Harker’s summer sports performance program has provided an excellent opportunity for summer students to improve their overall athleticism.
“What we’re doing is taking a very fundamental approach to sports performance. It doesn’t really matter what sport you play as long as it’s a ground-based sport,” said Ron Forbes, Harker’s director of sports performance, who heads up the six-week program. Students began by working balance, footwork, agility and other core aspects of ground-based sports. More advanced concepts such as plyometrics, which incorporate explosive movement, are introduced later. “So that no matter what sport you play, you’re going to be a better athlete at the end of the summer,” Forbes added.
Students will also work on resistive sprinting, which involves being tied to an object while sprinting. “It’s just enough resistance so that you can practice full-speed mechanics without actually going full speed,” Forbes said. “So it’s a safer way to do full speed mechanics, so you’re not worried about kids pulling hamstrings and that sort of thing.”
Another more advanced exercise is overspeed sprinting, comparable to running downhill. Forbes said these exercises teach students “the neuromuscular firing patterns to make their legs cycle faster, so it helps with speed development.”
The program also works on core strength exercises such as pushups and situps. Incoming Harker student Oisin Coveney, who will start grade 9 in the fall, found this part of the program to be his favorite. “You have to switch between each exercise very quickly without much of a break, and it’s actually more enjoyable because I know I’m getting better,” he said.
Coveney joined the program because he wanted to work on his speed and agility as a soccer player. “I’m not the fastest person on the field, and I’d like to step that up,” he said.
Forbes noted that many of the sports performance program’s students are in grades 6-8. To this he credits the program’s emphasis on developing overall athletes and not just preparing them for an upcoming season. “Most of these kids now, we’re not getting them ready for the season, we’re helping develop them into athletes at a younger age,” he said.
Other students, such as Naomi Molin, grade 9, simply enjoy the opportunity to get out and exercise in the summer weather: “It’s just a neat way to get out and do something active over the summer when it’s so easy to just stay inside and watch TV all day.”
Members of Harker’s Key Club had a busy and productive spring, collecting clothing, toys, food and animal carrier crates for the Sacred Heart Community Center and raising some $1,100 for the Silicon Valley Humane Society.
The funds were raised by selling baked goods, bagels, and root beer floats. Additionally, one student opted to anonymously donate $500 towards the cause.
Kerry Enzensperger, director of the upper school community service and activity program, reported that Key Club participants were thrilled with the results.
The Key Club is part of an international high school organization sponsored by Kiwanis International. Key Club members assist Kiwanis in carrying out its mission to serve the children of the world.
High school student members of the club perform acts of service in their communities, such as cleaning up parks, collecting clothing and organizing food drives. They also learn leadership skills by running meetings, planning projects and holding elected leadership positions at the club, district and international levels.
Students have flocked again to the Oakwood Tennis Center for this year’s Harker tennis camp, which are open to students in grade 2-11 of nearly any skill level.
The two tennis programs, Harker Summer Tennis Camp (HSTC) and the Harker-Oakwood Tennis Training System (HOTTS), cover a wide range of skill levels and techniques. Harker tennis coach Craig Pasqua, certified by the United States Professional Tennis Association and a coach for 14 years, heads both programs.
With HSTC students, he said, “We want to teach them a sound fundamental base, although with a modern twist.” Beginners still learn the primary forehand, backhand, serve and volley strokes, but they are also introduced to some slightly more advanced concepts. “I start teaching the kids right away how to hit rotational forehands, rotational backhands as well as traditional forehand and backhand,” he said. “When I learned how to play, and all the coaches learned how to play, there was one method, and that was you took the racket back, you stepped into the shot and your weight propelled your momentum. Today most pros play differently. They don’t hit that way anymore. They use a more rotational, or angular, force.”
This technique, he said, creates more spin and is more effective at concealing the kinds of shots a player makes. It also makes it easier for younger players to hit balls that are hit above their heads.
At the intermediate level, students still concentrate on the basic skills, but also learn how to take better control of their muscle groups to get the most out of each hit, using what is known as the kinetic chain. “The better a tennis player you are, the more opportunities you have to develop and expand your kinetic chain,” Pasqua said. “You start by pushing against the ground when you hit a stroke, and you push up through your legs, certainly using your waist and your hips as you rotate and then eventually to your arm with the racket.”
The HOTTS program is meant for competitive players who wish to learn the more advanced aspects of tennis. “It’s a technical tactical and conditioning program for our up-and-coming competitive players. Many of our players already play tournaments,” Pasqua said. Students in this program train for actual in-game situations and participate in interclub matches. “We feel that realistic engagement is going to lead to better performance when they get in actual game situations.”
What’s important to Pasqua however, is that the students have fun and maintain a healthy respect for the game. Additionally, all of the coaches in the program have college degrees and have played at the college level. “The coaches are very respectful and very supportive of the players,” he said. “We don’t yell at any of the kids. We teach tennis how we want to be taught.”
