Anna Weirich, grade 10, competed at the prestigious Stanford Invitational over the weekend and showed why she is one of the top runners in the state. Weirich finished second among 186 D2 state runners, posting the best sophomore time of the day; she had one of the top 10 best times for any runner in the six division invitational. Weirich rejoins the rest of the Harker runners this Thursday at Crystal Springs Cross Country Park for the first WBAL meet of the year, followed by the Artichoke Invitational in Half Moon Bay over the weekend.
Girls Water Polo
The girls water polo team stayed hot as they picked up two more wins last week. In an 8-2 win over Wilcox, Cas Ruedy, grade 11, led the team with two goals, while Arushi Madan, grade 11, had 14 saves. Later in the week, the girls defeated Santa Clara 7-2. The 12-3 Eagles travel to Monta Vista on Tuesday, host Milpitas on Thursday and compete in the Milpitas Tournament over the weekend.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team started last week with a 196-261 win over Sacred Heart Prep, led by Sophie Zhang Murphy, grade 9, who shot a 36 to earn medalist honors. Later in the week, the Eagles defeated Notre Dame SJ and Mercy Burlingame 184-233-254 in a league tri-match. Natalie Vo, grade 10, and Tina Xu, grade 9, tied for medalist each shooting a 35. The girls have a busy week as they take on Notre Dame Belmont on Monday, Menlo on Tuesday and King’s Academy and Mercy Burlingame in a tri-match on Wednesday.
Girls Tennis
The girls tennis team went 1-1 last week as they fell to a tough Menlo team 7-0 before defeating Notre Dame Belmont 7-0 later in the week. The Eagles host Castilleja on Tuesday and Sacred Heart Prep on Thursday.
Girls Volleyball
Last week, the girls volleyball team fell to Menlo in 4 games before defeating Mercy Burlingame in an exciting five-game set. The Eagles head into the week with a 6-8 record and will face off with Mercy San Francisco on Tuesday at home before competing at the Notre Dame Belmont Tiger Cup over the weekend.
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team started last week with a 10-8 loss to Wilcox, but finished the week with a 16-3 victory over Santa Clara. This week, the 7-8 Eagles travel to Monta Vista on Tuesday, host Milpitas on Thursday and travel to Los Gatos on Saturday.
Football
After a bye week, the 4-2 football team hosts Elsie Allen at Homecoming on Friday.
Alumni Sports News
Great result for Katherine Zhu, last week as she levered UC Berkeley into fourth place with her most excellent second place tie!
Earlier this month, Wei Chen of the Shanghai World Foreign Language Academy paid a two-week visit to Harker for this year’s teacher exchange with Harker. An English teacher at SWFLA, Chen visited the lower, middle and upper school campuses during his visit, viewing several English and Mandarin classes at each campus.
While at the lower school, Chen taught students about extracurricular activities at SWFLA, as well as other aspects of life in China, including food and holidays. He also brought letters and poems written by his students at SWFLA. The Harker students happily wrote responses to the letters from their friends overseas. “[My students] were super curious about everything – about my trip to Harker, about the United States and about peers of their own age,” Chen said. “I was really glad that the Harker students offered to share so many things about their school and their life and themselves.”
Chen spent the second week of his visit at the upper school, where he taught Mandarin in Xiuyu Gao’s and Shaun Jahshan’s classes, sat in on several English classes and cheered on the girls volleyball team. Not one to squander a trip to California, Chen made time on weekends to visit places including Napa and San Francisco, where he ventured to Chinatown and Coit Tower. “It was really amazing to see get a bird’s view of the whole city of San Francisco from the top of the tower,” he said.
Rajiv Movva ’18 was named a Davidson Fellow by the Davidson Institute for Talent Development to develop his project “SNPpet: Deep Learning the Human Epigenome Reveals Regulatory Sequence Patterns and Genomic Mechanisms of Disease.” Only 20 students are so honored nationwide each year. Movva is off to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall. Check out the great article about the honor and Movva’s plans and read his official biography on the Davidson Institute web page.
The article notes, “Movva built a computer model that can use a particular DNA sequence as input to predict gene expression level as output, which sheds light on the poorly understood ‘dark genome.’ In practice, Movva’s model could bring clinical meaning to large patient-specific DNA sequence datasets that are currently hard to decode. This advanced timeframe can allow patients to make lifestyle changes or be treated far in advance, when the disease has little potential to have severe consequence. Movva’s model can also give researchers a clearer picture of disease by flagging genes that are abnormally regulated, prioritizing better targets for drugs and other treatments that remain to be discovered.”
