Last month, four Harker students took first place for the second straight year at the 2019 Middle School State Championship Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Sacramento! Eighth graders Athreya Daniel, Brian Harder and Johnathan Mo and fifth grader Leah Harder were one of 12 teams competing in Division II, the category for developing teams. Other cities represented at the event were Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Berkeley and Davis. Rain began to pour during the team’s final match against San Francisco’s “Fire Hucks,” but it forged ahead for an 11-5 victory.
The students first came together to play Ultimate Frisbee – a fast-growing sport that now boasts more than 800 college teams – two years ago in an after-school club, where they developed their skills in a fun and friendly environment. The club’s faculty sponsor for this year as well as last year was middle school English teacher Rebecca Williams.
It was an impressive spring season for Harker athletics and it showed as many individuals were rewarded with all-league honors.
Softball
Cameron Zell and Taylor Lam, both grade 12, earned first team honors, with Anika Rajamani, grade 12, and Molly Mobley, grade 10, making the second team and Natasha Yen, grade 10, getting an honorable mention.
Baseball
Zach Hoffman, grade 12, Max Lee, grade 11, and Andrew Chavez, Levi Sutton and Nicholas Coulter, all grade 10, were each named to the first team, and Luke Wancewicz, grade 10, and Mark Hu, grade 9, made the second team.
Boys Tennis
The boys tennis team made it to the second round of CCS, led by first-teamers Ramanand Vegesna, Mihir Sharma and Richard Hu, all grade 11. Joshua Zhou, grade 11, and Shika Tseitlin, grade 9, made the second team, with Jack Hansen, grade 11, getting an honorable mention.
Boys Golf
Boys golf earned its sixth consecutive league championship (sharing it with Menlo this year) and finished sixth in CCS. Ashwin Rammohan, grade 12, Jaimin Bhagat, grade 11, and Aditya Tadimeti and Bryan Zhang, both grade 10, were all named to the first team, with Bradley Lu, grade 12, and Gabriel Yang and Bowen Yin, both grade 10, making the second team.
Lacrosse
The league champion lacrosse team featured Midfielder of the Year Elise Mayer, grade 12, along with first-teamers Heidi Zhang, grade 12, Nellie Tonev, grade 11, and Lisa Barooah and Anna Vazhaeparambil, both grade 10. Julia Amick, grade 12, and Piper White, grade 11, earned second team honors, with Zoe Sanders, grade 10, and Sarah Leafstrand, grade 9, receiving honorable mentions.
Track and Field
Alexa Lowe, grade 9, was the league champ in the triple jump and was named to the first team. Ayush Vyas, grade 12, and Gio Rofa, grade 11, each earned second team honors, with Anton Novikov, grade 10, Natasha Matta, grade 9, earning honorable mentions.
Boys Volleyball
Boys volleyball brought home the first team CCS championship in school history and took second place in NorCal for the second year in a row. Jarrett Anderson, grade 12, was named league Senior of the Year, and Billy Fan, grade 10, earned league Sophomore of the Year. Charlie Molin, grade 12, and Jeffrey Kwan, grade 11, were named to the first team, with Chris Gong, grade 12, earning second team recognition.
Swim
The boys swim team took third in CCS and fourth in state with Ethan Hu, grade 11, being named WBAL league MVP after setting numerous league, CCS and state records. Alex Yu, grade 12, and Jason Kwok, Matthew Chung and Rhys Edwards, all grade 10, were also recognized with first team honors for their top league and CCS finishes. Representing the girls swim team, Nikela Hulton, grade 9, was named to the second team.
