Issue 14

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ISSUE 14 SHAWNEE MISSION EAST PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KS APRIL 12, 2010

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page two

FEATURES: Parks in KC (pg. 11) SPREAD: Texting and Relationships (pg. 16-17) SPORTS: Eligibility Card Dilemma (pg. 27)

The Harbinger investigates sleep deprivation in students at East >>continued from page one

These rhythms, affected by the production of melatonin in the body, push students to stay up later than they did in elementary or middle school. The NSF also lists that it is “natural” for students to not be able to fall asleep before 11.

Senior Joe Newman averages about 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night during the school week, shooting to fall asleep in between 11 and 12:30, but rarely earlier. He usually feels tired during the school day, but says he can’t get in sleep until the weekend, and even then, work sometimes prevents him from catching up.

“I’m tired in the morning, I’ll be awake around noon, and then crash around 2,” Newman said. “Then I’ll be extremely tired from like 2 to 6 and get energy back and be energized for the night and kind of force myself to sleep.”

Lindsey also sees a major difference between her students in the morning and between those in the afternoon. After lunch, there are drooping heads and kids aren’t as “alert” or fast-moving as the kids in the morning, and she notices that it “slowly trickles into a little bit lower grades.”

“I have found that the afternoon classes, at least mine, have been harder,”Lindsey said. “I feel like we got through chapter five with hour three and now were only on chapter four discussion [with the afternoon hours].”

Another factor that is becoming increasingly dangerous is what Dr. Carskadon refers to as “screen time,” or time spent in front of electronics such as the computer, cell phones and TV. Lindsey remembers that, during her time at East, such distractions were not nearly as prevalent.

“It’s really different now because [the computer] is at your fingertips in your room, especially if it’s in your room, and you can get on at any point in the night and it certainly becomes a distracter,” Lindsey said. “My bedroom was a desk with books on it, and I shut that door, and maybe I could turn on music, but that was it.”

Junior Riley Watson aims to get to bed at around 11 each night, but spends much of his time right before bed watching TV or browsing through one of the 11 websites he visits daily. Although he would be getting around 8 hours of sleep, he says he wakes up 3 to 4 times in the middle of each night. To compensate for the lost sleep, he often takes “micro-naps” during the day and also sleeps in on the weekends. “[We would be] doing presentations, and everyone is

talking in a very droll monotone voice, and no one is really sure what they’re talking about,” Watson said. “I just kind of doze off.”

Like Newman and Watson, many teens attempt to load up on sleep during the weekend, hoping to recover from the past school week’s lack of sleep. Dr. Carskadon warns that this might not be an optimal solution.

“It is kind of a short-term fix,” Dr. Carskadon said. “It doesn’t help you accomplish what the brain and body are meant to be accomplishing on a daily basis. It keeps you from being totally ‘in the weeds,’ so to speak, but it is not the way you and your brain work most efficiently.”

To help teens at East get more sleep, Dr. Carskadon advises setting a bedtime, something that few of the students she studied did; only 57 percent of East students had a bedtime that they shoot to get to bed by. Dr. Carskadon also suggests avoiding lots of light right before bedtime and getting more in the morning, which can help a teenagers get to sleep when their internal clock may be pushing them later.

Several studies show the benefits of moving start times forward to combat the teenager’s natural tendency to go to sleep later. In a study by the University of Minnesota of schools in Minneapolis and Edina, they found pushing start times by more than an hour in surburban schools created an increase in alertness and a decrease in stress and behavior-related incidents. Students often kept the same bed times, gaining an hour of sleep.

In another study by Dr. Carskadon, in which they moved school start times back from 8:25 to 7:20, students reported being “pathologically sleepy” and were so tired that they fell into REM sleep in an average of 3.4 minutes--a dangerous symptom that means the student is so tired they skip the important non-REM period of sleep.

“One of the hardest things for the teen brain to do,” Dr. Carskadon said,”is to get up early because the developmental pressure is to get up later.”