Davidson Scholarships are awarded to young scholars—each must be 18 or younger to receive the grant. Categories include science, technology, engineering, mathematics, music, literature, philosophy and Outside the Box. Projects must contribute a work recognized as an outstanding accomplishment by experts in the field that has the potential to benefit society.
Movva will receive a $10,000 grant to assist him with his research. The 2018 Davidson Fellows will be honored at a reception in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 28. Amy Jin ’18 also received a Davidson Fellowship; read about it in Harker News
Harker preschoolers learned about prehistoric art, then made some of their own, last week. Michael Ear, the new art teacher at the preschool, led the expedition.
“To begin the year, I wanted to talk about the earliest and oldest painting ever done by humans,” said Ear. “Saying that this was about 35,000 years ago doesn’t mean much without the context of what life was like, so I started describing how there were no cars and no homes to live in. The people lived in caves for shelter and to tell stories, they painted on the walls.
“The examples we looked at were of a pig-deer eating berries and handprints. I had the students guess what they were looking at, but the paintings were hard to see because it was so long ago. I suggested we go into a time machine to see the paintings fresh on the walls of a cave. But some of them needed reference for what a time machine is, so we saw a clip of Back to the Future and that gave them an idea of what it would be like to travel through time.
“We turned off the art studio lights, grabbed a lantern and a flashlight and traveled back in time – and we saw a cave in the corner of the room! We entered and looked for some kind of painting similar to what we saw in the present. After 30 seconds of searching with a flashlight, the kids shouted, ‘There!’ and we found a handprint and a bison. It was glowing! I asked if they also wanted to paint their handprints on the walls and they used similar glow-in-the-dark paints to do so. We left the cave and returned to the future with our new paintings from the cave to take home and make glow in the dark,” he finished. What a great outing!
The football team dominated visiting Lowell on Friday to the tune of 50-0. It was also Senior Night, and the Seniors had quite a night! Anthony Meissner, grade 12, connected with Jared Anderson, grade 12, on a 58-yard scoring play, and with Mitchell Granados, grade 12, on a 64-yard touchdown. Meissner also scored on two rushing touchdowns. Marcus Tymous, grade 12, also had two rushing scores, with Ayush Vyas, grade 12, adding another rushing TD. In addition, Vyas recovered a fumble and Sid Dudyala, grade 11, intercepted his second pass of the year. The Eagles take this week off before returning for Homecoming next Friday, Oct. 5, against Elsie Allen High.
Girls Water Polo
The girls water polo team stayed hot as it defeated Lynbrook 4-3 and Cupertino 11-2 last week, before going 3-1 at the Watsonville Tournament over the weekend. The girls racked up 10 straight wins over the last few weeks before losing in the finals of the tournament. In the win over Lynbrook, Alicia Xu, grade 11, Sammi Yanovsky, grade 12, Cas Ruedy, grade 11, and Anna Arnaudova, grade 10, each scored. Abby Wisdom, grade 12, led the way for the Eagles with three goals in the win over Cupertino, and led the team with 15 goals throughout the weekend tournament. The Eagles look to continue their excellent play as they host Wilcox this Tuesday at 4 p.m. and Santa Clara this Thursday at 6:15 p.m.
Girls Volleyball
The girls volleyball team fell to Sacred Heart Prep 3-0 early last week before dropping a heartbreaking match 2-3 against Notre Dame Belmont. This week, the Eagles travel to Menlo on Tuesday before hosting Mercy Burlingame on Thursday.
Cross Country
The young Eagle runners stole the day at the Pacific Tiger Invitational at the University of the Pacific on Saturday. The frosh-soph girls team, led by the race winner Anna Weirich, grade 10, trophied with a third place finish out of 42 teams. Sophomores Aditya Singhvi and Arya Maheshwari led the boys frosh-soph team to a fourth place finish. Weirich defended her individual race title, winning last year by four seconds, this year by 50 seconds. Senior Ryan Adolf continued to shine as the varsity boys leader as he ran 17:44 in the golf course 5k run, improving by 1:00 over last year’s run. Adolf also represented Harker in the “Mascot Dance Contest”. Weirich will next run Saturday in the prestigious Stanford Invitational cross country meet. (Update provided by Coach Scott Chisam.)