Upper School Athletics Awards Ceremony
Harker’s annual upper school Athletics Awards Ceremony was held earlier this week, honoring our amazing student athletes. Awards were given in the following categories:
Super Eagle Award
Given to athletes who have participated in three sports during one school year:
Alycia Cary, Cameron Zell, Lilia Gonzales, Lily Wancewicz and Trevor Thompson, all grade 12; Gio Rofa, grade 11; and Andrew Chen, Ashley Barth, Brooklyn Cicero, Jack Hayashi and Marcus Anderson, all grade 9
Eagle Award
The Eagle Award is the only accolade voted on by the student athletes of that sport. It is given to the athlete who displays enthusiasm at all times, supports the team and individuals, hustles in every task, is a positive role model and displays a selfless, giving approach to the program:
Cameron Zell, grade 12, cheer; Ryan Adolf, grade 12, male cross country; Lilia Gonzales, grade 12, female cross country; Mitchell Granados, grade 12, football; Katelyn Vo, grade 11, girls golf; Gina Partridge, grade 11, girls tennis, Katrina Liou, grade 12, girls volleyball: Bobby Bloomquist, grade 12, boys water polo; Claudia Opris, grade 12, girls water polo; Gio Rofa, grade 11, boys basketball; Maria Vazhaeparambil, grade 10, girls basketball; Jared Anderson, grade 12, boys soccer; Ria Gupta, grade 12, girls soccer; Sophia Gottfried, grade 10, wrestling; Zach Hoffman, grade 12, baseball; Ashwin Rammohan, grade 12, boys golf; Zoe Sanders, grade 10, lacrosse; Taylor Lam, grade 12, softball; Cassandra Ruedy, grade 11, swimming; Jack Hansen, grade 11, boys tennis; Mitchell Granados, grade 12, male track and field; Alycia Cary, grade 12 female track and field; and Liam Bakar, grade 11, boys volleyball
Iron Eagle Award
The athlete receiving this award demonstrates the highest level of commitment to his/her school, teammates and their sport throughout the entire season, which includes off-season, pre-season and in-season:
Anika Tiwari, grade 11, and Rohan Varma, grade 10
Drew Goldstein Award
Given to athletes who participated in three sports in each of his/her four years at Harker:
Lilia Gonzales and Lily Wancewicz, both grade 12
Athletic Commitment Award
This award is given to seniors who played four years of at least one sport, showing commitment, positive leadership, good sportsmanship and a strong work ethic:
Trevor Thompson, Gene Wang, Richard Wang, Lilia Gonzales, Ria Gupta, Rithi Jayam, Alexandra Lu, Sahana Narayan, Krish Kapadia, Edwin Su, Prameela Kottapalli, Lily Wancewicz, Alex Rule, Henry Wong, Ryan Adolf, Alycia Cary, Mitchell Granados, Carl Gross, Surya Gudapati, Andy Koonmen, Noah Lincke, Kai Franz, Kobe Howard, Anthony Meissner, Marcus Tymous, Michael Wang, Aneesha Kumar, Mahi Gurram, Josh Broweleit, Andrew Chang, Leon Lu, Donna Boucher, Allison Cartee, Srija Gadiraju, Karen Krause, Katrina Liou, Linda Luo, Devanshi Mehta, Claire Newman, Kelly Shen, Taylor Vaughan, Stephanie Xiao and Claudia Opris
League Achievement Award
Given to seniors who played four years of at least one sport, achieving first team all-league honors and showing commitment, positive leadership, good sportsmanship and a strong work ethic:
Anika Rajamani, Chris Gong, Charlie Molin, Abigail Wisdom, Julia Amick, Akhila Ramgiri, Heidi Zhang, Samantha Yanovsky, Bobby Bloomquist, Jacob Kim, Cameron Zell, Zach Hoffman, Ashwin Rammohan and Taylor Lam
Director’s Award
This award is given to seniors who played four years of at least one sport, showing commitment, positive leadership, good sportsmanship and a strong work ethic and was either recognized at a state or section level or achieved league MVP honors:
Matthew Hajjar, Jared Anderson, Jarrett Anderson, Ayush Vyas, Elise Mayer, Alex Yu
Harker upper school students performed well in a pair of recent math contests. Yesterday, junior Jeffrey Kwan received an honorable mention from the Mathematical Association of America for being one of the top scorers in the 2019 USA Mathematical Olympiad (USAMO), among 300,000 participants.
In April, Harker placed ninth in National Assessment & Testing’s Four-By-Four competition due to the high scores posted by a team of sophomores comprising Arya Maheshwari, Luisa Pan, Sidra Xu and Nicholas Yi. The contest has teams of four solve a series of problems over 10 rounds, each lasting three minutes.
Shahzeb Lakhani and Alivia Li, both grade 9, are Harker’s latest winners of the H&R Block Budget Challenge! The students each earned $20,000 by coming in second out of thousands of entries worldwide.
Students who participated in the challenge were given a virtual job, complete with a 401(k), credit card bills and student loans. They then had to successfully manage their paychecks for 10 weeks. Li and Lakhani were two of just 10 competitors nationwide to receive the $20,000 scholarship.