In the end, Dr. Carskadon has seen that growing “screen time,” combined with a steady amount of extracurriculars, could create a sleep deprivation trend that continues to grow more dangerous.

“School work, sports practices, clubs, volunteer work, and paid employment take precedence,” Carskadon said in a story for the NSF. “When biological changes are factored in, the ability even to have merely ‘adequate’ sleep is lost.”

what’s your time?

An East survery of 210 students catalogs sleep habits

10+ 1 hours

7

1

hour

3 7 7 4 56 16 6 5 hours

77

6

hours

hours

hours

hours

Do you feel you get enough sleep during the school week?

Sleep Shortage

>>photo illustration by Eden Schoofs

page 2 news 4.12.10

20%

YES

Of those who answered no...

27%

Homework

80%

NO

data based off of April 1, 2010 survey of 210 students

24%

20% Stress/ Anxiety

18%

Extra-Curriculars

Procrastination

11%

Other

Do you have a bedtime you try to get to sleep by?

Yes, I have a bedtime. 57% No, no bedtime. 43%

THE NEWS {in brief}

issue 14 news page 3 A look at upcoming events at East for the next two weeks

>>AnnieSgroi and AlysabethAlbano

the calendar

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Lancer Dancer Spring Show Tuesday April 13, 7-9 in the Auditorium

The Boy in the Basement by Jake Davidson

The Lancer Dancer Spring Show is a showcase of the numbers both Varsity and Junior Varsity dancers have performed throughout the year. The styles of dance will range from jazz to lyrical to hip hop.

Also in the program are a few new numbers and the six senior Lancer Dancers’ solo performances.

Senior Annie Bennett will perform a jazz/lyrical number to Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet.” She expects the night to be filled with great routines and a ton of energy.

“I am really excited for it,” Bennett said. “It is something we have all been working for all of our four years here.”

>> Sammi Kelly

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Friday April 16, 3pm in the Little Theater Every May juniors involved in Repertory Theater select a play to direct their senior year. When senior Jake Davidson chose “The Boy in the Basement” he knew it was the perfect choice for him.

The play, written by William Inger, a graduate of the University of Kansas is set in the 1950s, this around Spencer, a middle-aged man still living with his parents.

His family runs a funeral home in the small mining town outside of Pittsburgh.

Jake cast junior Chris Melvin as the main character Spencer.

“I had seen him in other productions before and he had a strong audition,” Davidson said.

“He looked the part and I knew he would be able to play an older, mature character.”

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>>MackenzieWylie

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Five Minute Film Festival

Thursday April 22, AMC Ward Parkway Theaters

>>www.amctheaters.com

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For the past few years Shawnee Mission East has been hosting a film festival for students in the Shawnee Mission School District and the Blue Valley School District to compete in.

The film festival, organized by Senior Holly Lafferty, is a way for student filmmakers to share their work with the public. Some of their entries could be displayed at a showing at AMC Ward

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22 Parkway theaters on the big screen. The contest is open to any student within the two districts and many have entered.

Some entries in SMSD include “Tony Man,” “Yard Sale,” and “The Enchanted Remote.” All of which will be shown on Thursday.

Admission is $3 and participants are hoping for a huge turnout.

a quick look at events happening soon Earth Fair 9

Early Dismissal

Cheerleading Tryouts

Poetry Slam

On Friday, April 16 the library will There will be an early dismissal East will hold tryouts clinPrairie Village is hosting hold the second annual Poetry ics for anyone interested on Tuesday, April 20 for a Earth Fair 9, held at East on Slam hosted by librarian Ms. Larin becoming a cheerleader teacher work day.

Students Saturday, April 17 from 10 son. The slam will take place during on Wednesday, April 14 and will be dismissed at 1:45 pm. a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is Thursday, April 15 from 3 p.m. fifth block and students are encourThe schedule will regular 2,4,6 free. The goal of the fair is aged to attend during that time. to 5 p.m. in the gym. Actual with no seminar. to promote a greener earth Students will present pre-approved tryouts will take place on Friand connect members of the day, April 16 beginning at 3pm. poetry to the audience. community.

page 4 news 04.12.10 >>GrantKendall Between the new science wing, auxiliary gym and revamped administration offices, East gained more than 100,000 square feet in additions last year.

Although it was a big advancement in terms of technology, enrollment and student life, it didn’t improve the school’s carbon footprint.

With Earth Day coming up on April 17, the event is already becoming more publicized compared to past years, with more announcements being made about recycling, along with the Environmental Club and the Earth Fair flyers posted up around school. But despite these signs of a global movement towards energy efficiency, East’s use of utilities like water, natural gas and electricity have been going through the roof. The brunt of the blame is credited to the new sections of the school.

East’s use in the three utilities—gas, electricity and water—is going up, according to the 200910 SMSD Utility Usage Report. East spent $12,711 last September on these utilities, compared to the $5,984 spent in September 2008. East’s spending on energy sources has risen this year in every category except natural gas.

East is going in a new green direction with a school-wide push to improve energy efficiency.

And it starts with collecting data to make sure the school is going the right things to get there.

“We are using this year as the ‘baseline data,’ meaning that next year we want to reduce off that data,” Principal Dr. Karl Krawitz said.

SMSD recently hired a new energy analyst, Bruce Palmer, whose main focus will be to propose and execute green initiatives.

“What I do is propose a seven step plan that starts off with a commitment from the school,” Palmer said. “Then I establish goals to follow. The last step is to recognize performance.”

The first thing Palmer did when he took office Jan. 5 was review and analyze data that involved energy use. He found errors in some data which resulted in schools taking more money than necessary from the district. From there, he started to visit schools throughout the district.

“Schools are showing improvement,” Palmer said. “Comanche Elementary is built to improve energy use.”

Comanche Elementary has done a few simple things to make it more energy efficient, like switching to fluorescent lighting, and has special insulation which keeps heat in and the cold out.

Tomahawk Elementary started a program that recycles food scraps from the lunch room. These scraps turn into compost or fertilizer for farmers and it also saves the district money because garbage trucks stop by less to collect trash.

These solutions, which have been successfully implemented in elementary schools, are what Palmer is pursuing for East.

Steps to

Anne Melia’s

Earth Fair booth

Melia has a booth at the Earth Fair where she helps children paint eco-friendly glass bottles.

“I think my booth is important because it gives people an idea of what to do with their empty glass bottles instead or recycling them.”

Growing Traditions The Earth Fair shows how East can conserve resources and ‘Go green’

“If elementary kids can recycle food, then high school kids can,” Palmer said.

Something all SMSD schools will soon be implementing is a set-back program for nights and weekends. During those times, heating and air conditioning will be turned on at a minimum.

This set-back plan will improve East’s energy use, considering the district has implemented this in elementary schools and only three months in the program has already started to save money.

Palmer is planning to visit East sometime this year to establish a plan to use and to set goals to follow.

The district is proposing the installation of a wind turbine on the school grounds. Shawnee Mission West had a wind turbine installed early last year along with solar panels, and East hopes to follow within the next two school years. West is the model in the district in terms of energy efficiency. No other school in the district has wind turbines.

A school-led initiative was started to reduce the paper usage of teachers and students. Teachers and staff were asked to participate by Dr. Krawitz to use less paper.

“We had a goal of reducing paper usage by 10 percent,” said Dr. Krawitz. “I can say right now, with only two months to go, we are going to miss that 10 percent.”

This means that East has already missed their goal of reducing paper use, and there is still half of April and May remaining.

Kristin Riott, a guest speaker at an East assembly last year, focuses on making peoples’ lives greener and reducing their carbon footprints. In fact, she trained with Al Gore in 2007 to become a spokesperson for climate change. She now works for a nationally renowned organization called Bridging the Gap. Bridging the Gap is a nonprofit organization whose main focus is to help transition the average person into a more energy efficient one. Riott is mostly involved in Five Green Things. Five Green Things is a section of their Web site, www.bridgingthegap.org, which is a program that suggests simple changes in daily life that help reduce carbon footprint. Some of these changes include giving up bottled water, reducing gasoline usage and switching to compact fluorescent light bulbs.

The organization is focused on an active approach towards making people more energy-conscious.

“We take teams of people out into the neighborhood to change light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs, for example,” Riott said. “[We also] do simple things to make your house more energy efficient.”

At the all-school assembly last year that Riott spoke at, her slideshow didn’t play and her presentation didn’t go as planned.

“After the East assembly, I did research on how teens damage the environment,” Riott said.

“I wrote a new script and developed Five Green Things For Teens.”

The five things that she wrote were inspired by East students and relate to teens across America.

These things are to reduce the amount of beef teens eat, reduce the amount of soda drunk, reduce shower time, use a bike instead of a car and to convert their parents.

Last year, due to the construction, the yearly Earth Fair held at East was cancelled. It’s back this year as Earth Fair 9. The event is centered around giving people information and the tools they need to become more environmentally aware. Some of the events that go on during Earth Fair are guest speaking, music, food and demos on how to be green.

Earth Fair 9 is focusing on providing East students with facts like these and more that will make them more energy efficient. Earth Fair 9 starts at 10 a.m. and ends at 3 p.m. on April 17.

Teens have just as big an impact on the environment as adults do. According to the Food and Drug Administration, teens eat 90 pounds of meat yearly compared to 60 pounds for adults. For every pound of beef eaten, it takes 15 pounds of corn to get it to the table.

And it takes 15,000 pounds of water to make these 15 pounds of corn. It adds up and takes a toll on the environment.

Step 3:

Step 1:

Pick out an Eco-Friendly Glass Bottle Melia brings in glass bottles of all different shapes and sizes for kids to decorate.

The bottles are made of glass so that they can be reused for vases and pencil holders.

Step 2: Paint the glass bottle Kids can decorate the bottle any way they want using various colors of eco-friendly paint..

Add a label After the paint has dried, add a provided label on the jar . Melia says that generally kids use the project as a gift for their parents or grandparents.

>>Patrick Riggin

issue 14 news page 5

>>Samantha Bartow

>>PhoebeUnterman

In an effort to eliminate the lack of productivity that often accompanies the senior year of high school, options are opening up nationwide for students who want to leapfrog the ‘senioritis’ stage altogether and move on at their own pace.

For some, this means an early exit from high school and a stint in a local community college before taking off for a four year school. In some states however, students may soon be able to take examinations after their sophomore year that would deem them ready for college. And in Utah, the State Board of Education recently proposed eliminating senior year altogether in an effort to save money coupled with a recognition that according to them, senior year is a complete and utter waste of time.

Though Utah’s proposal is relatively extreme and seen as impractical by many, other programs with similar aims are becoming more popular in several states. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently provided a $1.5 million grant to fund a project organized by the non-profit National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) which would give tenth graders the option to take a series of examinations after their sophomore year to determine if they are ready academically to move on to college. Should they pass, they would be given a high school diploma and the opportunity to enroll the next fall as a full-time student at any two-or-four year open admissions institution in the state.

Based on school systems in Denmark, Finland, France and Singapore, the program is designed to prepare students better for college while in high school and prevent students from taking as many remedial courses in college.

Currently eight states are planning to implement the system in a number of schools during the 2010-2011 school year. According to Kansas Department of Education Interim Commissioner of Education Diane DeBacker, Kansas is not planning to seek participation in the program currently, but it’s still an option for the future.

“We really haven’t as a state talked about those kind of examinations at the high school level,” DeBacker said. “That’s not saying that our state board won’t want to take on that issue in the years to come, I can’t guarantee that they will or won’t.”

Though Kansas has not jumped on the bandwagon yet, this widespread implementation of such a program could have a huge impact on the educational system overall in the United States.

According to SMSD Director of Curriculum and Instruction Betsy Regan, this program and others represent a shift in the country’s educational values.

“The biggest difference I’ve seen in some of these newer proposals in terms of letting a student enter into a college setting is that they dont necessarily complete graduation requirements by taking a number of courses,” Regan said. “Instead though they are showing their competency by taking national examinations.

That’s the new twist to some of these things.” *** For senior Mitch McGuinness,* senior year is a joke, and he’ll readily admit it. His absences each week stack up to about one or two days on average, meaning he’s not at school about 20 percent of the time. If he comes to school in the morning and hears that nothing is going on in his fifth hour class, he’s not hesitant to go home and take a long lunch instead of showing up for class.

“I feel like there could be a better way to expedite the schooling in senior year,” McGuinness said. “Everyone’s already done, and by second semester, there’s not a lot going on, except for the senior paper.”

McGuinness, as several East students did, made their college decision early in their senior year or earlier. Since he’s already set for next year, McGuinness doesn’t feel the need to continue to challenge himself.

“I was kind of ready [to move on] after junior year,” McGuinness said. “I thought that there weren’t a lot of classes I was excited for this year, and I thought I was pretty well prepared for college already.”

However, unfilled requirements stood in McGuinness’s way of graduating a year early.

McGuinness affirms that he would definitely have taken advantage of a program that would allow him to test after his sophomore year had it been an option.

Though there are many seniors at East that feel the same way as McGuinness, there are a significant amount who continue to take advantage of challenging classes through their senior year. According to Regan, from a curricular standpoint, students that continue to challenge themselves through their senior year with a college preparatory curriculum in the core areas will be more prepared at a fouryear college.

“Having a fourth year in a high school setting allows a student an opportunity to continue to develop skills particularly in core content areas of math, language arts, science and SS that will help a student to prepare for the rigors of a college curriculum,” Regan said.

Though it doesn’t appear that SMSD will adopt the NCEE model within the near future, Regan points out that there are several options for students to receive college credit while still in high school within the district. In fact, several of the programs already identified by the NCEE that will be used as Board Examinations are offered within the district, including the ACT, the College Board’s Advanced Placement program and the International Baccalaureate Diploma program.

Counselor Laura Carter worries that although high school sophomores may prove their academic ability by scoring well on a battery of exams, their maturity level and emotional growth.

“I’m sure there are sophomores that are ready for college and juniors that are ready for college,” Carter said. “But as a whole, I would say that they don’t have enough life behind them, enough painful experiences behind them, and they’re not tough enough to live alone and deal with the complex relationships of living in a dorm and not having the day to day support from their parents.” *name has been changed to protect identity

SOPHOMORE ALEJANDROBARRERA

a proposal from the National Education Association would let students skip their senior year

FRESHMAN MEGSTANLEY

leaving early

JUNIOR SUSIEMcCLANNAHAN

SENIORLOUISAMORTON

>>lancervoice Q: Are there students who could benefit from not having a senior year?

A: I think that for kids interested in ROTC and the military it would be good, so they can have a college experience for a year before entering the military.

Q: If you didn’t have to have a senior year what would you do instead?

A: I would travel abroad with an organization like Partners in Health.

Q: Would having an optional senior year would work at East?

A: It would be good for some who are highly motivated. But if you don’t know what you want to study and keep pushing forward it would eventually back fire.

Q: Are there students who could benefit from not having a senior year?

A: If they’ve known what they want to do since they were little kids, that would get them closer to where they want to be.

Q: Would having an optional senior year would work at East?

A: No, everybody needs a senior year to help them prepare and be ready to go to college the next year.

Q: If you didn’t have to have a senior year what would you do instead?

A: I’d go straight to community college or regular college to study computer science and biochemical engineering.

Q: Would having an optional senior year would work at East?

A: No, I think senior year is vital for a transitional phase to the real world.

Q: Are there students who could benefit from not having a senior year?

A: For those in a specialized program at Broadmoor it would be a good option to start work.

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Highlights Schwarzkopf

Up Styling O.P.I.

issue 14 editorial page 7

LOGOOVERLOAD After taking on a massive bond project that has restructured the physical appearance of buildings in the Shawnee Mission School District and given a fresh new appeal to the oldest school district in the county, it has been announced that $10 million will be cut from the budget the district has to work with. In many cases it means teachers will be cut and some activities will be cut. It’s the harsh reality.

In the face of such a negative situation, Shawnee Mission East cannot allow its identity as a quality public Letters to education with strong academic, aththe editor should letic and fine arts programs to get lost be sent to room 521 in the commotion. There are many or smeharbinger@ things that can mend this problem gmail.com. Letters but the simplest is as cut and dry as may be edited for anything: make the school a recogclarity, length, libel nizable brand.

In 2006, a public school in Lonand mechanics and don, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson accepted or rejected School (EGA), embarked on a brandat the editor’s ing campaign after losing students to discretion. area private schools due to receiving negative remarks from local citizens about the state of the school after it took cuts from its budget. Since then, school population has risen and the negative remarks all have disappeared according to the Guardian, a daily British publication that covered EGA’s identity structuring from the first brainstorming meeting until the unveiling of the school’s new image.

the

>>

a publication of shawnee mission east high school 7500 Mission Road, Prairie Village, KS 66208

Editors-In-Chief >>Tim Shedor >>Phoebe Unterman Assistant Editors >>Sam Logan >>Kevin Simpson Head Copy Editor >>Andrew Goble Art and Design Editor >>Michael Stolle News Editor >>Annie Sgroi News Page Editors >>Alysabeth Albano >>Haley Martin Editorial Editor >>Jack Howland Opinion Editor >>Aubrey Leiter

This was all a part of the United Kingdom’s “London Challenge Strategy”, launched in 2003 to transform the poor view of the city’s public schools into a positive one. Since its inception, like EGA, student success rates have increased, public perception has become more positive and enrollment rates at public schools have stayed consistent rather than declined, all this according to the initiative’s press releases.

In the marketing world, most brands lie in industries like fast food, retail shopping, banking and technology, as they are used to bump the reputation of the company or organization through its identity of logos, wordmarks and slogans.

Oftentimes people look past where such branding can be used, though. Despite having an undeniable tie to commercial enterprises, it could be effective if used in public education, without abusing its capabilities.

Shawnee Mission East needs the bare basics of such branding: a logo, wordmark and publicity. We have all of them, but not in a common and unified manner. East has a different logo for football, basketball, boys’ soccer, cross country and track, volleyball, boys’ swim and dive, wrestling, softball, smesports.com and the school’s website.

That abundance of identities lacks the ability to connect an image of the school to the public. We need these things and these things only for it to be effective- one primary logo that represents the whole school in academics, athletics and fine arts; one alternate logo for athletics that complements the primary logo; and one wordmark that can be used any time the school’s name needs to be represented in the form of an image.

This standard sets the bar for the school district to present itself in a positive light, as the most identifiable brands often are the ones that are most successful. With negativity swirling about the district due to the budget cuts it could be a likely scenario that students from this

April 12, 2010 issue 14, vol. 51

Opinion Page Editors >>Tom Lynch >>Kennedy Burgess Features Editor >>Duncan McHenry Feature Page Editors >>Sarah McKittrick >> Kat Buchanan >>Anna Bernard Spread Editor >>Emma Pennington Asst. Spread Editor >>Morgan Christian A&E Editor >>Mac Tamblyn A&E Page Editors >>Raina Weinberg >>Maddy Bailey >>Bob Martin Mixed Editor >>Toni Aguiar

Sports Editor >>Sam Logan Sports Page Editors >>Corbin Barnds >>Christa McKittrick >>Evan Nichols Photo Editor >>Mackenzie Wylie Assistant Photo Editor >>Dan Stewart >>Grant Heinlein Freelance Page Editors >>Kathleen Ireland >>Collen Ireland >>Lilly Myers Copy Editors >>Andrew Goble >>Logan Heley >>Jack Howland >>Sam Kovzan >>Annie Sgroi >>Tim Shedor >>Kevin Simpson

>>Michael Stolle >>Phoebe Unterman >>Kat Buchanan >>Evan Nichols >>Duncan McHenry Staff Writers >>Griffin Bur >>Grant Kendall >>Alex Lamb >>Anne Willman >>Katy Westhoff >>Ian Wiseman >>Matt Gannon Contributor >>Kiki Sykes Editorial Board >>Griffin Bur >>Andrew Goble >>Logan Heley >>Sam Logan >>Jack Howland >>Annie Sgroi >>Tim Shedor

East needs to adopt a common logo area leave the public school system to a private setting like Rockhurst, Notre Dame de Sion, the Pembroke Hill School or Barstow as their student popuation has no geographic boundary restrictions.

