In what has been one of the most competitive and exciting postseasons in Harker history, two sports will continue this week in hopes of CCS and state glory.
Girls Tennis
On Monday afternoon, the dynamic doubles team of Lizzie Schick, grade 10, and Pam Duke, grade 9, continued their impressive run at a CCS title as they advanced to the semifinals of the doubles bracket. Playing through the chilly weather at the Bay Club Courtside in Los Gatos, the girls opened their day with a 6-3, 6-1 victory over a tough Mountain View team. Later in the day, Schick and Duke defeated the Mitty duo 6-3, 6-3 on center court in the quarterfinals. Bad weather pushed the semifinal and championship round to Dec. 1, at noon, when the No. 2 seeded Harker doubles team will face off against the No. 3 seeded Menlo-Atherton team. Good luck, Lizzie and Pam!
Girls Volleyball
The girls volleyball season came to an end last Wednesday as the Eagles fell to league rival Menlo in four games in the semifinals of the CCS D4 Championship. Harker opened with a spirited 25-23 win in game one after trailing by as many as seven points. Menlo would then take the next three games, but not without a fight from the Eagles. Lauren Napier, grade 10, and Jackie Chen, grade 12, led the team with 12 kills each. Congrats on a great season!
Cross Country
Don’t forget, Niki Iyer, grade 11, will race this Saturday, Nov. 28, at Woodward Park in Fresno for her chance at a D4 state title. Last year as a sophomore, Niki finished in fifth place at the state meet. Good luck, Niki!
Eight students were part of the Mixed Choir: Krishna Bheda, grade 10; Karina Butani, grade 10; Mia Giammona, grade 11; Madhu Karra, grade 12; Ashwin Rao, grade 11; Gurutam Thockchom, grade 12; Sumi Wadhwa, grade 10; and Tiffany Zhu, grade 11. Three sang in the Women’s Choir: Anika Banga, grade 10; Morgan Douglas, grade 10; and Rithi Jayam, grade 9.
The students rehearsed all day and evening on Thursday and Friday, as well as Saturday morning, prior to the concert, which was held at First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto. They were prepped by Susan Nace and Jennifer Sandusky, Harker music teachers and choir directors.
“Susan really did a lot of prep work with the kids on the music prior to the Honor Choir rehearsals,” noted Sandusky.
Singers will advance to California All-State Honor Choirs, to be held Feb. 11-13 in San Jose, based on scores from their regional audition. In those auditions, “students were scored on vocal tone quality, intonation, sight-reading abilities and musicianship skills. Each sings an Italian Art Song, sings major, minor and chromatic scales a cappella, and completes a sight-singing exercise,” said Sandusky.
Harker’s journalism department recently received 10 Gold Circle Awards from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, which also named the Winged Post a finalist for the Crown Award, the winners of which will be announced in March.
Gold Circle winners were: Elisabeth Siegel, grade 12, third place in Newspaper News Features; Shay Lari-Hosain, grade 12, third place in Newspaper Art/Illustration: Portfolio of Work, first place in Newspaper Typography: Overall Look, second place in Newspaper Typography: Look of One Page and second place in Digital Media Personal Opinion; Kacey Fang ’15, second place in Newspaper Informational Graphics and Newspaper Photo Layout: Full Page; Kathryn Duan, grade 11, and Alex Jang ’15, third place in Digital Media Humor; Jessica Chang ’15 and Priscilla Pan ’15, first and third place in Digital Media Video Feature Package.
Certificates of Merit went to juniors Ria Gandhi and Alex Youn in Newspaper Sports Features; Shay Lari-Hosain, Kshithija Mulam, grade 11, and Meilan Steimle, grade 11, in Newspaper Photo Story; Shay Lari-Hosain in Newspaper Photo Illustration; and Kacey Fang in Newspaper Informational Graphics. Go Journalism Eagles!
Both of Harker’s Quiz Bowl teams had strong showings this past weekend at California Cup #2, a quiz bowl tournament held at UC Berkeley. The upper school team – made up of Nikhil Manglik, grade 11, Swapnil Garg, grade 10, Edgar Lin, grade 10, Derek Yen, grade 10, Andy Semenza grade 10, and Sukrit Ganesh, grade 9 – were 7-2 on the day and finished third out of 20 teams. Just as impressive, the middle school team – Kyle Li, Arun Sundaresan, Jin Tuan, Simar Bajaj, Jeffrey Fung and Catherine Zhao, all grade 8 – entered the tournament in the junior varsity category and ended up placing a solid fifth out of 31 teams. Team coach Jonathan Brusco said the tournament was initially meant to be a learning experience, making their performance, which included victories over Saratoga, Monta Vista, Valley Christian and Menlo, all the more impressive.
