Harker’s summer water polo camp is the perfect opportunity for students in grades 4-8 to learn about one of the most popular and longstanding aquatic sports. Offered for both beginning and intermediate players, the camp will teach water polo history, rules and terminology, eggbeater kicking, shooting, passing and ball handling. Players will participate in scrimmages and game play, and learn how to condition for moving quickly through the water. Students who wish to participate in the camp must be able to swim 25 yards.
Harker water polo coaches Allie Lamb and Ted Ujifusa will direct the camp. Lamb has played for some of water polo’s most distinguished coaches, including Rich Corso and Ricardo Azevedo, and was team captain of the 2009 Santa Clara University water polo team. She served as a volunteer assistant coach at Santa Clara University and has coached at Harker for the past two seasons.
A water polo veteran of more than 50 years, Ujifusa was a member of the University of California at Berkeley water polo team that won its first championship in 1974. In his coaching career, he has won CCS championships at both Leland High School and Cupertino High School, making him the only coach ever to win championships at two different high schools. He also has coached at De Anza College, UC Berkeley and San Jose State University.
The Harker water polo camp will take place at the Singh Aquatic Center, located at The Harker School’s upper school campus at 500 Saratoga Ave. in San Jose. The beginners camp runs from June 22-27 from 9-11 a.m., and the intermediate camp runs from July 13-17 from 9-11 a.m. For more information on this and other Harker summer sports camps, including pricing, visit the Harker Summer website.
Nikash Shankar, grade 12, who qualified as a regional semifinalist in the Biotechnology Institute’s BioGENEius Challenge, presented his research in San Francisco last week.
“Out of a field of nearly 50 students, Nikash was selected to compete as a finalist at the challenge,” said Gabriella Arroyo, executive assistant at BayBio, Northern California’s life sciences association. “While he did not place, the competition was very strong this year and he should be proud to have participated in the challenge.”
Shankar’s project is titled “Insulin and Metformin: A Therapeutic Approach for the Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease after Type II Diabetes Mellitus Using a Novel In-Vitro Cell Model.”
Here is Shankar’s description of his project:
“In recent years, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been considered to be in part a neuroendocrine disorder, even referred to by some as type III diabetes. AD is characterized by a paucity of insulin and insulin resistance, which results in accumulation of β-amyloid peptides to form plaques in the brain leading to neuronal degeneration. Epidemiological evidence suggests a link between type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and AD.
“The present study investigates the effect of insulin and metformin, an insulin sensitizer, on the production of β-amyloid by using a novel in-vitro neuronal cell model. The findings demonstrated that when neuronal cells, transfected to produce endogenous β-amyloid, were exposed to high glucose conditions [50 mM], they exhibited high cellular toxicity and increased β-amyloid generation. Metformin, at a dose of 10 mM, and insulin, at a dose of 1μM, were effective in lowering the production of β-amyloid. However, tyrophostin, a known inhibitor of the insulin-signaling pathway, did not modulate the effect of metformin on β-amyloid. Hence, the effect of metformin on β-amyloid is probably mediated through mechanisms other than insulin signaling pathway. These findings suggest a possible role of insulin sensitizers in reducing the risk of AD in T2DM.”
Shankar originally submitted a poster, which, after being viewed by a number of judges, was selected, allowing him to compete in the 2015 Amgen Bay Bio Area BioGENEius Challenge, the local qualifier to the next level.
Harker students participated in the 2015 National French Contest, which tests listening and reading comprehension, vocabulary and grammar, with résultats joyeuses! “
Honorable Mentions: Shreya Neogi, grade 10; Alexandra Dellar, Zarek Drozda, Shannon Hong, Emma Sayiner and Esther Wang, all grade 11.
Bronze Medals: Michael Tseitlin, grade 10; Richard Yi, grade 11.
Silver Medals: Hazal Gurcan, Anika Jain, Pooja Kini, all grade 10; Victoria Ding, Selin Ozcelik and Samali Sahoo, all grade 11.
Gold Medals: Lavinia Ding, Divya Rajasekharan, Andrew Rule, Andrew Tierno, Tiffany Zhu, all grade 10; Daphne Yang grade 11.
“Students were placed in different categories according to their level and exposure to the language,” explained Galina Tchourilova, upper school French teacher. Allez les aigles Français!
A Harker Summer mainstay, the basketball camp will introduce and reinforce fundamental basketball skills and concepts to coed students in grades 4-8 and boys in grades 6-9. Skills emphasized include ball handling, shooting and rebounding. Campers also will play team games coached by Harker varsity basketball players.
Each day of the camp begins with a warm-up period of shooting and stretching, after which campers will work on the first of two skills emphasized that day. Students will work on each of these skills in three-on-three sets, and conclude the day with a five-on-five league game and a fun game in which students’ names are chosen at random to perform some kind of task, such as a trick shot with their eyes closed. Every activity is structured to help students build their basketball skills and deepen their appreciation for one of the world’s most popular sports.
The basketball camp will be run by John “Sarge” Siers, a veteran basketball trainer of 30 years who has coached in two NCAA Final Fours and trained 32 players who went on to earn Division 1 scholarships. Since 1985, he has spent 10 weeks of every summer providing instruction and guidance at basketball camps all over the world. Siers also works with many NBA players, including Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Cleanthony Early and Johnny O’Bryant. In addition to his work at summer camps, Siers runs Sarge’s Basic Training Basketball Academy and acts as program director for Max My Game, an international basketball academy.
