This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In the fall the lower school library announced the formation of a new “maker space” after-school, drop-in program for students in grades 3-5. With the popular program, Harker has joined libraries, schools, clubs and museums throughout the country in eagerly embracing the educational maker movement and its do-it-yourself (DIY) mantra.
Ever since the inaugural program was held in the Bucknall library at the end of September, the lower school has enjoyed having its own maker space – a physical location where people come together to create. The convenient “pop-up” maker space goes up when in use and into storage between sessions.
The first maker space event attracted more than 20 students who had a blast creating mechanical toys called “brush bots.” A simple circuit with a pager motor vibrates and moves the bot across surfaces, such as tables and floors. The students built and designed the tiny robots from toothbrush heads, batteries, wire and adhesive. They were provided the basic components and a pile of miscellaneous materials to enhance and modify their bot. Students also could design habitats: small boxes that contained their motorized brush bot. The result, recalled the lower school librarians, was a dynamic and open-ended exploration of the principles of motion and energy.
Fourth graders Matthew Chen and Brandon Wang took their brush bots to the next level by designing them to do battle in an arena. In the course of their experiment, the pair discovered they needed to expand their bots’ habitat and were overheard making plans to incorporate paper towel tubes and use a table rather than a shoebox in their design plans.
Grade 5 English teacher Ann Smitherman observed that the “flexibility that these kids are showing when they’re trying to decide what to do and why things work like this is really important.”
A second maker event was held in the lower school library on Oct. 23. This time, the students created simple light-emitting diode (LED) critters. Students got creative with the types of critters they built, as well as the habitats they constructed. In addition, there was an “inspiration bin” on hand for students who preferred to tinker in a more unstructured way. The bin, and freedom of choice while creating, will be a staple at all future maker events, which will be scheduled throughout the school year on different days of the week.
During the second maker event, Tristan Goodwin, grade 5, had fun making a vibrating LED “fuzzbot” critter using a small motor designed during the previous brushbot-making program. “I just thought it was a good idea,” said Goodwin.
“The maker movement celebrates creativity, tinkering and experimentation in a collaborative environment where makers and mentors come together to use common tools and materials,” explained Kathy Clark, lower school campus librarian. “Our activities support our information literacy goals because creative thinking is a foundation for all information problem-solving; making physical things in a collaborative environment helps students to approach intellectual assignments in the same creative and methodical way.”
An enthusiastic creator and crafter herself, Clark recalled that after a year of planning and development, the lower school was ready to make its foray into the maker movement.
“When the students entered the classroom for our first maker event, all the initial questions were about how to make the brush bot correctly,” recounted Sue Smith, library director. “But after 10 minutes the conversations changed. ‘What happens if we add another battery? Why does mine fall over? I want to add stabilizers!’ Answers to these questions came from experimentation and collaboration among the students.”
The topic of how best to implement appropriate maker activities schoolwide (preschool through upper school) was a major theme at the fall meeting of Harker’s What’s New Committee. The committee comprises a dedicated group of teachers who investigate new ideas in education and their applications at Harker.
“Our lower school library maker activities have proven to be a good match for our students. It stimulates their natural creative inclinations in such a way that provokes and aids in the development of crucial problem-solving skills. They have to work through problems in a repeated manner of brainstorming, testing solutions, and returning to the original planning stage if their hypothesis is different than expected,” noted Jennifer Gargano, assistant head of school for academic affairs.
With the rapid decline of classes such as home economics and woodshop, there was an awareness in the American educational system that more hands-on type classes were needed. According to WeAreTeachers. com, a website designed to connect teachers with the latest resources and knowledge tools, many schools throughout the United States are jumping on the maker movement bandwagon.
The maker movement, said the site, is a technological and creative learning revolution underway around the globe, utilizing new tools and technology, such as 3-D printing, robotics, microprocessors, wearable computing, e-textiles, “smart” materials and programming languages. Typical maker spaces feature flexible, computer-controlled manufacturing equipment for creating, cutting, and forming plastics, metal, plaster and other common materials.
