On Feb. 6, several members of Harker WiSTEM (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) headed to the lower school for a first-ever STEM Buddies event at that campus.
The upper school students set up several stations with chemistry activities, including making silly putty, experimenting with milk and paint, and using a ProScope. “My favorite part of the visit was working with the kids, because I could see how much fun they were having,” said senior Judy Pan, who helped run the silly putty station.
STEM Buddies began in 2014 as a way to increase interest in STEM learning among Harker’s younger students, starting with visits to the preschool. “In the future,” Pan said, “we hope to expand STEM Buddies to have more frequent visits to the lower school and preschool.”
The wrestling team took seven Eagles to the SCVAL Tournament over the weekend and returned with six medals and four CCS qualifiers. Diego Figueroa, grade 12, placed eighth in his weight class, while Justin Su, grade 11, placed sixth and is a CCS alternate. Danny Reidenbach, grade 12, Eric Fang, grade 9, and Anthony Contreras, grade 11, all placed fifth in their respective weight classes and qualified for CCS. Davis Howard, grade 12, placed third and also qualified for CCS. The CCS State Championships begin on Feb. 24.
Boys Soccer
The boys soccer team has been playing really well as of late, going 5-0-2 in its last seven matches. Last week Harker defeated Sacred Heart Prep 4-3 with Sparsh Chauhan, grade 11, delivering a hat trick and Jared Anderson, grade 10, scoring the remaining goal. Later in the week, the Eagles played to a 2-2 tie with first place Menlo. This week, the boys team will host Eastside College Prep on Tuesday and The King’s Academy on Friday.
Girls Soccer
The girls soccer team lost 8-1 to a very tough Priory team last week. Joelle Anderson, grade 12, scored the only Harker goal. This week, the 10-4-1 girls team will host Mercy Burlingame on Monday and Eastside College Prep on Wednesday to finish off the regular season.
Girls Basketball
The girls basketball team picked up a 53-43 win over Mercy Burlingame last week to bring its season record to 12-10. The team finishes off the regular season this week with a trip to The King’s Academy on Tuesday and a home game on Friday versus Crystal Springs Uplands.
Boys Basketball
The boys basketball team dropped two league games last week. In a 55-47 loss to Eastside College Prep, Jack Connors, grade 9, led the Eagles with nine points. Later in the week, Connors led the way again, this time with eight points and five rebounds in the 55-43 loss to The King’s Academy. The Eagles take the court for their final two regular season games this week as they travel to Menlo on Tuesday and Pinewood on Thursday.
Track and Field
Niki Iyer, grade 12, continued her long run of success this past weekend by placing second in the 3000-meter at the California Track & Field Winter Championships, held at Arcadia High School in Southern California. Iyer will return to Arcadia High later this year for the Arcadia Invitational, where she plans to run in the 3200m.
During the third week of January, 22 students from the Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy visited Harker as part of an annual exchange program with the school, which has existed for more than 20 years.
The students arrived on the morning of Saturday, Jan. 14, and met up with their homestays. The WFLA chaperones enjoyed a day of sightseeing in San Francisco courtesy of technical theater teacher Paul Vallerga. The following day, grade 3 department chair Kathy Ferretti shuttled the chaperones to Monterey and Gilroy, and on Monday, lower school English department chair Kate Shanahan took them shopping in the San Jose area.
On their first day at Harker, the students observed classes with their buddies, made crafts in the middle school’s innovation lab and learned how to play American football. The next day, they toured Stanford University and visited the campus’s Cantor Arts Center. Thursday’s cooking class was especially fun for the students, who “had a great time making sloppy Joes, deviled eggs, clam chowder and apple pie,” said Jennifer Walrod, global education director.
Friday was packed with activity, as the WFLA students enjoyed a Chinese paper-cutting activity with lower school students, then headed to Cesar Chavez Park in downtown San Jose to enjoy a bag lunch before exploring the Tech Museum of Innovation. That afternoon, they returned to the middle school for a farewell party, where they and their buddies had great fun using the photo booth and making sundaes.
