Fall sports are in progress and although some starts have been rough, teams are pulling together to put their best efforts forth as the season matures!
Boys Water Polo
The boys water polo team dropped its home opener to Lynbrook 12-11 in a heartbreaking overtime loss on Tuesday. Next up for the Eagles is a trip to Fremont High on Thursday, followed by the Connolly Tournament this weekend.
Girls Water Polo
Playing under the lights for its home opener, the girls water polo team fell 6-4 to visiting Lynbrook. Abigail Wisdom, grade 10, led the Eagles with two goals. Harker travels to Monta Vista on Thursday, then competes in the Charger Varsity Invitational at Wilcox on Friday.
Girls Golf
The girls golf team lost in its season opener to Valley Christian last week, but Katherine Zhu, grade 11, was the medalist shooting an even 36. Katelyn Vo, grade 9, was also outstanding, shooting a 2-over-par 38. On Tuesday, the Eagles bounced back with a convincing 203-301 league victory over Notre Dame San Jose. The Eagles were led once again by Zhu and Vo, each shooting a 1-under to tie for medalist honors. The girls golf team will compete next at the Helen Lengfeld Memorial Tournament at Poplar Creek Golf Course on Monday.
Football
The Eagles suffered a tough 17-14 loss at Prospect last Friday. Will Park, grade 12, led the way for Harker with 63-yards rushing and a TD. Come support the Eagles this Friday as they play their home opener against Menlo at 7 p.m.
Girls Volleyball
The girls volleyball team dropped a pair of matches last week bringing the team record to 2-6 in this early season. The Eagles fell to Monte Vista Christian and Presentation, both in three games. Harker travels to Valley Christian this Thursday.
Girls Tennis
Making the trip into the Central Valley, the girls tennis team opens its season this weekend at the California Girls Tennis Classic in Clovis.
Cross Country
The cross country team will officially start its season this Saturday at the Lowell Invitational in Golden Gate Park.
In August, Lawrence Li ’16 received a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics, an international programming competition held this year in the Russian city of Kazan. Li’s medal was one of three gold medals won by the United States team, which tied for first place with China and Russia. The event consisted of six problems, each worth up to 100 points. A minimum of 416 points was necessary to earn a gold medal.
One of five international science Olympiads (along with those in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology), the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) was started in 1989 to foster student interest in computer science. This year, 308 contestants from 80 countries participated in the competition.
Ameek Singh ’16 was recently named one of five Bay Area-based summer interns in the Bank of America Student Leaders program. This paid opportunity develops real-world work and leadership skills through hands-on experience at a local nonprofit organization. Singh’s internship will take place at Junior Achievement, which helps students in grades K-12 with career readiness and entrepreneurship.
Singh and more than 200 other Student Leaders from across the country also were invited to attend the Student Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C., from July 10-15. There, the students discussed how to increase diversity and inclusiveness as well as how to positively impact communities through cross-sector collaboration.
San Jose Mercury News – June 22, 2016: Harker volleyball coach Mike Aitken, rising seniors Andrew Gu and Ray Song, and rising sophomores Charlie Molin and Chris Gong are noted for winning Coach of the Year, Juniors of the Year and Freshmen of the Year, respectively, in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League’s El Camino Division.
San Jose Mercury News – June 22, 2016: 2016 graduate Vineet Kosaraju is mentioned in this story about MathAndCoding, an organization he co-founded with his friend, Nikhil Cheerla, a rising senior at Monta Vista High School.
San Jose Councilman Chappie Jones’ Blog: The councilman’s blog details how Harker helped with the resurfacing of Rebecca Way, which is located near the middle school campus.
San Jose Mercury News – June 9, 2016: Rising senior Niki Iyer’s third-place finish at the CIF state track and field meet is featured in this roundup of the event.
San Jose Mercury News – June 7, 2016: Model United Nations coach Carol Green is mentioned for being awarded a Diamond Coach Award from the National Speech & Debate Association’s Honor Society.
San Jose Mercury News – June 1, 2016: Rising sophomore Rithvik Panchapakesan is featured in a story about being one of the country’s 66 winners in the H&R Block Budget Challenge.
Congratulations to Model United Nations coach Carol Green, who recently was named a Diamond Coach Award winner by the National Speech & Debate Association. Green was one of 22 coaches who received the award, which recognizes success and time served.
“Model UN students still earn points towards degrees in the National Speech & Debate Association,” said Green, who recently shifted roles and began coaching Model UN after several years as Harker’s speech and debate chair. “So I am still an active coach in the organization.” Green and 21 other Diamond Coach Award winners will be honored next week at the National Speech & Debate Tournament in Salt Lake City.
Michael Zhao, another 2016 graduate, was recently named a 2016 winner of a National Merit Scholarship, bringing the total number of winners to 13. Congratulations!
Update: June 9, 2016
Three more members of the Class of 2016 have won National Merit Scholarships, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced in early June. These college-sponsored scholarship winners are Stephanie Huang (Northwestern University), Joshua Hung (University of Southern California) and Jonathan Dai (Northwestern University).
