North Pointe - Issue 15 - May 4, 2018

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ON CAMPUS PAGE 4

Parents Club holds fashion show at the Yacht Club to raise money for senior scholarships.

MARIAH LOPER & JORDAN CRAIGHEAD

NORTH

GROSSE POINTE NORTH HIGH SCHOOL

UPCOMING

EVENTS

SAT TESTING Saturday, May 5 at 8 a.m. in the gym AP TESTING Monday, May 7 through Friday, May 18 at First English Lutheran Church SPRING CHOIR CONCERT Thursday, May 17 at 7 p.m. in the PAC

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IF HAVE NO

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SINCE 1968

Junior goes to bat for yellow ball inclusion By Lindsey Ramsdell & Alex Harring SENIOR ASSISTANT EDITORS After three years of fighting for a waiver that would allow him to continue playing the sport that he loves, junior Ryan Huizdos has set a precedent that will help kids nationwide with vision impairments play Little League baseball. Huizdos has albinism, a recessive genetic condition which causes serious visual impairments in the people that it affects, rendering him legally blind. Because of this, participating in sports was difficult growing up. He uses an ROLB1Y baseball, a traditional baseball colored yellow, to make it easier for him to spot the moving object against its surroundings. For his first few years of Grosse Pointe Woods-Shores Little League, his father, John Huizdos, said the coaches, players and umpires all allowed him to use this ball when at bat. This changed when he was picked to be on the tournament team in 2015, and was told the ball was not up to national regulations and would not be allowed to use it in a tournament. “It’s the same size and the same weight and everything, it’s just a different color,” Ryan said. “Being legally blind there’s a lot of challenges that I have to face that a lot of average people don’t face, and one of those is playing sports. It’s hard to play a lot of sports. I’ve always loved baseball my whole life and I’ve always wanted to play it like anybody else, but it’s challenging This tournament set off what would become a long process of legal action against the national Little League association to get a permanent waiver for Huizdos to use his ball. John said that while he and his wife were supportive of Ryan, it was ultimately Ryan’s decision to pursue fighting the rules at the national level. They took the case to the U.S. District Attorney’s office in Detroit, and the case was picked up by the first assistant district attorney Saima Mohsin. “Ryan’s mom and I talked to him and asked, ‘what do you want to do? Because this is about you, you’re going to be in the spotlight and you’re gonna spearhead it,’ and it was totally his initiative, what he wanted to do. Ryan had said it’s not just for him because at that time he only had a couple years left to play,” John said. “He was more

"WHEN YOU'RE DOING

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ALWAYS GOING TO BE

FULFILLED.” PAGE 5

"GET "I FEEL LIKE INFORMED AFRICAN AND MAKE

AMERICAN YOUR VOICE PEOPLE ARE HEARD. WE JUST AS CANNOT SMART AND AFFORD IMPORTANT TO LOSE

By Michael Harrt & Emily Widgren PAGE EDITORS

As the quiz bowl team prepares for nationals, senior Elijah Manson is looking forward to the competition, despite the higher caliber. Manson was one of the few chosen to attend the National Academic Quiz Tournament (NAQT) high school championship in Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend. “I'm optimistic. It can be difficult going from region-level tournaments, to state-level, to national-level. It's like going from being the best, to just being one of the best,” Manson said. “So the national tournament will definitely be a challenge. But, we are excited to go above all, and I think that energy will drive us forward.” The competition, like any other quiz bowl competition, consists of two teams competing to answer questions on history, literature, science, fine arts, current events, popular culture, sports and more. The team is given two packets to prepare from — one on general knowledge and the other is the championship packet. The championship packet is filled with harder and more specific questions than the general packet, according to junior Alex Nichols.

“We don’t have much homework, we do have some,” Nichols said. “But it's just to study up on things that we wouldn't really know otherwise.” To qualify for the national tournament, the team had to do well at the regional tournaments at Stevenson High School in Sterling Heights. They ended the tournament in first place and immediately qualified for nationals, according to quiz bowl staff advisor, Jonathan Byrne. The preparation necessary for the national competition routinely includes multiple years of experience on quiz bowl teams and a long history for curiosity. According to Manson, most of the team members fit this description. Preparation includes practices twice a week as well as studying topics that are typically could cause confusion. “A lot of the team involved has been doing quiz bowl for most of high school, and our strongest players played in middle school as well,” Manson said. “We have been practicing a long time, and though I myself have only played for two years, I can definitely see a growth in our breadth of knowledge and in our collaboration as a team.”