Joshua Valluru, an incoming student who starts grade 5 in the fall, has enjoyed the camp so far, as much for its educational value as for the opportunity to make new friends. “It’s really fun because since I can socialize with the Harker students, I can get an idea what it’s going to be like when I enter fifth grade,” he said.
In accordance with the camp’s aims, Valluru said the most important thing he learned was “to have fun and not take the sport too seriously because you’re not going to become a good tennis player if you’re always under pressure, so I’ve learned that if you take the sport in a fun way then you’ll become better at it.”
This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Harker Quarterly.
The Harker Concert Series season came to a close on March 17 with a distinguished string quartet, who ran a master class with orchestra students and then performed to a full house in Nichols Hall auditorium.
The Afiara String Quartet is a Canadian group with impressive résumés: the foursome have degrees from Juilliard, Peabody, New England Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory and Mannes College among them. Together the result is a tightly knit, focused yet relaxed ensemble that interprets music as though it were coming from just one bow.
In the hands of this quartet, Beethoven’s “String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95” was aggressive, passionate and full of extremes, just as one wants Beethoven to be. Violist David Samuel and cellist Adrian Fung had a chance to show off the rich sonorities they coaxed from their instruments, and the group bobbed and swayed in perfect physical harmony as they dug into the dramatic piece, executing flawless transitions between tempi and movements.
Next was a commissioned work by Samuel’s Juilliard buddy Brett Abigaña, a rising star in the classical world, and the piece seemed perfectly designed to highlight each player’s musicianship and virtuosity. The first movement was hauntingly beautiful, with a stunning dissonant ostinato provided by the two violinists, Valerie Li and Yuri Cho. The piece ended in a flurry of scalar passages, performed absolutely in sync and with clarity and precision that were truly spectacular. This piece was a wonderful mixture of modern atonality and lush melodies, and it was a treat to have such a positive glimpse of classical music’s future.
The Bohemian composer Dvorák is known for infusing his work with nationalistic folk songs, and it didn’t take much imagination to hear such themes in his string quartet, next on the program. The third distinct genre of the evening, this piece received the same flawless interpretation as the others, showing Afiara’s comfort with various styles.
It is truly a learning experience for students and the community alike to witness such a seamless meeting of the minds amongst members of a small ensemble like the Afiara String Quartet.
With summer temperatures on the rise, students in grades 4-8 headed to the Singh Aquatic Center at the upper school campus to learn about one of the more popular aquatic sports at this year’s summer water polo camp.
“The camp is basically one for fundamentals of water polo,” said coach Ted Ujifusa, who has been involved with water polo since 1964, and helped the University of California, Berkeley, win their first NCAA championship. “We want to talk about body movement in the form of a variety of different kicks that we use to move ourselves around, also just the mechanics involved in simply catching and throwing a ball.”
The camp started with the basics of the game, including movement, body positioning and passing. “We consider a shot to simply be a faster version of a pass, so we’re trying to work on good body positioning and mechanics right to begin with,” said Ujifusa.
Students later worked on shooting and how to guard members of the opposing team, as well as how to break free from defenders and deal with one-on-one situations against goalkeepers. The aim by the middle of the week was to have students build enough fundamental skills to begin playing games. “Really, we’re just playing a fancy game of keep-away, so it’s not rocket science,” Ujifusa said.
One student, Addith Srinivasan, who will start grade 6 in the fall, said the games were his favorite part of the camp, which he joined this year because he “just wanted to try out water polo.
“It’s really fun,” he said.
Samantha Yanovsky, also going on to grade 6, saw her siblings excel at water polo and decided to try it for herself, and enjoyed the camp, learning that “you need really big leg muscles because it’s going to get tiring.”
Boys in grades 4-8 attended Harker’s basketball camp the week of June 25 to learn the game’s fundamental skills. The camp was headed up by Butch Keller, upper school head, who has coached basketball at the high school and college levels for more than 25 years.
“Our goal is to hand [the students] skills and tools to make them better individually, so they understand the fundamentals of the game,” he said.
Each day of the program focused on a different skill, such as dribbling, passing and shooting. Harker varsity basketball players assisted the younger students with morning drills. “We had different stations set up and the kids went through the stations; each player was given to one of the older players, so they have a group of players that they’re responsible for and making sure they learn the fundamentals,” Keller said. “Everything we did during that day had as its emphasis the skill that we taught that morning.”
Students also played four-on-four games using the skills they learned, and also participated in schoolyard games such as Hotshot.
“The goal by the end of the week is to give the kids that are here skills that they can work on on their own,” Keller said. The program even taught the students drills that they could work on during commercial breaks while watching TV. “It’s all about things that they can do to improve their game at their age,” Keller added.
Jarrett Anderson, starting grade 6 in the fall, thought attending the basketball camp was a “great idea” because he wanted “more experience.” He believed dribbling was one of the most important things he learned.
