Eagles traveled to Fremont High School to compete at the Firebird Relays last weekend. Highlights included Gloria Guo, grade 11, and Kismet Singh, grade 9, each winning their races in the 400m and 100m hurdles. Guo joins Grace Koonmen, grade 11, among the top four all-time finishers in the Harker 400m. Koonmen’s 200m time put her second on the Harker all-time list. Angel Cervantes, grade 11, ran personal bests in his 100m and 200m races, and Rishi Chopra, grade 11, ran a season best in the 800m, moving in to the Harker top 10 all time. The Eagles have a few weeks off before their next meet on April 12.
Softball
The Eagles fell to The King’s Academy 13-2 last week. Marti Sutton, grade 12, and Cameron Zell, grade 10, each had a hit and drove in a run in the effort. This week, the girls host Notre Dame San Jose on Monday, travel to Notre Dame Belmont on Tuesday and host Mercy Burlingame on Thursday.
Boys Tennis
Last week, the boys tennis team dropped a match to Menlo 7-0 before upending Sacred heart Prep 6-1. This week, the Eagles take on The King’s Academy on Monday, Nueva on Tuesday and Crystal Spirngs Uplands on Thursday.
Lacrosse
The lacrosse team defeated Woodside 8-7 before falling to Burlingame 18-4 last week. The 4-4 Eagles host Aragon on Tuesday and Sequoia on Thursday.
Swimming
Last week, the Eagles hosted their first jamboree of the year with many notable performances. Ethan Hu, grade 9, won the 50 freestyle with a CCS qualifying time, then broke the school record in the 100 backstroke. Vivian Wang, grade 11, won the 100 backstroke and the 50 freestyle, qualifying for her fourth CCS event. The 400 and 200 freestyle relay team of Jack Farnham, grade 12, Justin Culpepper, grade 12, Michael Auld, grade 12 and Hu qualified for CCS in both events, as they won the 400 and took second in the 200. The Eagles will be in action again on April 7 at The Ron Freeman Invitational at Monta Vista High School.
Baseball
The varsity baseball team had a rough week as it dropped three games, losing to El Camino 11-1, Jefferson 6-3 and Harbor 10-4. The 5-4 Eagles look to bounce back this week as they host Westmoor on Tuesday before traveling to Westmoor on Thursday.
The annual Jump Rope for Heart event took place at the lower school campus in early March, as students jumped rope and participated in other activities to raise money for the American Heart Association.
Students collected donations in the weeks leading up to the event, during which they jumped rope in the gym and shot hoops at the basketball court. These and other activities are meant to commemorate those suffering from heart problems, as well as bring awareness to healthy lifestyle habits.
This year’s drive raised more than $13,000 for the American Heart Association, surpassing last year’s amount by more than $3,000. Since 2000, the effort has raised nearly $180,000.
Big news in the speech and debate world: Harker debaters compete in a very tough district and, although only three students qualify per event to attend the national tournament each June, this year two of those students are from Harker! In original oratory, a 10-minute original persuasive speech, Nikhil Dharmaraj, grade 10, took first and Avi Gulati, grade 9, took second. Dharmaraj also took first at the state qualifying tournament and will be representing Harker at the state tournament in April. Meanwhile, freshman Nikki Solanki also did very well, advancing to semifinals in dramatic interpretation and fifth in program oral interpretation, making her the second alternate for the national competition in that event. Congrats to these students for this major accomplishment – especially as underclassmen!
BECon, the business & entrepreneurship department’s annual conference, drew nearly 100 attendees this year. Highlights of the conference, organized by students for students, included a mentorship luncheon. “We had 20 mentors from the Harker community join us for lunch at the upper school to provide the students with insight on their careers,” noted Lucas Wang, grade 12, one of 13 students who organized the conference. “Each mentor facilitated a discussion at a table in two networking rounds of 30 minutes. Students were encouraged to meet with different mentors in each round.”
Highlights included the keynote speaker, Colleen Haight, San Jose State University economics department chair, who spoke on international trade and the morality of capitalism.
Another highlight was this year’s “sHarker Tank,” wherein six teams of Harker student entrepreneurs – five from the upper school and one from the middle school – presented their business ideas.
The conference included workshops on user interface design and how to start a business. Cooper, a design and business strategy agency, held a workshop on user interfaces and the user experience, and Satish Dharmaraj, entrepreneur, speaker, angel investor and venture capitalist, and general partner with Redpoint Ventures hosted a Startup 101 workshop.
Corporate exhibits also exposed students to innovative technologies. For example, Google VR exhibited its new Daydream product and its programs on HTC Vive viewers.
Prompted by the idea of a compassionate lower school student, the campus acknowledged World Down Syndrome Day today by learning about Down syndrome and having Crazy Sock Day, “which aligns with what is being done on a larger scale, nationwide and worldwide,” said Ken Allen, lower school dean of students. On World Down Syndrome Day, people are encouraged to wear crazy socks to signify the extra chromosome that people with Down syndrome carry. Under a microscope, pairs of chromosomes look a lot like pairs of colorful socks!