In addition to being embraced by elementary school-age children, the maker movement also has caught on with older students and adults. Community-based, independently produced maker fairs are happening all over the globe; each year, thousands of people attend the World Maker Faire in New York City, the world’s biggest maker event. In fact, last September Harker News (Harker’s online news site) ran a story about Davis Dunaway, grade 10, who invented an award-winning grid, which he presented at the New York fair (https://staging.news.harker.org/rising-sophomores-project-featured-at-white-house-maker-faire/).
Nailing down a definition of the maker movement is eclipsed in difficulty only by trying to determine its origins, according to Clark. “In a nutshell, makers – whether they are MIT students putting in extra lab hours, members of burgeoning clubs in the Silicon Valley, or fourth and fifth graders at Harker – learn by making, crafting or tinkering,” she said.
Tinkering, she explained, has a long- established tradition in the United States. Its resurgence, in the form of the maker movement, is attributed to myriad factors including burgeoning DIY hobbyists, society’s growing participatory culture, increased accessibility to technology and an impetus to repurpose discarded materials. It is no surprise, then, that educators would seek to harness the inventive nature of the maker movement for classroom application, she said.
As for future maker happenings at the lower school library, Clark stressed that the goal is the process, not the product. “In fact, some months there will be no product – just experimentation and fun!” she said.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
This year Harker was thrilled to welcome one of the largest-ever contingents of students from its sister school, the Tamagawa K-12 School & University in Tokyo. On Oct. 14, the 28 exchange students, along with their three chaperones, arrived at the middle school for their first in-person meeting with their grade 6 Harker buddies.
Each fall, as part of a long-running program, the Tamagawa students come to Harker for a much-anticipated weeklong visit. Prior to that, Harker and Tamagawa peers stay in touch through video conferences and email exchanges.
While here, the Japanese students stayed with their Harker buddies and their families. They went sightseeing around the Bay Area, and visited and observed classes at the Blackford campus.
Among their many activities, the students made tie-dyed T-shirts with both the Harker eagle and Tamagawa eagle on them (the schools coincidentally share the same mascot), made slushies, went on a scavenger hunt and enjoyed a bittersweet ice cream farewell party. The Japanese students also joined in on classes such as dance, drama, art and P.E.
The Tamagawa students also spent time at the lower school, where they worked with the kindergartners on an origami activity. Previously, the kindergarten students had received an album depicting life at Tamagawa’s kindergarten.
Kishan Sood, a grade 6 Harker student, said that he and his buddy, Satoya, had a lot of fun together. “We went to San Francisco and saw a lot of amazing things there.”
After his buddy returned to Japan, Sood received a thank you email from Satoya. “That really made me feel that he had a great time in America and he appreciated everything that we did for him. That made me feel special,” said Sood.
Jennifer Walrod, Harker’s director of global education, reported that all the students had an amazing time. “When the Tamagawa buddies first arrived, everyone was so quiet and shy. But by the farewell party, the kids were all running around, laughing, taking photos and behaving like the best of friends that they have become,” she said. 
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
Halloween took on new meaning this year for grade 8 students in Cyrus Merrill’s history class, who donated care packages filled with thank you letters and candy to American troops stationed around the world, including in Afghanistan.
Last year when Merrill and his students launched the project, they were thrilled to receive responses from some of the soldiers.
This year, the care packages once again included nut-free candy sealed in Ziploc bags, packaged along with a “thank you for serving” letter addressed to “Any American Soldier.”
“The packages were sent to U.S. troops stationed around the globe. The candy served as either treats for soldiers or for them to hand out to children living around where they are stationed,” said Merrill.
The timing of the note writing also made it possible for students to reflect on and inform the soldiers about their recent grade 8 trip to Washington, D.C., and their often newfound passion and interest in the American government.
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In October, more than 8,000 visitors poured into the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona. For the week of Oct. 8, the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing was the biggest show in town. Scientists, engineers, college students and faculty came from around the globe. An overwhelming majority of the attendees were female. As a rare high-school participant chosen for my research, I was honored to be a part of this intellectual mix.