Harker has had winners in this contest for four years running. Last year, Luisa Pan, now grade 10, won. Roma Gandhi, grade 11, won in 2017, and Rithvik Panchapakesan, grade 12, won in 2016. Each semester, five awards are given out nationwide.
“I believe that the hardest part of managing my budget was definitely understanding all of the concepts,” said Lakhani. ”Since I planned out the entire challenge within the first month, I had to learn quickly what functions did what. I was able to understand these a lot better thanks to some help from last year’s winner, Luisa Pan.”
He did run into some speed bumps, and managing them made the project challenging. “I found that planning ahead and making adjustments when things went sideways was one of the most important keys to success,” Lakhani said. “Being organized and creating tools such as the machine learning application I applied to predict risk was equally important, because the tools allowed me to make more informed decisions.”
Lakhani gained a practical life lesson, too. “I learned that staying on top of things and checking in often aided in paying bills on time,” he said. “Even when you think all hope is lost and you have no chance of winning as I did, if you keep working hard, things might turn around for you.”
Li noted, “The hardest part of the challenge for me was mainly learning the basics of personal finance in general and how to plan and pay for living expenses. Once I got the hang of using the interface and knew what to check and where to do so, everything quickly became second nature.
“The most important thing I learned through this experience was definitely how to plan out future finances. Getting a good handle on keeping a spreadsheet and staying organized is undoubtedly the most valuable and practical skill I have acquired through the H&R Budget Challenge,” she finished.
Six Harker middle school girls were named finalists and one named a semifinalist in the 2019 ProjectCSGIRLS Competition for Middle School Girls, which encourages entrants to create technology projects that will improve people’s lives. Individual finalists were Deeya Viradia, grade 8, and Anika Pallapothu, grade 6, and team finalists were eighth graders Carol Wininger and Amiya Chokhawala and seventh graders Trisha Iyer and Anika Mantripragada. Saanvi Bhargava, grade 6, was named a semifinalist. This was the first year Harker students entered the competition.
Participants were tasked with creating a computer science or technology project that addressed a social problem in the categories of health, world safety, intelligent technology or inequality. Finalists are eligible to attend the ProjectCSGIRLS National Gala, which will be held June 8-9 in the Washington, D.C., metro area. National winners will be announced at this event, which also will include notable speakers and workshops.
At yesterday’s school meeting, Zachary Wong ’19 was presented with The Forgotten International’s 2019 Compassion Award for his work bringing water to impoverished regions of Nepal via the nonprofit organization Water In Nepal, which Wong founded and runs with other California high school students.
Founded in 2007, The Forgotten International works to alleviate extreme poverty around the world, especially for women and children, by supporting community organizations it believes will have the most impact.
Wong traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal, in December of last year to help construct a sedimentation tank for the village of Patlyachaap. The sedimentation tank filters out sludge that builds up in water sourced from a pond near the village and is expected to last up to 100 years.
After being presented with the award, Wong thanked his parents and teachers and reminded the students to “remain kind, remain compassionate, remain grounded.”
The business & entrepreneurship department launched two incubator courses this school year, and the young entrepreneurs have been going full tilt all year. Here is a quick look at the first year of these classes. Watch for a full length feature article on the classes in the winter issue of Harker Magazine in December 2019.
In summer 2017, Harker’s business and entrepreneurship department held an incubator class for high school entrepreneurs, one of the first in the nation. The class was an intensive, student-led and community-supported program in which student entrepreneurs received a seed grant, mentorship, academic curriculum and internal support from a student leadership team to help them develop and grow their startup companies. The class was so successful and well received it was converted into a full academic class for the 2018-19 school year. Read about the 2017 class here.
The two new academic incubator classes began in fall 2018: Honors Entrepreneurship: Startup Incubator 1 and Honors Entrepreneurship: Startup Incubator 2.
In Incubator 1, students created and commercialized their own product or service. “Teams are led through the Lean Startup processes of developing hypotheses about a business concept, testing those hypotheses, adapting and continually iterating,” said Michael Acheatel, business & entrepreneurship teacher. “Once students have validated their business concept hypothesis, they receive a seed grant to propel their business plan into reality, thereby learning business foundations in entrepreneurship, marketing, economics, finance and business operations firsthand. “
Incubator 2 is geared toward students who have already launched a company and are focused on growing their business. “Students are led through three-week long ‘sprints’ where students identify their individual goals and tasks at the beginning of the sprint and present a demo of their accomplishments at the end of the sprint,” said Acheatel.