“I like sports, and basketball’s a fun sport,” said Brandon Coulter, who starts grade 4 in the fall, of his reasons for joining the camp this year. He enjoyed the camp and said shooting was a skill he felt the camp helped him to improve.
The bottom line for Keller was to equip the students with what they need to become better individual players. “If they’re here to get better, they can take everything that we teach them, and they can do it on their own,” he said.
Young soccer enthusiasts in grades 5-12 once again flocked to the upper school campus for Harker’s yearly summer soccer camp. Players of all skill levels found something to enjoy about the program, which just finished up its second week.
Coach Shaun Tsakiris, who won an NCAA national championship with UCLA in 1997 and received an MVP award from that university in 2000, says Harker’s approach is unique among soccer camps. “We do different stations of psycho-motor skills, which is either juggling, balance, coordination or agility. We incorporate passing and receiving in part of our warmups,” he said.
Throughout each day of the camp, different stations are set up to allow students to work on different skills. “We rotate the kids so we make sure that each kid has a topic every day,” Tsakiris said. Each station has a coach dedicated to helping students improve a skill, be it shooting, passing, futsal (indoor soccer), one-versus-one matchups or dribbling.
“We have coaches who have either played at the highest level or coached at a very high level, and I think that we have a lot of energy with the kids,” Tsakiris said, adding that it is important to him that students have fun and learn at the same time. “We make it fun, but we make sure that it’s not just day care, that this is a soccer camp where kids are leaving knowing that they learned something.”
Harker student Jeffrey Hanke, who starts grade 11 in the fall, said the soccer camp is a “good way to train and get ready for next season,” and has been a good opportunity for him to improve his shooting techniques. Alan Guo, entering grade 10 in the fall, is now attending his third summer soccer camp. “I can improve while still having fun,” he said.
At the end of each week, students receive awards for their efforts at the camp. Awards are based less on ability and more on hard work, improvement, teamwork and attitude. “Things like that are very important for us,” Tsakiris said.
Each week also ends with an appearance by a guest speaker. The first week of the program featured an appearance by Aly Wagner, a former professional soccer midfielder who played for Women’s Professional Soccer and was a member of the United States women’s national soccer team.
According to Tsakiris, the hard work that the coaching staff and the students have put in has evidently paid off: “The fact that we keep getting more and more kids every week I think says quite a bit.”
Harker’s InvenTeam visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in June for this year’s EurekaFest, an annual event held by Lemelson-MIT for young inventors. New Harker graduates Prag Batra, Sachin Jain and Arihant Jain, along with grade 12 students Shantanu Joshi, Wilbur Yang and Ramakrishnan Menon and grade 11 student Nikhil Dilip, were at the event to showcase the invention that won them funding in this year’s InvenTeam contest. Their project, an aquatic thermoelectric generator that can produce solar energy without the need for expensive panels, won them a $9,110 grant in the fall of last year to build a prototype.
During their time at the event, the team toured MIT’s wind tunnels and fusion lab, and participated in a 20-minute design challenge in which they were randomly placed into teams which were then instructed to build a free-standing structure made with balloons. They also attended presentations that showed them how to market their inventions, and saw presentations by the collegiate and industrial winners of the InvenTeam competition.
Daniela Lapidous ’12 recently won the Saratoga Library Teen Poetry contest in the high school category for her submitted poem, titled “Regression.” Lapidous attended a special reception on June 13 in honor of the winners of the contests. Her English teacher, Jennifer Siraganian, encouraged students to enter the contest during the spring semester.
Reading historical text about the California Gold Rush is one thing … experiencing what it might have been like first-hand quite another.
During several action packed spring days in Coloma, Harker’s grade 4 class had the unique opportunity to live the legendary life of a gold digger. This past spring, the students ventured to Coloma, located near Sacramento and most noted for being the site where gold was first discovered back in 1848, leading to the California Gold Rush. Today, Coloma is a designated national historic landmark district and tourist attraction best known for its ghost town and Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park.
According to Kristin Giammona, elementary school head, initial rain showers on day one didn’t deter the excited Harker students from hiking five miles on the area’s Monroe Ridge, armed with ponchos, rain jackets, “smiles, songs and lots of learning.”
After the rain cleared, students had a blast making cornbread, building a shelter and panning for gold. They even had a hoedown under a huge tent, warmed by a campfire alongside the breathtaking American River.
Following the evening’s fun skits, performed by both teachers and children, was a surprise visit from a special guest, a Native American who informed them that the name Coloma comes from the original natives name for the surrounding valley: Cullumah, meaning “beautiful.” In fact, Coloma is located on the south fork of the American River that runs through the valley and was built on an original Native American village.
These days, the small town has only several hundred inhabitants, mainly consisting of hopeful modern-day miners who pan the American River, and others who run the museums and tours in the area. In fact, Coloma’s economy is largely based on money generated from its museums and students like Harker’s fourth graders, who take field trips with their schools to learn about the California Gold Rush.