For three days, the convention center was abuzz with activity. While the daylight hours were filled with informational and inspiring talks, evenings mixed in “mocktails” and entertainment. The conference was kicked off by Shafi Goldwasser’s keynote address. An electric engineering and computer science professor at MIT, Goldwasser is the world’s leading researcher in cryptography, working on privacy issues in our uber-connected world. She was followed by other luminaries from the computing world: Yoky Matsuoka from Nest Labs, Linda Northrop from the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, Lori Mackenzie from Stanford University, and many others.
Personally, I thought this was two conferences in one. While much of the time was focused on how women are shaping modern technology, there was also a serious discussion around the role of society in shaping young girls, especially when it comes to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Ruthe Farmer, director of the National Center for Women & IT, spoke on the importance of getting girls interested in science at a young age. While some of us at Harker may not realize the problem, I agree with her when she argues that there is a significant STEM gender gap.
Megan Smith, CTO of the United States, was a surprise speaker. She reports to the president himself, and she talked about her role in the government in helping reverse this gender gap tide. Deborah Estrin from Cornell University commented that women should be “forming science circles instead of coffee groups.”
Interestingly, a casual on-stage conversation between Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College, garnered the most press. In response to a question around salary discrepancies between men and women, Nadella was “inarticulate” (as he himself later admitted), inadvertently implying that women should not be asking for raises and instead wait for “good karma” to play out. Many people in the audience, including me, were alarmed at his response.
Ironically, the ensuing media firestorm may have actually helped the cause. The dialogue went national, and certainly helped in increasing awareness around the disparities between men and women in the industry.
Beyond the engaging sessions, a personal highlight was the poster session. Over the last year, I have been working on research in data science. It was an honor to share my work at such a prominent venue. Hundreds of people stopped by to see my poster. They listened to my pitch. Some even hugged me and encouraged me. My project involved mining online thyroid cancer forums. My effort came about when a loved one was diagnosed with the disease. I found myself spending countless hours online, reading hundreds of “threads” and looking for answers. While these forums are valuable sources of data, searching them isn’t always simple. It was then that the thought of extracting “word-of-mouth” patient experiences came to me. By applying natural language processing techniques – part-of-speech tagging, topic modeling and association rules – I was able to develop models for discussion topics and thread summaries. I also laid the groundwork for discovering and correlating symptoms and treatments. My project ended up being a first-of-a- kind effort at mining such insights from free-form medical forums, making the data valuable to patients and health care professionals alike.
After three productive days, the conference came to an end. On my flight back, I went through my collection of more than 100 business cards, and remembered meeting my new friends, all of whom shared my passion for computing. While it’s true that women are severely underrepresented in STEM, and that females make up less than 20 percent of enrollees in our engineering colleges, I sense that a revolution is underway. It won’t be long before we turn this tide. I left the event inspired to double-down on my own dreams in the field of computer science. Rejuvenated by the energy, I am also committed to bringing more females into STEM.
I can’t wait for the conference registration to open next year. I hope some of you will join me there!
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
By Mayra Flores De Marcotte
It’s identified as the gender gap and has been a topic of heated discussion in recent years. According to various organizations, statistics and studies, there is a significant gap between males and females entering – and staying in – the computer science fields.
The National Science Foundation found that computer science is the only field in which women are receiving fewer degrees since 2002 – only 18 percent compared with 37 percent 12 years ago.
Even before getting to the college level, only 23 states – including California – and the District of Columbia count computer science as a graduation requirement and those offering AP computer science classes are down 35 percent since 2005, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology.
These trends are important to note because of the impact computer science will have on the future job market. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there will be more than 1 million computer specialist job openings by 2020, but our universities will only produce 29 percent of the qualified graduates needed to fill these jobs.