The middle school performing arts department changed things up a bit for this year’s fall theater productions, putting on a double bill last week at the Blackford Theater.
The first show of the evening was Alan Haehnel’s “No Show,” guest-directed by Harker alumnus Cooper Sivara ’07, who also served as an assistant director on the upper school production of “The Laramie Project.” This production was also the first annual grade 6 play, a brand new addition to the middle school performance schedule, and featured a cast made up entirely of grade 6 students. In this unique comedy, a group of theater students find themselves in a troubling position, all of them having forgotten that they are to give a final exam performance at the very moment they all appear on stage. Faced with the possibility of a failing grade, the actors band together to produce a play on the spot, humorously surveying the basic tenets of theater in the process.
Next was Phil Willmott’s version of “Treasure Island,” directed by Monica Colletti, which changed the gender of many key characters from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic swashbuckling tale, losing none of the charm or adventurous spirit in the process. Compared with “No Show’s” appropriately minimalist setting and wardrobe, Caela Fujii’s costumes and Paul Vallerga’s set design for “Treasure Island” seemed positively flamboyant, though nevertheless fitting for a story of adventure on the high seas, punctuated by exciting set pieces and fight choreography by Kit Wilder.
Last month, lower school art teacher Jaja Hsuan’s students were busy with a variety of fascinating projects. In early October, her kindergarten students studied the works of Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky and created pieces that displayed dots contained in concentric circles, using different emotions to guide their color choices. Weeks later, to celebrate Halloween, they expanded on their learning about colors and emotion to create a series of expressive, and frequently funny, pumpkin faces using paint and construction paper.
Hsuan’s grade 3 students spent much of October putting ideas in sketchbooks, which they later used to create landscapes inspired by visions of Africa. They then created animals for their scenes by tracing their shapes and reverse-rubbing them onto watercolor paper. Environmental elements such as trees and clouds were also added. Finally, the students painted in the backgrounds using a variety of colors. The resulting artwork was displayed in the lower school’s front office and gym lobby.
This past week saw some exciting postseason action from many of our Harker teams and athletes. While seasons ended for some, others are still fighting to bring CCS – and maybe even state – titles back to Harker!
Cross Country
The girls cross country team saved its best runs for last, placing eighth in the Division 4 Central Coast Section (CCS) Championships. Led by captains Niki Iyer, grade 11, and Alex Dellar, grade 12, six of the seven Harker runners ran personal bests on the Crystal Springs course in Belmont. Placing second, Iyer ran 17:26.0 to become the 26th all-time runner on the 44-year-old course; her time is also the eighth best run by a junior. Alycia Cary, Aneesha Kumar, Lilia Gonzales, Anika Rajamani, all grade 9, and Akshaya Vemuri, grade 10, helped the Eagles to their second best season in school history. Dellar and the team also accepted the CCS Scholastic Award for their 3.865 team GPA. The boys were also awarded a CCS Scholastic Award for their 3.792 team GPA.
Iyer will now advance to the state championships in two weeks in Fresno.
Tennis
Girls tennis earned a first round bye in the team championship bracket, before defeating Sacred Heart Prep 4-3. Unfortunately, they fell to eventual CCS champion Menlo in the quarterfinals. But there is still more Harker tennis to be played as Pam Duke, grade 9, and Lizzie Schick, grade 10, will compete in the CCS doubles bracket Monday at noon. Duke and Schick are the No. 2 seed and open with Mountain View. Good luck girls!
Football
The Harker football season came to an end after a first round loss to Fortuna High School in the opening round of the North Coast Section (NCS) Division 4 tournament. However, it was a great season that saw Harker’s best-ever football record and only the second playoff appearance for a football team in school history. Harker football says goodbye to seniors Oison Coveney, Trenton Thomas, Miles DeWitt, and captains Johnathon Keller and Nikhil Ramgiri. The football program graduates only five seniors this year, so this young team should be competitive for a long time!