“Eye-catching, brightly colored patterned socks or … socks that simply rock were the menu for the day – in the words of the student who initiated the idea,” Allen added.
The athletic center is rapidly coming together! With exterior walls and roof nearly complete, serious work has started inside. The gym floor itself will be the subject of another construction update when it goes in, but in the meantime, there are a dozen workers upholstering interior spaces.
There is still a huge opening in the east wall to allow material like the pallets of sheet rock and flooring to be loaded into the gym, and heavy equipment to be removed as it is finished with, but in just a couple of weeks the building will be sealed and final interior appointments installed. At this point, everything not affected by the weather is being bolted, glued or welded into place.
The locker rooms, coaches’ area and workout rooms are forests of light gauge metal studs waiting for drywall, which can’t go in quite yet – the building has to be “dried in” (watertight) first so, in case of rain, the drywall does not get damp. The building will be dried in by early April and, at that point, “tenant improvements” will begin in earnest. Interior walls will have acoustical insulation installed and drywall will be hung, taped and painted.
But all wall coverings are not created equal! While the normal interior drywall that will cover 95 percent of the non-gym area walls will be smooth and must be kept dry, there are two other kinds of wall covering used.
Regular drywall will be used for offices, locker rooms and other auxiliary rooms but, for the playing area itself, special acoustical paneling that “looks like it has ramen on it,” will cover the drywall, said Matt McKinley, senior project engineer. These Tectum panels will keep the noise under control during the exciting games.
The third wall covering, called DensGlass, is used only in limited interior areas, specifically, the basement, where utility rooms had to be drywalled prior to drying in so heavy junction boxes and other electrical equipment could be installed while exterior walls were still open. This special drywall resists moisture without being entirely waterproof, so is okay to hang prior to drying in – the rooms stay dry even if it is raining outside and there is high humidity due to the building being partially open to the elements.
Special reinforcing will be run behind drywall to allow for the mounting of fixtures. For the bleacher area, blocks of wood 6 inches by 8 inches will be anchored in the north wall, and the bleachers will bolt to the blocks. Light-gauge sheet metal will be installed behind drywall in other areas of the building to support fixtures mounted to the wall.
Flooring
With the exception of the playing floor, most of the athletic center will have polished concrete floors. Polished concrete keeps costs down and makes for a long-lasting, easy-to-maintain surface. Coaches’ offices will have linoleum flooring or carpet, while all locker rooms and other wet rooms, like the hydro-therapy room, will have ceramic tile; all good, solid, durable floor coverings. Stairways are of cast concrete, with some having a rubber coating for safety.
One of the less glamorous finishing jobs is making sure pipe, conduits and ducts all line up and don’t run into each other. Devcon, using the architect’s plans, worked up a three-dimensional digital model using computer-assisted design software. The model helps the construction company manage each set of utilities and scan for problem areas. This process is called building information modeling (BIM).
“We model all of the duct work, all of the pipes, all of the steel … everything we do to see if there are any conflicts,” said McKinley, “and run a clash detection so you can see if a pipe is running into a duct, and so on.” He pointed out where a 4-inch water pipe ran through a hole cut through an 18-inch steel support beam. Thanks to the BIM, “we knew they were going to have to bore through that steel beam to allow that pipe to pass through it.
“It used to take longer in the field,” said McKinley, when workers would discover a conflict and have to resolve it before continuing. Now the conflicts can be predicted and work carried forward quickly. “Once you have the model, everyone knows how to build it as soon as they get out here,” he said. “You still run into problems, but the 3-D modeling really helps speed the process.”
Other Points of Interest
There are some nice features coming to light as the open areas are framed in, such as the fitness room in the southeast corner (on the freeway side, near the new performing arts center), where a 12-foot by 6-foot mirror will slide to one side to allow a birdseye view of the playing floor below.
Not yet installed are all of the trappings of a state-of-the-art athletic center and, when they are installed, many pieces will be on the ceiling. Volleyball nets, basketball hoops and other P.E. equipment will be fastened to the ceiling and lowered into place for use, then lifted to clear the area for the next activity.
Decorations will include two 20-foot-square banners opposite the bleachers featuring a male and female athlete. There will be a giant eagle on the gym floor, but details are still being worked out as the design has to mesh with all the lines for the various playing courts that will be painted on the floor.
From McKinley’s point of view, things are starting to get exciting. The last 20 percent of a project takes 80 percent of the work, he noted. “We’re trying to finish up in three months,” he said. “It is always a scramble at the end, but the project team is all working hard and on track to turn the gym over this summer.”
Beginning in June 2016 Harker launched two new state-of-the art building projects on the upper school campus, the result of a $45M capital campaign. The 33,000 square-foot athletic center, opening August 2017, features a 12,000 sq.-ft. gym, athletic training room with advanced hydrotherapy unit, and spacious team rooms. The Rothschild Performing Arts Center, opening spring of 2018, features a 450-seat theater with fly loft and hydraulic orchestra pit, a state of the art scene shop, vocal, instrumental, theater/musical theater classrooms and dressing rooms. For more information visit the news and video links below or contact communications@harker.org