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team took care of Fremont 13-9 last week before suffering a tough 10-11 loss to Cupertino in OT. The Eagles take on Wilcox this Tuesday at 6:15 p.m. and Santa Clara this Thursday at 4 p.m., both at the Singh Aquatic Center.
Girls Tennis
Last week, the girls tennis team took a tough 3-4 loss to Sacred Heart Prep, but bounced back to defeat Crystal Springs Uplands 5-2. This week, the Eagles face off with Menlo on Tuesday and Notre Dame Belmont on Thursday.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team is back in action today against Sacred Heart Prep, followed by a tri-match against Mercy Burlingame and Notre Dame San Jose on Wednesday.
The football team dominated visiting Lowell on Friday to the tune of 50-0. It was also Senior Night, and the Seniors had quite a night! Anthony Meissner, grade 12, connected with Jared Anderson, grade 12, on a 58-yard scoring play, and with Mitchell Granados, grade 12, on a 64-yard touchdown. Meissner also scored on two rushing touchdowns. Marcus Tymous, grade 12, also had two rushing scores, with Ayush Vyas, grade 12, adding another rushing TD. In addition, Vyas recovered a fumble and Sid Dudyala, grade 11, intercepted his second pass of the year. The Eagles take this week off before returning for Homecoming next Friday, Oct. 5, against Elsie Allen High.
Girls Water Polo
The girls water polo team stayed hot as it defeated Lynbrook 4-3 and Cupertino 11-2 last week, before going 3-1 at the Watsonville Tournament over the weekend. The girls racked up 10 straight wins over the last few weeks before losing in the finals of the tournament. In the win over Lynbrook, Alicia Xu, grade 11, Sammi Yanovsky, grade 12, Cas Ruedy, grade 11, and Anna Arnaudova, grade 10, each scored. Abby Wisdom, grade 12, led the way for the Eagles with three goals in the win over Cupertino, and led the team with 15 goals throughout the weekend tournament. The Eagles look to continue their excellent play as they host Wilcox this Tuesday at 4 p.m. and Santa Clara this Thursday at 6:15 p.m.
Girls Volleyball
The girls volleyball team fell to Sacred Heart Prep 3-0 early last week before dropping a heartbreaking match 2-3 against Notre Dame Belmont. This week, the Eagles travel to Menlo on Tuesday before hosting Mercy Burlingame on Thursday.
Cross Country
The young Eagle runners stole the day at the Pacific Tiger Invitational at the University of the Pacific on Saturday. The frosh-soph girls team, led by the race winner Anna Weirich, grade 10, trophied with a third place finish out of 42 teams. Sophomores Aditya Singhvi and Arya Maheshwari led the boys frosh-soph team to a fourth place finish. Weirich defended her individual race title, winning last year by four seconds, this year by 50 seconds. Senior Ryan Adolf continued to shine as the varsity boys leader as he ran 17:44 in the golf course 5k run, improving by 1:00 over last year’s run. Adolf also represented Harker in the “Mascot Dance Contest”. Weirich will next run Saturday in the prestigious Stanford Invitational cross country meet. (Update provided by Coach Scott Chisam.)
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team took care of Fremont 13-9 last week before suffering a tough 10-11 loss to Cupertino in OT. The Eagles take on Wilcox this Tuesday at 6:15 p.m. and Santa Clara this Thursday at 4 p.m., both at the Singh Aquatic Center.
Girls Tennis
Last week, the girls tennis team took a tough 3-4 loss to Sacred Heart Prep, but bounced back to defeat Crystal Springs Uplands 5-2. This week, the Eagles face off with Menlo on Tuesday and Notre Dame Belmont on Thursday.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team is back in action today against Sacred Heart Prep, followed by a tri-match against Mercy Burlingame and Notre Dame San Jose on Wednesday.
The football team dominated visiting Lowell on Friday to the tune of 50-0. It was also Senior Night, and the Seniors had quite a night! Anthony Meissner, grade 12, connected with Jared Anderson, grade 12, on a 58-yard scoring play, and with Mitchell Granados, grade 12, on a 64-yard touchdown. Meissner also scored on two rushing touchdowns. Marcus Tymous, grade 12, also had two rushing scores, with Ayush Vyas, grade 12, adding another rushing TD. In addition, Vyas recovered a fumble and Sid Dudyala, grade 11, intercepted his second pass of the year. The Eagles take this week off before returning for Homecoming next Friday, Oct. 5, against Elsie Allen High.