At The Harker School, however, administrators, educators and students are setting their own trend by embracing computer science education and the school is encouraging all its students to explore the field by making it a graduation requirement. Robust class offerings include Digital World, a foundational class that offers insights into computer science history, the digital representation of data and computer architectures. Other classes offered include introductory and advanced programming, data structures, AP Computer Science and 11 courses in advanced topics in computer science, seven of which are UC-approved courses.
According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, only 5 percent of U.S. high schools are certified to teach AP computer science courses and only 10 percent of U.S. K-12 schools offer computer science classes at all.
Harker’s dedication to teaching and inspiring all students equally, regardless of gender, makes for an inviting classroom atmosphere.
“I think Harker is unique because it creates a safe environment where everyone feels like they have the chance to try anything without worrying about factors that could potentially ostracize them such as gender,” said Shivali Minocha, grade 11. “While students at other schools may find it unconventional to take computer science classes, at Harker the class feels just as accessible and welcoming as any other class I’ve taken here.”
Classes spark Curiosity Minocha took her first robotics class in grade 7 as a part of the curriculum, which exposed her to basic code and the various applications of computer science. Her first programming course, during the Harker Summer Institute, was a prerequisite for the AP Computer Science course she’s currently enrolled in.
“It’s always exciting to have the ability to actually apply the skills I’m learning in class outside of it,” she says. “There are several clubs and programs at Harker that make this possible like the Computing Club, the Programming Club and the Robotics [Club].
“It’s also extremely cool to be able to successfully run a program after working on it for a long time,” Minocha said. “It’s a great feeling when your code finally compiles correctly.”
Earlier this year, Minocha and a team of three other Harker students entered Technovation, an entrepreneurship program and competition for girls, with an app they developed called Aura, aimed at helping teenage girls deal with their emotions in a safe way. The app matches a girl’s mood with images, quotes and music and allows them to share with their friends. Teammate Sameep Mangat, grade 9, was first introduced to computer science and the world of coding by her father and older brother.
“Even at a young age, I was given the opportunity to contribute to the software and the design,” she said. “This experience overall fostered a curiosity that [grew] through the creation of an app called Aura with my friends. We submitted this app to a competition, and although we didn’t win, it was an amazing experience and helped me learn a lot more about coding and design.”
Investing in Our Brain Trust Eric Nelson, computer science department chair at Harker, teaches numerous computer science classes. He began his career as an experimental physicist in the defense industry and is well aware of the much-talked about gender gap, but says not engaging girls and women in computer sciences is a disservice to the greater population.
“I am a firm believer in investing in our brain trust, and ignoring half of that potential seems to go way beyond negligent,” he said. “New ideas and inventions require a critical mass. By encouraging women to join in the computer science revolution – and you have to capture their attention early in life – the probability of an earth-shattering discovery or idea is greatly increased, to the benefit of all.”
Nelson witnessed the power of this potential during his career prior to Harker.
“In all my years managing software engineers, one of my absolute best was a young woman in Albuquerque,” Nelson said. “She was methodical, organized and had an amazing attention to detail. Her ability to think algorithmically was also top notch.”
Nelson became the chair of the upper school computer science department in 2010 with a goal of better preparing students through a diverse portfolio of classes that would allow them to better explore multiple opportunities within the computer sciences.
Harker’s location within Silicon Valley also plays a role in its trendsetting. Being in the midst of technological developments, new ideas and even newer challenges helps to organically elicit interest in computer sciences from the student body – and the girls are no different.
Daniela Lee, grade 12, took her first programming class during the summer between her freshman and sophomore years to learn more about computer science. She and classmate Sadhika Malladi, grade 11, were regional finalists in the Google Science Fair competition this year, and received a commendation from the city of San Jose recognizing their effort. The online competition, open to students around the globe, has taken place every year since 2011. Lee and Malladi entered their project, “Non-Invasive Search for Optimal Cancer Treatment.”
“We love people, we’re good at programming and we want to predict cancer,” begins their video.
The basis of the project was to avoid unnecessary surgeries, particularly those related to triple negative breast cancer, through the use of a learning algorithm and a new type of MRI machine to better predict response to treatment.