Students in each of the courses receive coaching and mentorship from entrepreneurs, investors and business experts who visit the classes. Students also get out to visit with Bay Area startups and venture capitalists to experience entrepreneurship at the next level. “We had eight student companies complete the course this year and enrollment for next year is growing rapidly,” said Acheatel.
A key element in the classes was provided by Next47, a venture capital firm. The company supported the program as an essential part of education and donated $10,000 in venture funds. “We believe that entrepreneurial skills are life skills,” said Lak Ananth, CEO and managing partner of Next47. “Being passionate about an idea, taking the time to think through it, market it, and have the wherewithal to see it through – these are skills that are necessary to succeed in life. Exposing kids to this process is incredibly valuable. Even if these businesses don’t succeed, the process will inculcate in them the fire to keep getting better.”
Mentors are a critical element of the entire process and Phu Hoang has contributed his time to helping two of the ongoing ventures climb the ladder to success. He has been working with Mahi Kolla, grade 11, founder of The Minty Boutique, and Nishka Ayyar ’19 and Riya Gupta ’19, founders of of PromElle, to refine and channel their efforts as they expand their businesses.
“Mahi is an extraordinarily gifted young woman,” said Hoang. “She is hard-working, a very fast learner, and has tremendous passion for her company. It’s just so rare to see that at such a young age. What has been such a pleasure mentoring Mahi is that she can understand and soak in complex advice and suggestions and builds a plan to execute on them. I feel like my mentoring of Mahi is at the same level of strategic thinking and complexity as my mentoring of much older and more experienced founders of venture-backed companies.”
PromElle, Ayyar and Gupta’s venture, also has been around a couple of years. “PromElle is a more mature business than the Minty Boutique,” said Hoang, noting both women have now graduated. “They had done a lot of things right before I got involved. First of all, the idea of PromElle is brilliant and very needed. But they actually market-tested the concept by hosting a prom dress exchange at Harker when they were freshmen to test their idea. Most adult entrepreneurs don’t test their ideas that effectively. Once they got clear confirmation of the value that they can bring, they were able to get app development help at a very reasonable cost.”
Hoang, who holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was an early engineer at Yahoo, noted he has been working in technology all his life. “I enjoy working with entrepreneurs to help them realize their vision, build their products and grow their businesses. My son joined Harker as a freshman in 2017, and I got to see how advanced and entrepreneurial the kids are, so I reached out to Michael at some point to offer to contribute.”
This year, Incubator 1 startups included Sero, started by Cameron Jones ’19, an intelligent bike assistant with anti-theft and fitness tracking capabilities; PeerCoco, by Sayon Biswas ’19 and Nemo Yang ‘19, which is a peer-to-peer college consulting network for international high school students; GetTime, started by Claire Luo, grade 10, a student-focused time-management app that allows users to input tasks, set timers and track progress in a gamified manner; and PolyForm, the brainchild of Nakul Bajaj, grade 11, who is developing a platform for voters to answer polls and discuss policy at the local, state, and national level in civilized manner.
At the beginning of the year, these students identified problems they and other students face in daily life or that they see in the world. “They begin to assess the problem from a business perspective by looking at how these problems are currently being solved (competitive analysis) and identifying who has these problems (market analysis),” said Acheatel. Students then conduct customer interviews to validate their assumptions, then begin the solution ideation process to conceptualize their proposed solution, noted Acheatel.
In February, students pulled their projects together and pitched to a panel of investors for funding to develop a prototype of their product, known as the minimum viable product (MVP). “All four [Incubator 1] companies successfully raised seed funding and have since developed their prototypes,” Acheatel noted. “Now that the entrepreneurs have had three months to develop their products, they will pitching to investors in late May for funding to fully launch their companies,” he said.
There were also four Incubator 2 companies. The Minty Boutique, a luxe stationery company that utilizes unique designs and functional products to cater to the #BOSS lifestyle; PromElle, the first peer-to-peer marketplace for teen fashion where teen girls can lend/rent or buy/sell formal, party and everyday wear; Nanoseed, developed by Jason Huang ’19 and Suraj Pakala ’19, a nonprofit organization in the field of microfinance that empowers rural Chinese farmers to form cooperatives and build sustainable businesses; and PillBot, being developed by Johnny Wang ’19 as an automated solution to medicine dispensary with a tamper-proof design and overdose protection.