This announcement brings the total number of National Merit Scholarship winners from the 2016 senior class to 12.
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The National Merit Scholarship Corporation just announced this year’s $2,500 National Merit Scholarship winners, and six Harker seniors are among them. Karen Qi, Evan Lohn, Vivek Bharadwaj, Victoria Ding, Anika Mohindra and Allison Wang were among 2,500 scholarship winners nationwide, who were chosen from more than 15,000 finalists.
Last month, seniors Emily Pan, Esther Wang and Vineet Kosaraju were among 1,000 students nationwide to receive corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards.
College-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners will be announced in June and July.
More than 1.5 million high school students were entered into this year’s National Merit Scholarship Program after taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in October 2014. Less than 1 percent of these students went on to the semifinal round of the competition, and 15,000 of those were named finalists. To be eligible for a National Merit Scholarship, semifinalists must demonstrate good academic standing, be recommended by a school official and receive scores on their SAT exams consistent with their performance on the qualifying tests. They must also complete an application that details the awards they’ve received, their extracurricular activities and leadership positions they have held.
La Oferta – May 26, 2016 (Spanish): Harker is mentioned in a story about the Rita Moreno California High School Musical Honors. Harker’s “Bye Bye Birdie” was nominated for Outstanding Overall Production.
San Jose Mercury News – May 18, 2016: Harker swimmer Vivian Wang, grade 10, is mentioned for her second place finish in the CCS finals, which qualified her for the state meet.
Patch Saratoga – May 12, 2016: Seniors Victoria Ding, Anika Mohindra and Evan Lohn are listed in a story about National Merit Scholarship winners from Saratoga, Los Gatos and Campbell.
Patch Cupertino – May 12, 2016: Senior Karen Qi is listed in a story about Cupertino residents who received National Merit Scholarships.
Daily Democrat — May 11, 2016: Senior Evan Lohn is named in a brief update about local National Merit Scholarship winners.
SmartBrief – May 11, 2016: Diane Main, upper school director of Learning, Innovation and Design (LID), authored this blog entry on managing student projects with the Doctopus add-on for Google Apps.
Last week, sophomore Shaya Zarkesh – via his company, Polyup, which he co-founded last fall – held an event at the upper school campus to help students develop computational thinking skills. “We were holding a workshop for students to explore searching algorithms through a presentation and a set of problems that they worked on in teams,” Zarkesh said.
Polyup teaches students “how to design efficient algorithms to solve computational problems,” he explained. “These are the sort of problems that engineers, physicists and data scientists face every day.” The company achieves this by using chatbots designed to suit the learning needs of each student. Polyup also employs what it calls “playgrounds” on mobile devices to allow users to apply computational thinking concepts to solving a variety of problems.
The company was co-founded by Zarkesh, renowned math professor Yahya Tabesh and entrepreneur Shahin Hedayat. Workshops similar to the one held at Harker have been held by Tabesh at The Nueva School, which Zarkesh said were a “huge success.” More info is available at the company’s website.
The 2016 Physics Bowl wrapped up in May, and Harker placed second in its region in Division II (for second-year physics students) and was ranked 122 worldwide. Each year, about 10,000 students participate in the competition, which consists of a 40-question timed test. Harker students who tested for this year’s Physics Bowl were Akshay Ravoor, Ayush Pancholy, Cindy Wang, Enya Lu, Katherine Tian, Kaushik Shiavakumar, Mathew Mammen, Nishant Ravi and Rithvik Panchapakesan, all grade 9; Edgar Lin, Jimmy Lin, Neelesh Ramachandran, Shaya Zarkesh and Swapnil Garg, all grade 10; and David Zhu, Manan Shah, Misha Ivkov, Peter Wu and Steven Cao, all grade 11.
The final unit of study for upper school Spanish 1 students is learning language related to food and restaurants. Upper school Spanish teacher Diana Moss tries to expose her students to cuisine from Spanish-speaking countries other than Mexico, which is already very popular in California. In previous years, her students have enjoyed lunch at local Peruvian, Salvadoran and Cuban restaurants to learn about Hispanic cuisine in an authentic setting.
This year during parent conferences, Moss learned that Harker parent Ivette Meissner (Anthony, grade 9) was born in Cuba and was raised learning to cook traditional Cuban cuisine by her grandmother. After years of experience, she now has her own cooking business (www.cookingbyivette.com) and offered to prepare a luncheon for the Spanish 1 students featuring a variety of Cuban dishes.
On May 11, Meissner hosted all 28 students at her home in Willow Glen, where she prepared ropa vieja (shredded beef in a savory tomato sauce), roast pork, arroz con gris (black beans cooked in white rice), croquetas de jamón (ham croquettes), tostones (fried plantains) and pasteles (pastries of guava and coconut) along with non-alcoholic mojitos. She also shared with students the story of how her father ended up working in sugar cane fields in Cuba when the government had him fired because he wanted to come to the U.S. He eventually was able to immigrate to the U.S. when Ivette was 11 months old.
The students greatly enjoyed their off-campus outing, but even more the opportunity to experience a new cuisine and learn about Cuban culture.