Owning it on the field

New coach has big goals for LHHS football

Story by KYLE KLEMME I Photo by DANNY FULGENCIO

THE LAKE HIGHLANDS WILDCAT football team has been through a bit of a rollercoaster in the past decade. The team’s best record was 10-3, that was in 2008.

Since then, the Wildcats have only had three winning seasons. Lonnie Jordan was hired in the spring of 2015, bringing with him a new, and seemingly winning, era.

“We cannot have built in excuses for failure,” he says. “Whether it is in the classroom, on the field or at home... No excuses — own it.”

His first two seasons were rocky, as is often the case with new teams. But this year the Wildcats almost bested notoriously hard-to-beat Skyline, a signal of a new day. Jordan is focused on building a program that will sustain generations.

“Our current challenge is to create an atmosphere and culture that is magnetic,” he says. “We want these young families and players to yearn to be an LH Wildcat.”

Team Captain Hill Hardin, a senior, has seen progress under the new coach’s guidance.

“We have a great offseason that prepares the kids for the next season,” he says, “and it’ll only keep getting better.”

Jordan also has an eye on his players’ futures, luring in college scouts with recruitment packages and highlight reels.

“I want what our kids want, so if I have a player that wants to play at the next level and has the ability to do so, then that just became my passion,” Jordan says.

ANNIE CLARK (a.k.a. St. Vincent)

From her attire to her chord progressions, everything Annie Clark touches is stylized. She took on the moniker St. Vincent when she launched her music career and never looked back. Although she did come back to Lake Highlands in 2015 to serve tacos briefly when sister Amy Clark Savoie first opened Resident Taqueria at the corner of Audelia and Walnut Hill. Clark released her fifth album, “Masseduction,” in October to critical raves. “It’s bright melancholy and it’s a lot of sorrow, but sorrow you can jam to,” she told NPR.

Three things to know

1

All of St. Vincent’s work has been critically praised, but her self-titled fourth record was the talk of the town, named album of the year by Entertainment Weekly, Slant Magazine and The Guardian, and earning her a Grammy in 2014. She was the first solo female artist to win the Best Alternative Album award in more than 20 years.

2

Her struggle with mental health is a constant theme in her music. Her new song “Pills” highlights her search for the right drug to settle her overactive mind. “I didn’t have coping mechanisms for tremendous anxiety and depression. I was trying to get through pharmaceutically,” she told The New Yorker in August.

She stood in for Kurt Cobain in 2014, performing lead vocals and guitar on “Lithium” with the remaining members of Nirvana at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

3

STAND-OUT STUDENTS

Jackson Allen and Jonathan Randall were named National Merit semfinalists after they scored in the top 1 percent of the 1.6 million American high school students taking the PSAT/NMSQT test as juniors. They are now eligible to compete for 7,500 scholarship awards worth $32 million. Cale Kimball, Robert Reed, Scott Griffin, Onyedikachi “Oby” Uche, Noah Henry and the late Austin Silva all earned Commended status for their test score achievements. Silva was also named a National Hispanic Scholar.

Neighborhood students Kate Moseley, Deonta Taylor, Riley Lewis, Elizabeth Chandler, George Chandler, Reggie Mensah, Barbara Raygoza, Priscilla Beltran and Cullen Bryant gather once per month as members of the Mayor’s Rising Star Council. Appointed by their local council member, the committee aims to get the youth perspective on city issues while inspiring a love of civic service. “It goes both ways. They come in and educate us on how things work, then they take what we say and draft things and make things happen,” says Bryant, a Lake Highlands High School junior.

Tamdan Khuu and Preston Eggert earned the Character Counts awards from the Lake Highlands Exchange Club last month. The club also honored Rachel Obenhaus and Luca Gisellu as Youth of the Month.

Tragedy At Lhhs

Azeneth Pina was fiercely loyal to her family and her dedicated to her church. The 14-year-old Lake Highlands High School freshmen was killed in October. According to police, a group of teens were driving around Whitehurst Drive, playing with a gun, when it accidentally discharged and fired a close-range shot into Pina. The teens panicked and drove to the creek to dump the weapon before taking the teenager to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. The unnamed 16-year-old boy who fired the gun is facing manslaughter charges and was taken to Lone Star Juvenile Detention Center. He is not a Richardson ISD student. Pina’s youth minister created a GoFundMe account to help her family cover funeral expenses (just search her name).

Jack Stewart, LHHS class of 2013, was killed in a 2014 car accidentduring his freshman year at Baylor. He was honored at the Lake Highlands Area Choirs Fall Concert in October when classmate Kelsey Hohnstein was commissioned by Stewart’s parents, Patrick and Ann, to create a new choral piece for the A Cappella Choir in memory of Jack.

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