Volleyball
Coming off a first round bye in CCS, the No. 3 seeded girls volleyball team defeated Santa Cruz in three games (25-19, 25-20, 25-17) to move on to the semifinals it they will face league rival Menlo. The match will be played at Notre Dame Belmont High School tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. If the girls win, they play in the CCS finals this Saturday, which would include a trip to the NorCal Tournament. Students, if you would like to root for your Eagles, Harker is planning to provide transportation to and from the game for upper school students. A permission slip is required and you must sign up at the athletics office by 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 17, to reserve a seat. Good luck girls!
Golf
After finishing third in CCS, Katherine Zhu, grade 10, ended the season shooting plus-12 at Crazy Horse Ranch and finishing tied for 28 among 83 golfers at the NorCal Championship. Congratulations on a great season Katherine!
Harker’s middle school golf team took second place in a West Bay Athletic League tournament in late October, behind the Nueva School. Harker’s top performer of the day was eighth grader Alex King, who shot a 34, followed closely by Aditya Tadimeti, grade 7, who shot a 36. Katelyn Vo, grade 8, finished with 39, while Natalie Vo, grade 7, and Ronit Gagneja, grade 8, both shot 40. Rounding out Harker’s squad were respectable scorers Marcus Page, grade 6 (41), Bryan Zhang, grade 7 (42), and Bowen Yin, grade 7 (44).
Spring saw the release of the 2015 edition of Harker’s Eclectic Literary Magazine – HELM, for short – which featured writing, photography and an assortment of visual artwork, created and compiled by Harker students. Works in the magazine include a short story by now senior Elisabeth Siegel, snapshotting the lives of bookstore employees and shoppers, a powerful poem by Maya Nandakumar ’13 (a regional silver award winner in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards), evocative black and white photography by senior Shay Lari-Hosain, and art pieces by seniors Sophia Luo and Kevin Ke, and May Gao, grade 11.
When a group of academics got together to play at Nichols Hall recently, the results were anything but academic. The four veteran musicians of the Eastman School of Music Faculty Jazz Quartet opened the 2015-16 season of the Harker Concert Series on Nov. 6. Prior to the evening show, the quartet gave a wonderful morning performance for students and, the next day, held a three-hour master class for students.
The group, as its name indicates, comprises faculty members at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. All masters in their own right, their credentials have led them to stints with the likes of Tito Puente, Chet Baker and Buddy Rich. They have been playing together for more than 15 years.
Having played with quite a few of them, the quartet harbor a healthy respect for the greats, evident in the choice to begin with the evening with Duke Ellington’s “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart,” immediately elevated by trumpeter Clay Jenkins’ buoyant melodies and pianist Harold Danko’s tasteful comping, drummer Rich Thompson quietly dominating his space on the stage. Danko’s bluesy solo cleared the way for an effortless bass solo by Jeff Campbell, with the trumpet returning for the outro.
The next tune, the Thompson-penned “Less is More,” saw the band cruising through an infectious three-four stride, driven along by Campbell’s strolling bass, providing what might be a delightful soundtrack to an afternoon walk through the city at twilight, preferably after a good rain.
Danko opened the next number with an extended intro of unaccompanied chords that fell in sheets, making way for a Campbell bass solo that had Jenkins wearing one of many trance-like expressions he showed during the evening. He followed with a virtuosic and tuneful solo that led gracefully into another Danko-led section, this one less busy, gathering momentum for a thrilling finish that Jenkins punctuated with a sustained note.
The band would return to the greats later in the set, treating Thelonious Monk’s “Holiday in San Francisco” with the delicacy and experimentation unique to the beloved prodigy, as Danko took a number of mid-solo detours, in line with the Monk canon. Jenkins’ trumpet solo wavered between plaintive and explosive as Campbell provided sparse accompaniment. Campbell would add, after the song had concluded, “I often wonder what that trip was like,” eliciting some – perhaps unexpectedly loud – laughter from the audience.
The group closed the set with a Jenkins riff on a Tommy Dorsey chord progression, titled “Work First” (as it was based on Dorsey’s “Opus 1”), introducing stomping, upbeat drum rolls and a lively, playful melody. Each solo carried with it a distinct sense of fun and adventure, as well as a clear sense of one another’s abilities. Perhaps no one onstage was having more fun than Thompson, however, who traded solos with this bandmates en route to the finale, which ended with Jenkins holding the last note, possibly one of the softest exclamation points in recent memory.