Each Incubator 2 company pitched at sHarker Tank – BECon for $15K in prize money provided by venture firm Next47. Read all about that effort here.
PromElle took first place at sHarker Tank BEcon and presented at the Association for Corporate Growth Silicon Valley’s 2019 GROW awards. Officers are currently in communication with SharkTank about appearing on their show.
The Minty Boutique took second place at sHarker Tank BEcon and was written up in a blog post by Stukent. Kolla is excited about the year’s progress. “In August through September, we launched our first iteration of our academic planners which sold out within a week,” she said. “From there, we reached out Harker to become the new manufacturer of the Harker academic planners. We are currently working with the freshmen class dean and the Office of Communication to finalize this partnership.”
PillBot took third place at sHarker Tank BEcon and received funding and support from various nationwide competitions. Wang found the class valuable for his development needs. “The class provided a good framework for the students to build and grow their businesses,” he said. “The curriculum gives us enough flexibility so we can focus on individual business goals. The majority of instruction is not done by lecturing but one-on-one mentoring with both teachers within the B&E department and external mentors. By leveraging on the Harker alumni/parent network, we are able to learn much more than just listening to lectures.”
Nanoseed earned fourth place at sHarker Tank BEcon and has grown to more than 20 branches. It held a benefit concert that raised $9,000 to fund loans. “To me though, what was most memorable about the class was the variety of people we get to interact with,” said Huang, “from lawyers and mentors coming in to talk to us, helping us with legal or financial issues, to us being able to pitch directly to real investors who provided valuable feedback on how we could improve our organization.” Read this 2017 article on the company’s inception.
The students also pitched to Ananth and principals at Next47’s headquarters in Palo Alto and visited Tesla and Manticore Games.
The class continues in the fall with new and returning entrepreneurs. Watch for the comprehensive article in the winter issue of Harker Magazine, coming out in December!
Harker’s A Quiz Bowl team – juniors Rohan Cherukuri, Jeffrey Fung, Kyle Li and Arun Sundaresan – spent Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta, where they finished in the top 5 percent at the High School National Championship Tournament for National Academic Quiz Tournaments. Coached by Sundaresan’s father, Sankar Sundaresan, the team tied for 19th place overall out of 336 teams. After qualifying for the playoffs, the team notched three straight wins before losing a close contest to Detroit Catholic Central, historically a very strong performer at the national level.
In another notable achievement, sophomore Daniel Wang received the Sophomore Rising Star award for his performance at the event.
It is with deep sadness that we share the news that Jason Yu ’12 passed away in a traffic accident in Seattle on May 6, 2019; he was 23. Yu was involved in swimming, water polo, robotics and more during his three years at Harker’s upper school. His obituary can be found here.
Yu’s parents, Charles and Sharon, wrote, “Jason loved nature and being outdoors. His life was full of adventures and excitement. Jason’s passion outside work was to ‘ride my bike and fly my drone.’ His humor and positive attitude were infectious. Jason loved his family. He was especially protective of his little brother, William. He wrote on the first page of his notebook in Chinese “没有什么比家更重要!” (“Nothing is more important than family!”) He kept the notebook next to his computer at work. Jason will always be dearly loved by his friends and family!
“Over 100 friends and family attended a memorial service for Jason in Seattle on May 10, including colleagues from Amazon and classmates from WAB, The Harker School and Purdue University. We are grateful for the outpouring of love, support and prayers from everyone who knew Jason. We LOVE and MISS you so much, Jason!!!”
A memorial service in the Bay Area to celebrate Yu’s life will be held on Saturday, June 8 at 10:30 a.m. at the Alameda Family Funeral Home, 12341 Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road, Saratoga, CA 95070. In lieu of flowers, tax-deductible donations may be made to the “Jason Yu Memorial Scholarship in Computer Science” at https://giving.purdue.edu/inMemoryofJasonYu
Please send messages to Yu’s father, Charles Yu, at xiyu@yahoo.com or cards to Nicole Hall at The Harker School, Nicole Hall, 500 Saratoga Ave., San Jose CA 95129. Contact communications@harker.org with questions.