Girls Water Polo
The girls water polo team stayed hot as it defeated Lynbrook 4-3 and Cupertino 11-2 last week, before going 3-1 at the Watsonville Tournament over the weekend. The girls racked up 10 straight wins over the last few weeks before losing in the finals of the tournament. In the win over Lynbrook, Alicia Xu, grade 11, Sammi Yanovsky, grade 12, Cas Ruedy, grade 11, and Anna Arnaudova, grade 10, each scored. Abby Wisdom, grade 12, led the way for the Eagles with three goals in the win over Cupertino, and led the team with 15 goals throughout the weekend tournament. The Eagles look to continue their excellent play as they host Wilcox this Tuesday at 4 p.m. and Santa Clara this Thursday at 6:15 p.m.
Girls Volleyball
The girls volleyball team fell to Sacred Heart Prep 3-0 early last week before dropping a heartbreaking match 2-3 against Notre Dame Belmont. This week, the Eagles travel to Menlo on Tuesday before hosting Mercy Burlingame on Thursday.
Cross Country
The young Eagle runners stole the day at the Pacific Tiger Invitational at the University of the Pacific on Saturday. The frosh-soph girls team, led by the race winner Anna Weirich, grade 10, trophied with a third place finish out of 42 teams. Sophomores Aditya Singhvi and Arya Maheshwari led the boys frosh-soph team to a fourth place finish. Weirich defended her individual race title, winning last year by four seconds, this year by 50 seconds. Senior Ryan Adolf continued to shine as the varsity boys leader as he ran 17:44 in the golf course 5k run, improving by 1:00 over last year’s run. Adolf also represented Harker in the “Mascot Dance Contest”. Weirich will next run Saturday in the prestigious Stanford Invitational cross country meet. (Update provided by Coach Scott Chisam.)
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team took care of Fremont 13-9 last week before suffering a tough 10-11 loss to Cupertino in OT. The Eagles take on Wilcox this Tuesday at 6:15 p.m. and Santa Clara this Thursday at 4 p.m., both at the Singh Aquatic Center.
Girls Tennis
Last week, the girls tennis team took a tough 3-4 loss to Sacred Heart Prep, but bounced back to defeat Crystal Springs Uplands 5-2. This week, the Eagles face off with Menlo on Tuesday and Notre Dame Belmont on Thursday.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team is back in action today against Sacred Heart Prep, followed by a tri-match against Mercy Burlingame and Notre Dame San Jose on Wednesday.
Harker’s new Rothschild Performing Arts Center (RPAC) and its 450-seat Patil Theater, along with the athletic center that opened last summer, were named winners in the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Structure Awards in the Education Project category.
The athletic center, which comprises 33,000 square feet and is a LEED Gold certified building, opened in August 2017, while the RPAC, boasting 53,000 square feet and on track for LEED Gold, opened in February 2018.
Ashley Gauba, grade 10, contributed to this report
The first business & entrepreneurship Crash Course event was held this week to tell incoming high school students how to get involved in the B.E. program. The officer team explained the purpose of each facet of the program, including TedX, BeCon, Podcast, Oeconomia, DECA and CareerConnect.
Speakers outlined the focus of each program, how to get involved and how to become an officer. The Crash Course also highlighted the benefit of involvement in each of these areas, and how they offer students endless opportunities and more exposure to different industries and fields.
At the end of the event, the officers held a Q&A session to allow students to talk more in-depth about programs they were interested in and ask questions about how they could become more involved.
“I really liked how they explained the different opportunities for each event and that really interested me and got me wondering how I could contribute to each separate program,” said William Chen, grade 9. Fellow freshmen Tina Zhong noted, “Everyone explained the events and the program really well.
Overall, the event was a success in introducing underclassmen to the myriad B.E. programs Harker offers, and gave students insights to the industries and opportunities the B.E. department has to offer.
Environmental activist Jackie Nunez visited the upper school today for a special assembly on the use of plastic and how disposable plastic products – straws, in particular – are discarded in the ocean, where they cause harm to aquatic life and enter the food chain after being consumed by animals. Students watched a pair of films about the dangers of plastic waste and learned how they can help reduce consumption and harmful disposal of plastic, including using fewer straws and requesting not to have drinks served with them at restaurants.
Later, Nunez toured the upper school lunchroom and discussed with students various ways ways in which single-use plastics could be reduced on campus, such as proposing a plastic-free day for the school and carrying their own utensils. She also left them with cards they could use to convince local establishments to only provide straws on request, as well as 100 stainless steel straws to share with their fellow students.