Both coed and boys basketball camps will be held June 22-26 at Harker’s middle school campus, located at 3800 Blackford Ave. in San Jose. The boys camp will take place from 9 a.m.-noon, and the coed camp will take place from 1 p.m.-4 p.m. For more information on this and other sports camps, including pricing, please visit the Harker Summer website.
In late February, middle school Latin students took The National Mythology Exam, answering questions on the Olympians, Theseus (the theme) and classical literature (such as “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad”). The following students are certified myth mavens:
Bronze medals:
Grade 6: Jason Lin, Akshay Manglik, Arohee Bhoja, Saloni Shah, Linus Zheng, Maria Vazhaeparambil
Harker’s team returned home after a very respectable showing at the Harvard Pre-Collegiate Economics Challenge! Ameek Singh, grade 11, placed second in individual testing out of 120 students, while the team made the final eight out of more than 30 teams, said advisor Sam Lepler. Following the competition, the team adjourned for Thai food near Harvard Square, where they were joined by four alumni, Olivia Zhu ’11, Vikram Sundar ’14, Angela Ma ’14 and Ashvin Swaminathan ’13, with Ramya Rangan ’12 enroute.
Last weekend, grade 9 students Anooshree Sengupta, Maya Kumar, Aria Coalson, Jessica Susai and Aliesa Bahri, also known as the Infinities Vex Robotics team, won the Design Award at the Vex Robotics World Championships in Louisville, Ky. Of the 450 teams in attendance, the Infinites were one of five division award winners. This latest win caps off a season of achievements for the team, which won two regional tournaments and a slew of awards earlier this year, including the Create Award at the NorCal State tournament and two Excellence Awards. Congratulations!
Harker’s team came in third place at this year’s state Mathcounts competition, held at Stanford on March 21. Harker team members comprised Rose Guan and Katherine Tian, grade 8, and Cynthia Chen and Jeffrey Kwan, grade 7. “They did an excellent job at the competition and placed third as a team among 33 contending teams,” said Vandana Kadam, middles school math department chair, who coached the team. The competition included 33 teams with 174 individual contestants. Tian placed sixth individually and came in fourth in the speed math contest, called the countdown round. The top 16 students in the written round were invited to take part in the countdown round. Tian beat her opponents in all rounds and made it to the semifinals but lost in that round.
Chen finished 19th, Guan 27th and Kwan 28th. Only two points separated Tian from Chen. “The ranking difference tells you how tough a competition we have in the Bay Area,” Kadam, said.
“Needless to say, it was a tough competition with William Hopkins, Hyde, Kennedy, Redwood and Miller schools also fielding extremely strong teams,” Kadam added. “Harker’s team members had a consistent high performance on the individual rounds which served them well. With the kind of competition we see around here, the rankings keep changing every year. Last year Harker placed first at the state Mathcounts, while Cupertino Middle School and Miller Middle School came in second and third, respectively.” Please congratulate the students on their accomplishment!
Now in its third year, the summer TRX training camp offers students in grades 6-12 the opportunity to prepare for an upcoming athletic season or simply get fit. The Navy SEAL-developed TRX suspension training system utilizes the user’s body weight to grant them access to a wide variety of exercises that can strengthen core, improve endurance and increase overall athletic performance. This unique system also puts the user in control of how much they want to challenge themselves by adjusting resistance settings and body positions to best suit their fitness goals.
This camp will be directed by Harker athletics coach Karriem Stinson, a certified TRX Group Instructor and wrestling coach, who also runs the Harker summer wrestling camp and coaches middle and upper school wrestling. To date he has coached three members of the California national wrestling team and multiple CCS placers.
The TRX training camp will take place Mondays and Wednesdays from June 22-July 22, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Sessions will be held at The Harker School’s middle school campus, located at 3800 Blackford Ave. in San Jose. For more information on this and other sports camps, including pricing, please visit the Harker Summer website.
Eight Harker students qualified to take the United States of America Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO) or the United States of America Junior Mathematical Olympiad (USAJMO) exams! These tests, which will be taken on campus tomorrow and Wednesday, are qualifiers for the 2015 U.S. Math Olympiad Team.
Students who qualified to take tests are seniors Patrick Lin and Ashwath Thirumalai; juniors Lawrence Li and Richard Yi; sophomores Kai Ang, Peter Wu and David Zhu; and freshman Swapnil Garg.
The tests are six-question, two-day, nine-hour essay/proof examinations. Students qualify by taking the American Mathematics Competition (AMC) exam and then, after passing that, the American Invitational Mathematics Exam (AIME).
The AIME is a 15-question three-hour test given to those who rank in the top 5 percent, or score at least 100, on the AMC 12 high school mathematics contest (formerly known as the AHSME), and those who rank in the top 2.5 percent, or score at least 120, on the AMC 10.
Only about 500 students out of 350,000 who take the AMC exam qualify for either the USAMO or USAJMO exams. Of that 500, 12 then qualify for the prep team based on their scores. A variety of other top finishers also may be invited under various qualifications. These students then attend the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP), where instructors select the six-person team (plus supernumeraries) to compete in the International Mathematical Olympiad in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from July 4-16. Go Math Eagles!