Just before boarding their flight home on Saturday, Jan. 21, the WFLA students shared an emotional farewell with their Harker buddies.
Late last year, Vignesh Panchanatham, grade 11, was named to the US Chess Federation’s 2017 All-America Chess Team in the age 15 category, one of the highest possible accolades for a chess player under the age of 18. It capped off a very successful chess year for Panchanatham, who was also named an International Master following his July performance at the World Open in Philadelphia. Way to go, Vignesh!
Harker’s team of physicists took third place overall at the United States Invitational Young Physicists Tournament, held late last month at Philadelphia’s University of the Sciences. The team – comprising senior Manan Shah, juniors Neelesh Ramachandran and Selin Sayiner, and sophomores Ayush Pancholy and Ashwin Rammohan – earned 70.5 points to tie for third place, trailing just 1.5 points behind the second place finisher.
Important to the team’s success in Philadelphia was the work done by the research team of juniors Joanna Lin and Justin Xie and sophomores Nishant Ravi and Kaushik Shivakumar. These students spent many hours after school performing research and running experiments that provided valuable information to the team that represented Harker at the tournament.
The Young Physicists Tournament is held in a round-robin format and has schools debate solutions to various problems. Teams are evaluated based on the quality of their theoretical solutions, experimental evidence and answers during Q&A portions.
A score of female Harker students attended the Watermark Conference for Women this year, thanks to the conference organizer, which provided 20 tickets for Harker students.
The conference “was a fun and valuable opportunity for many of our female students involved in business and entrepreneurship at Harker,” said Neha Tallapragada, grade 10. “They learned not only about the different spheres of business, but also about personal lessons to apply to their lives outside of their future vocations.”
Speakers included Madeleine Albright, Sheryl Sandberg, Condoleezza Rice and the prolific and accomplished actor, Viola Davis.
“Of the keynote speakers, the most popular was Viola Davis, who spoke at the conference about her hardships and financial instability growing up, and how she persevered past that to achieve both personal and career success,” said Tallapragada.
“Enya Lu, grade 10, of Harker DECA and Harker Podcast, said that it was ‘really inspiring’ to listen to Davis and garner wisdom from her experiences,” Tallapragada noted. “Sheryl Sandberg spoke at the conference as well, and was also a crowd favorite among the Harker students. Overall, Watermark was a supportive, motivating, and exciting time for our Lady Eagles and we are definitely looking forward to returning next year.”
About Watermark:
Watermark is a community of executive women in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose mission is to increase the representation of women at executive levels to drive innovation, human development and economic growth. The Watermark vision is to ensure women are able to make their mark in and for their companies, their careers and their communities by providing programs focused on connection, development and advocacy.
The women of Watermark have created and led the most innovative and successful enterprises, contributing to all aspects of business, nonprofits, technology, media, education, healthcare, law, government and society. Founded in 1993 as the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), Watermark has since expanded to include women leaders in all disciplines and industries.
On Feb. 3, HarkerCTF held its first cybersecurity competition at the Nichols Hall atrium. About 60 students separated into teams to solve cybersecurity problems and answer lab questions, which required them to submit their own code for grading.
HarkerCTF, which aims to boost student interest in computer science and give advanced computer science students opportunities to test their abilities, organized the competition to give students a chance to utilize their knowledge of applied computer science concepts. In computer security, CTF (Capture The Flag) is a popular type of computer security competition.
“In order to allow all students to participate in the event regardless their previous computer science experience, and to promote more students to become interested in computer science, we have provided some introductory questions in our competition as well, so all students could learn from the competition,” said HarkerCTF president Johnny Wang, grade 10. HarkerCTF plans to invite students from other schools to attend future events.
Placing first at the event was team “VASP,” consisting of grade 11 students Sumer Kohli, Praveen Batra, Vijay Bharadwaj and Akhil Arun. The humorously named “Team Freshmen,” made up of juniors Swapnil Garg, Andrew Semenza, Adriano Hernandez and Derek Yen, placed second. In third place was “L33t Haxors,” consisting of seniors Misha Ivkov, Vedaad Shakib and Andrew Tierno.