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AS ANY." THEM

PAGE 7 RACE.” COURTESY OF RYAN JACKSON

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@thenorthpointe www.northpointenow.org

VOLUME 50 | ISSUE 15

News Briefs

Now, any kid who needs it can obtain this waiver, opening the door to participation in Little League for many kids with significant visual disabilities. Looking back at the long journey to securing this waiver, Ryan’s parents are proud of his perseverance and dedication to the cause. “I was very proud that he wanted to do it, that he stuck with it, that he never gave up, he just pushed forward. Ryan’s very humble so he didn’t like the attention because he felt like he was just doing something that he should do that was right,” John said. “Any time we told him, ‘if you don’t want to fight this, if you don’t want to do anything that’s fine,’ but he kept wanting to do it, so I gotta give him credit.”

concerned about the kid down the road who may get to use it or may not get to use it. He seemed to be more interested in the person going forward in the future, so he said I’m not just fighting for myself I’m making it for other kids to be able to use it as well.” The attorney wasn’t the only one that thought Ryan’s case was worthwhile, when the issue first began in 2015, his story was picked up by Fox News Detroit who interviewed Ryan and his teammate, sophomore Brett Abke. “When it first happened, Fox Detroit contacted me and I realized that, ‘wow this is an issue that people care about,’ and it’s more important than one singular thing,” Ryan said. “So then I was kinda inspired to change it not just for me but for everybody, nationally.” After working with the attorney, Ryan was granted a one-year waiver to use his ball. After the original one-year waiver expired, Mohsin worked with Ryan once again to get him another. This time, however, the waiver was granted for two years, and allows for the ball to be used while he is playing in the field in addition to batting. This waiver expires in 2018. But these waivers weren’t recognized by the officials at every tournament he went to. Sometimes they would work, and other times the waiver would be revoked. Abke recalls several tournaments when Ryan was unable to use his yellow ball. Although he remembers that Ryan was upset by it, he said he did his best under the conditions. “It was unfair that they were doing that to him,” Abke said. “There’s no reason he or anyone else shouldn’t be able to play, he’s just like the rest of us and the ball just helps him play equally. It didn’t give him an advantage over anyone else.” This constant uncertainty over whether or not Ryan could use the equipment he needed went on until this March, when Ryan was granted a permanent waiver for the yellow ball. But, what Ryan is most proud of is that this waiver is not only applicable to him.

Quiz bowl qualifies COMPLAINTS for nationals WITH IT. " PAGE 3

Friday, May 4, 2018

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Editorial On Campus

COURTESY OF RYAN HUIZDOS

Girls rocketry takes the road to nationals

By Arzoo Chhaya PAGE EDITOR

Junior Shannon Flores spent her first year of Rocketry Club working on developing rockets, testing out different launch methods and fixing errors along with the rest of the club and adviser Steven Kosmas. On March 31, the girls’ efforts were rewarded with the news that they had advanced to Nationals in Washington D.C.. The team had to place in the top 100 out of 800 teams to be able to qualify. “I just want to put an emphasis on how there are not many females really into rocketry or rocket science,” Flores said. “There’s been a lot of programs that have been trying to support females going towards rocketry, so I just thought it would be really cool if more females were empowered by that.” Women in “STEM” (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) has been a discussion topic for many both in schools and the workplace. The National Girls Collaborative Project is an organization that informing and encouraging girls to pursue careers in STEM. Kosmas said all students should pursue STEM activities and competitions The journey to Nationals required a lot of dedication and commitment from the team, according to sophomore Kamaria Chambers, who is a member of the team. “We all have equal roles, which is to brainstorm ideas on how to make a sufficient rocket and of course to build the rocket and put those ideas to test,” Chambers said via email. Building the rockets requires a lot of precision and accuracy, and rocketry 3 4

Life Reviews

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students must follow Team America Rocketry Challenge (TARC) rules to participate. The method of trial and error is crucial to building a winning rocket. “(We) practice launch and see what we need to fix, such as if the rocket is going too high that means the mass is too low,” Chambers said. The fine details that go into the launches can seriously impact result, but many can be controlled with small changes.

COURTESY OF SHANNON FLORES

“We had rockets that would fly too short or would break when they fell,” Flores said. “It’s always this little stuff that you need to fix. It’s a lot of persistence and patience that you need to have.” However, some parameters like wind, snow, rain and temperature cannot be controlled. The team tries to pick the best conditions to launch under. The final decision is made on-site, but analysis and research must be done before hand. “The problem is that there is significant wind 90 percent of the time, which makes the event more challenging.” Kosmas said via email. “The weather in Michigan makes launching rockets a lot of fun, it is hard to control the outcome.” The team will travel to Washington D.C. on May 10 and will attend the Reception on the Hill.

In-Depth Sports

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