“Since we live in the Silicon Valley, we see and experience a lot of the newest technological innovations, most which are related in some way to programming,” Lee said. “Moreover, a considerable amount of things in our lives come about due to some code someone programmed.”
Lee found computer science much easier than she first anticipated and an exciting field of study she hopes to continue to explore, particularly within graphic design and medicine.
Malladi caught the computer science bug early, after taking an elective class in middle school where she learned how to create websites using Dreamweaver.
“I was inspired by the potential that the rapidly growing field holds for solving a diverse set of problems that pervade society,” she said, adding that many people have the misconception that computer science is used just for creating programs and applications.
“In reality, almost everything is fueled by computer science,” Malladi said. “It’s at the forefront of revolutionizing everyday life and changing the world around us. Computer science is something that we experience through music, video games and the Internet, but it’s also something that is pioneering new interdisciplinary fields that solve important problems.”
Reading and hearing all about the gender gap never swayed her decision to enroll in a class.
“In a way, Harker’s subtle recognition of the minority position is one of the best ways to approach the issue,” Malladi said. “By not explicitly addressing the underrepresentation of females in computer science, Harker avoids perpetuating the stereotype that discourages so many high school girls. However, Harker still takes steps toward encouraging women into [computer science] careers.”
Providing a diverse list of classes, as well as a deep bench of educators to connect with students, is key to the program’s success. And it was within this deep bench of teachers that one educator made her mark on many of her pupils, particularly the females.
Passing It On Susan King joined the Harker faculty seven years ago after her family left their home in Florida and moved to the other sunshine state: California. Originally from Montana, King was first introduced to computer science in the sixth grade after her math teacher read a short article about the up-and-coming field of computer science.
“He said it offered equal opportunity for both men and women and you had to be good at math and I said to myself, this was for me,” she said.
King was part of the first group of graduating students to receive a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Montana State University and went on to receive her M.Ed. in educational technology from the University of Central Florida.
She spent the first decade after college as a programmer and loved it. “I just love the puzzles,” King said. “For many years, it was like being in a candy store – sampling all these candies that were puzzles. The other thing that I loved about the profession was the people. There were so many interesting people in this new field.”
She later left programming to start a family and then decided to pursue education as a career.
“I went into teaching and fell in love with it even more than programming,” King said. “I’ve been at Harker now for seven years and it’s a phenomenal place to work. It’s the first school where I wasn’t the only programming teacher and a great opportunity to work with other teachers in the field. I have been fortunate to have two careers that I loved.”
King has worked with countless students – including many girls – who have gone on to participate within the computer sciences through projects, research and professional careers after Harker.
Life After Harker Rashmi Sharma ’10 majored in bioengineering at Stanford University. She has a minor in computer science and now works at Genentech, in its process development rotational program.
She credits her time at Harker for instilling within her a desire to learn more about computer science.
“I definitely wouldn’t have had the guts to have minored in computer science without the confidence from Harker and Mrs. King,” Sharma said.
She really liked science and math and had already taken biology and chemistry during high school but computer science was the only “techie” class she hadn’t explored. Sharma wanted exposure to it before heading to college, so she signed up for AP Computer Science and immediately felt intimidated by the coursework. This quickly changed once the class began.
“The way Mrs. King approached introducing [it to] us, it all felt less intimidating and less abstract; a less obscure concept than what I thought it would be,” Sharma said. “She started all lectures from the ground level. I never felt disadvantaged. Everyone was on a level playing field.”
It was only after leaving Harker that Sharma realized how different the learning environment actually was.
“Before I went to college, I never felt there was a difference in expectations between girls and boys,” she said. “It wasn’t until college that I saw a difference.”
The disparity in the male-to-female ratio became especially obvious in Sharma’s computer science lectures and, for a moment, made the field feel intimidating once more.
“All these guys had been breathing computer science way longer than I had and [also had] more previous exposure than I had; it made it harder for me to be more comfortable in class,” she said. “But it’s evolving.”