In late January, upper school soccer teams took to Davis Field for this year’s Kicks Against Cancer event to benefit Camp Okizu, which organizes camp outings for children with cancer. The girls varsity, boys varsity and boys JV teams raised money in the week leading up to the event by selling T-shirts and wristbands. This year, the event’s organizers also sold special tie-dyed T-shirts, which proved to be great sellers.
“We only ordered 75 shirts, because we weren’t sure if they were going to be popular,” said senior Maile Chung, who helped organize the event. “Lucky for us, we sold out on the first day of Kicks week.”
Chung first got involved with Kicks Against Cancer as a freshman. “When the upperclassmen started telling me to wear purple for Kicks and sign up for selling, I was very excited to become more involved with this great fundraiser,” she said. “I wanted to help out as much as I could, not only for raising money for Camp Okizu, but also because I wanted to enhance my leadership skills.”
Although the amount raised had not been tallied at press time, Chung estimated that it was between $1,000 and $1,500.
“I’m really happy that I was able to take charge of this fundraiser and be a part of something that benefits others,” Chung said. “If I hadn’t put myself out there and tried to be a leader, I wouldn’t have had the amazing experience of being a part of Kicks, which I definitely would have regretted.”
Three Harker students had notable performances at Santa Clara University’s High School Mathematics Contest, held in November. Senior Kai-Siang Ang took first place among seniors at the contest, while Misha Ivkov, grade 12, and Joanna Lin, grade 11, both received honorable mentions. A total of 131 students participated in the contest.
Started in 1958, the High School Mathematics Contest is sponsored by SCU’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and consists of a three-hour exam that tests problem-solving skills and mathematical ingenuity. It is typically held on the second Saturday of November.
Playing in two close matches last week, the girls soccer team fell to Pinewood 2-1 before taking care of Castilleja 2-1. Joelle Anderson, grade 12, scored a goal in each game, with Sahana Narayan, grade 10, adding the second goal vs. Castilleja. With a record of 10-3-1, the team sits in second place in the Skyline Division and will host first place Priory on Tuesday before Pacific Collegiate visits Harker for a non-league matchup on Friday.
Boys Soccer
The boys soccer team picked up two big league wins last week, upending Priory 5-2 and Crystal Springs Uplands 3-2. The Eagles sit in fourth place in the WBAL, but are within striking distance of all three teams ahead of them. This week the team takes on the first and second place teams in the WBAL as it hosts Sacred Heart Prep on Wednesday and travels to Menlo on Friday.
Wrestling
Last week, the wrestling team was defeated 60-15 by Palo Alto before the Eagles picked up a win over Homestead by forfeit. In the loss to Palo Alto, Davis Howard, grade 12, won by pin, Diego Figueroa, grade 12, won 7-0, Anthony Contreras, grade 11, won 5-4, and Shikhar Solanki, grade 11, won 11-8. The Eagles travel to Lynbrook on Thursday before starting the SCVAL tournament this weekend.
Girls Basketball
The girls basketball team was defeated 60-52 by Mercy SF last week before rebounding with a 44-36 OT win against Castilleja. In the loss to Mercy, Prameela Kottapalli, grade 10, led the Eagles with 18 points, and Selin Sayiner, grade 11, added 15 points. In the OT win over Castilleja, Jordan Thompson, grade 12, led the way with 19 points, and Akhila Ramgiri, grade 10, added 14 points. The 11-10 Eagles travel to Mercy Burlingame this Wednesday.
Also, Thompson was honored last week by CalHiSports.com as one of their State Stat Stars of the Week:
The boys basketball team went 1-1 last week in league play. In a 63-48 loss to Woodside Priory, Jack Connors, grade 9, led the Eagles with 13 points. Later in the week, Harker defeated Crystal Springs Uplands 69-44 with Jordan Goheen, grade 12, scoring 16 points. Next up for the Eagles is Senior Night on Tuesday versus Eastside College Prep, then a trip to The King’s Academy on Friday.
Cross Country/Track
Cross Country Express recently interviewed Niki Iyer, grade 12, on her illustrious high school career. Check out the full interview here: