Taking the final bow

Varsity Dance heads off to Nationals March 1

With a sixth place finish at the UDA Chicago land Competition, Dance has finished their season and works towards their NDA National Competition at Orlando March 1. The team will be competing in the Medium Varsity Jazz & Pom divisions, following their third place in Pom and fourth in Jazz from the 2022 season. Junior and varsity dance captain Gabriella Kajmakoski is optimistic about the team’s chance at Orlando.

“I’m really excited. I feel like we’ve been working hard this year and we have more of a shot than we did last year,” Kajmakoski said. “This year we have a new coach. She’s a lot more fun and understanding of where we’re at, and that makes us and the team a lot more confident going into nationals.”

Boys’ Swim and Dive: Reclaim the fame

seamus keegan page editor

Boys’ Swim took second last Saturday at Sectionals, losing to Lake Central. After losing their 36-year streak last year, they were disappointed that they weren’t able to recover. Cavin McNulty, sophomore, says he had a good season but hopes to improve his breaststroke

“That event is kind of my Achilles heel,” he said. “I can always get better, so that’s one of my main goals for next season.”

Boys’ Dive has only one diver, Declan Taylor, junior. Taylor says that while it can be lonely by himself, it is nice to get a lot of oneon-one instruction from his coach.

“We made regionals freshman year,” Taylor said. “I’m hoping to make it to regionals again this year and then hopefully state.”

Declan placed second at regionals Feb. 21 and will advance to State this weekend.

The wrestling team finishes with a 11-7 record

Wrestling: The last wrangle

lauren hoogeveen

story editor

After sending junior Chris Bohn and seniors Lex Borrero and Ezekiel Gomez to Semi-State, the wrestling team moved into postseason. Working on their individual skills for the rest of winter, they are mainly focusing on working towards their goals for next year and correcting common critiques they received throughout the season.

A couple team favorites from the season was when the team did hot yoga during morning practice in the wrestling room and basketball 3v3s after conditioning. His last season of high school wrestling ever, two of Borrero’s favorite moments from his senior season was when the wrestling team beat Highland during a dual meet and when he won the Lake County Championship.

“My team was hyped up the whole time,” Borrero said. “The whole team was loud during the meet, so the rivalry made it better.”

With the help of choreographer Jillian Zagorski and first-year Varsity Dance Coach Elyse Skalka, the team has been relentlessly working during their practices, focusing on their strength in motion and precision of each step. Due to minor injuries posing a rocky start at the beginning of the season, the girls have been playing catch-up during the last few weeks.

“Our practices have been more focused on the specific details that the national judges look for,” Coach Skalka said. “I keep pushing them every practice and every time they take

Munster hockey heads to state

seamus keegan page editor

Two years ago, the Munster Hockey Club took first place at their state tournament. They say it was a great experience and hope to reclaim their victory this year.

“We’re practicing hard, and spending time looking over a lot of old film to make sure we’re prepared,” Joey Campagna, senior, said.

The team has games once or twice every weekend, and occasionally a couple of times a week. Members don’t have to attend every game, but if they want to qualify for state they do have to attend a certain amount of practice.

“We play Indiana teams, but we also play teams that are like in the Chicago suburbs,” TJ Nyhan, junior, said. “So we’ve played Lincoln Way and we also played Mount Carmel.” the floor to be more confident, more precise and to enter their ‘Beast Modes’. Clean, crisp movements have to be achieved in unison to make our routine pop.”

TJ says that while the team does have seven seniors leaving this year, they also have a decent amount of new players that he hopes will fill the void.

As her third year on the MHS dance team, junior and varsity dance captain Anna Andello has high expectations on the big stage this year, hoping to demonstrate what the dance team is capable of on a grander scale. She relays the team’s goals moving forwards towards nationals.

“There’re many goals we’ve set as a team. Heading to nationals, we mainly want to come off that stage knowing it was our best performance and have no regrets,” Andello said. “Winning nationals or not, we are doing this for us and to represent Munster.”

The team performs their last dance at the IHSDTA state competition March 11, concluding their season until call outs and audition clinics start back up in April. Coach Skalka honors the girl’s hard work this season and looks forward to many years of coaching to come.

“It has been a great year so far; I have the honor of coaching some of the best students at the high school. These girls are extremely talented and dedicated to this sport at all levels,” Coach Skalka said. “Every single dancer on the team has improved vastly since tryouts last June. I am so proud of this program and I can’t wait to see them take the stage at nationals.”

“We definitely want to end the season on a high note,” Campagna said.

One thing that separates hockey from other sports is the fact that they aren’t a school-sponsored sport, but instead a club. While most of the boys wish they were endorsed by the school, being a club does have its benefits. “Being a club sport allows us to recruit from other schools,” Campagna said. “That makes us a better team as a whole.”

reena alsakaji & dorothy lakshmanamurthy editor-in-chief & page editor

This story was brought to our attention by Lita Cleary, Paragon’s editor. From that point, we reached out to Pam Cleary and others involved. Mrs. Jovanka Cvitkovich, director of exceptional needs, is not permitted to disclose any names, and we did not receive any from her.

Mrs. Pam Cleary had long felt that phys ical education was difficult for kids with disabilities—but she had also long known that her son Nathan Cleary, of all kids, loved to swim.

She was informed about an incident with her son, who is a freshman, back in December. Nathan had struggled to get out of the water during PE. Mrs. Cleary has two sons with autism, but she had pushed for her younger son Nathan to get the op portunity to swim in the way her older son had not been able to. Nathan, who is nonverbal, swam fine, but aids nearby had to get a chair to get him out of the water, which he ended up sitting on, the water rising up just below his head.