Fellow Harker alumna Katie Siegel ’12 agrees. Siegel is now studying computer science at MIT. She began exploring computer science in a programming class at Harker.
“I intended it to be a one and done but found it fairly easy and I liked the projects we did,” Siegel said. “Mrs. King made it very interesting and explained the concepts in a comprehensive way. We were able to see the relevance of what we were working on and the infinite number of opportunities.”
She was unaware of the gender gap while attending Harker.
“I never felt like there was any sort of [gender] barrier at Harker,” she said. “I never paid attention to the gender ratio. I feel like it was fairly even. I didn’t know there was a gender problem until I got to college.”
This article originally appeared in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
by Chris Nikoloff, Head of School My son’s basketball team had its first tournament of the season recently. It was my son’s first basketball tournament in his life. The tournament was an opportunity for the team to experience the dual nature of competition: each contest can teach us about our opponents and ourselves. Sun Tzu, in “The Art of War,” says, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.”
At the end of the day, our primary competition ought to be against our own potential, not others. We compete and compare with others all the time, but hopefully only to understand our own potential more clearly. Aristotle said that man is by nature a political animal. We learn about ourselves when we compete and compare, but our competition with others ought to be secondary. Making the comparing and competing with others our primary focus can throw us off track.
A parent recently referred me to William Deresiewicz’s book “Excellent Sheep,” in which the author talks about how students in elite colleges lose themselves to conformity of thought, majors and career paths. A review in The New York Times captures his proposition: “We’ve spawned a generation of polite, striving, praise-addicted, grade-grubbing nonentities.” I don’t think this is entirely fair, but a herd mentality, striving toward a limited definition of success, breeds unhealthy competition and an uninteresting conformity that Deresiewicz laments.
As the nation’s high school seniors are in the thick of early admissions season for college, the parent’s book recommendation is timely. It used to be that a few go-getters applied early to college. Now the majority of ambitious students apply early and often. Competition and comparing are rampant. Deresiewicz caused a stir with his article in The New Republic, “Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League” and its subtitle, “The nation’s top colleges are turning our kids into zombies.” Apparently no one is listening to his advice.
Deresiewicz is not without his critics, but I believe his message can help us pay more attention to the second half of Sun Tzu’s advice, “know yourself.” Too often, comparing to others can lead to following others, as Deresiewicz warns. The parent’s son who referred me to Deresiewicz’s book followed his own path in high school, didn’t necessarily load up on APs, and is currently studying something he is deeply passionate about at an Ivy League college.
That is the irony: parents compare their kids to others hoping for any hint of advantage toward getting into top colleges, but those same colleges are actually looking for hints of authenticity in the students they admit. They want interesting learning communities and students who “think outside the box.” As Deresiewicz learned during his stint in admissions, colleges are looking for students with PQs (personal qualities) or who are deeply “pointy” if not well-rounded.
My son’s basketball team learned in competition that they need to switch between man-to-man and zone defense more effectively, and that they need more plays that they can execute. Perhaps they learned more; I don’t understand basketball well enough to say. They could only learn this in competition.
But after the competition they have to return to their practices and face themselves to see if they can reach their potential. Plato famously said, “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” That battle with ourselves, our potential, has to be fought alone, and in that battle our true identity is forged, our true path found, after which comparing should mean very little anyway.
This article was originally published in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
A special accommodation has been made by the Rothschilds, trustees and fellows. This accommodation will allow those who have not yet participated during the short six-month original period of the Rothschild challenge to still double the impact of their gifts and become a part of the Partners’ Circle.
The accommodation will allow Harker to “replace” up to the $2.5 million used from the Trustees & Fellows Fund with new contributions from those who have yet to participate or who wish to increase the amount of their existing pledge. Current families, alumni, parents of alumni, grandparents and staff who would like to know how they can participate in the Partners’ Circle should contact Joe Rosenthal at joe.rosenthal@harker.org, or visit www.harker.org/eventscenter and click the “pledge now” icon.
This article was originally published in the winter 2014 Harker Quarterly.
In keeping with Harker’s culture and tradition of philanthropy, more than 1,000 families rallied to help meet the school’s historic $10 million Rothschild Matching Gift Challenge.
Chris Nikoloff, head of school, announced the remarkable achievement at the conclu- sion of the annual Family & Alumni Picnic on Oct. 12. He said that Jeff and Marieke Rothschild’s intention was to inspire other members of the community to act and join them in supporting the construction of a new events center by accelerating fundraising to a level that enables Harker to move from the conceptual design stage to actually bidding out the project.
The challenge was met with $7.5 million in direct capital gifts and $2.5 million of the $5 million Trustees & Fellows Matching Fund, which matches qualifying gifts made to annual giving. “With the Rothschild challenge met, we went from just under $5 million dollars to just over $25 million dollars in our overall campaign goal in just six months,” Nikoloff reported.
All donors who made gifts helping Harker to meet the challenge will be recognized as members of the Partners’ Circle and will have their names listed on a special plaque in the new events facility.
Last week was a big week for Harker sports! The girls varsity basketball team won the Pescadero tournament, thanks to an amazing comeback victory, while three fall athletes were honored for their tremendous seasons.
Basketball
The girls won the Pescadero High School Hoop Dreams Small Schools Invitational basketball tournament last week, defeating Pescadero and Alma Heights before roaring back for a come-from-behind 45-42 victory over Stevenson School in the championship game. Sophomore Jordan Thompson was named to the All-Tournament Team, thanks to her 16-point, eight-rebound performance. Freshman Elizabeth Beamish scored 14 points in the final game against Stevenson. The girls will celebrate their victory with two home games this week, hosting Oceana on Friday and James Lick Saturday.
The boys varsity squad, meanwhile, went 2-1 at the James Lick Invitational Tournament, coming away with a third-place finish. Their only loss was a nail-biter in double-overtime to Wilcox High School. The team bounced back from that heartbreaker with a 62-36 win over North Monterey County High on Friday night, thanks to 16 points from junior Rohan Desikan and 14 from senior Dylan Patel. Senior Sriv Irrinki also scored a massive 35 points in the victory over Andrew Hill. The boys play in the Lynbrook Tournament this week.
Soccer
The girls played a tie and a loss last week, matching Lynbrook 2-2 and then dropping their match to Fremont 4-3 despite goals from sophomores Joelle Anderson and Kailee Gifford. The Eagles play home games all week, hosting Redwood Christian on Tuesday and Terra Nova on Thursday.
The boys tied Saratoga High last week 2-2 thanks to goals from juniors Omar Hamade and Kevin Hu. They travel to Terra Nova Wednesday before returning home to host San Mateo on Friday.
Golf
Freshman golfer Katherine Zhu was recognized as an All Mercury News athlete by the San Jose Mercury News, an honor bestowed upon the top eight golfers in the entire section. The award was well merited: Zhu won the WBAL Individual Championship this year and reached the Northern California Championships, the furthest of any golfer in Harker history.
For the second year in a row, senior water polo player Billy Bloomquist was recognized as All-CCS Division II by a group of section coaches.
Football
Senior Keanu Forbes was featured in the San Jose Mercury News’ Highlight Reel for his outstanding football performance in last month’s Senior Night game. In that game, a 48-15 win over St. Francis CCC, Forbes carried the ball 14 times for 223 yards and had 91 yards on two kick returns.
Five Harker singers successfully auditioned for the California American Choral Directors Association’s All-State Honor Choir. Ishanya Anthapur, grade 12, was named to the mixed choir; Madhu Karra and Sahana Narayanan, both grade 11, earned spots on the women’s choir; and Ashwin Rao, grade 10, and Gurutam Thockchom, grade 11, joined the men’s choir. Earlier this year, Anthapur and Narayanan were named to ACDA’s Regional Honor Choir.
Rehearsals are tentatively scheduled to begin in March for a special performance at the First United Methodist Church of Pasadena on March 28.