East needs to recognize this and take advantage of the opportunity to maintain its strong reputation in the area through a rebranding that unifies its image as one instead of a different logo for every activity. It would be a fitting time to do so as the building has just taken on a new facelift in some locations and its facilities have greatly improved.

Coupled with these recent renovations, a uniformed branding is a process that could have close to no negative effects if embarked upon; it can be costless: pick one of the logos our programs currently have in use to be centralized as the building’s only primary identification. it can be functional: involve art and marketing classes to pinpoint ways in which the brand could be used in different settings. It can also be a source of pride: a common image and font can be used on every sports team’s equipment and in places where a Lancer logo are needed. Such actions in this project would utilize the resources we have on-hand in a thrifty manner that has great long-lasting results.

The SMSD has not reached a condition like the London schools were in at the start of this decade, but taking preventative measures to reverse the effects of a negative event like the budget cuts can go a long way in the overall success of not only East but the district as a whole.

The

>>

VOTE

The majority opinion of the Harbinger Editorial Board

>>KevinSimpson >>Michael Stolle >>Mac Tamblyn >>Phoebe Unterman >>Corbin Barnds Photographers >>Eden Schoofs >>Lindsey Hartnett >>Nathan Simpson >>Samantha Bartow >>Anna Marken >>Katie East >>Grant Kendall >>Claire Wahrer >>Michael Stolle >>Sammi Kelly Staff Artists >>Kennedy Burgess >>Morgan Christian Circulation Manager >>Jeff Cole Ads Manager >>Anne Willman

for

against absent

10 0 2 Online Editors >>Logan Heley >>Pat McGannon >>Michael Stolle Multimedia Editor >>Tom Lynch Podcast Editor >>Alex Lamb PR Representative >>Jeff Cole Online Copy Editor >>Bob Martin Online Staff Writers >>Christopher Heady >>Elizabeth Mcgranahan Online Photographer >>Nathan Simpson Adviser >>Dow Tate

page 8 opinion 04.12.10

DISORGANIZATION

DILEMMA

Junior talks about her habit of uncleanliness For weeks, my battered copy of ‘Catcher in the Rye’ sat dormant under my bed, unnoticed amongst a science fair project from eighth grade and a few posters I made in elementary school. I was never overly KatyWesthoff >> concerned about it; I noticed it was missing from my bookshelf, but I am of the naive and untrue philosophy that everything will work out. If I need it, it’ll be there. And then: I needed to whip out the book to find an obscure quote on some obscure page to bring to light some obscure idea that had been floating around in my head. And I spent 30 minutes digging through clothes, old papers and things I should have thrown out months ago, looking for that book. Fortunately, it was mostly unscathed, save a few bent pages and a torn cover.

Such isn’t the case for the teddy bear I abandoned in Colorado, with the missing nose and the dirt-ridden fuzz.

Nor for the mood ring my brother got me as an impromptu gift, with turtles along the edges, lost somewhere between an airport, my dad’s car and the endless abyss that is my room. The clutter tends to join together, creating some sort of unstoppable, mess-eating monster that will stop at nothing to eat everything I own.

I used to have the color guide for the mood ring, but I’m sure my room has eaten it by now.

It’s the combination of my poor organization skills and my memory of an 80-year-old that cause my grief. I can’t keep anything straight in my head, so I cling to my planner, writing down anything that might be helpful later, trying desperately to organize the thoughts in my head so that maybe, just maybe, the rest of it—schoolwork, my room, my closet—will fall into place. Unfortunately, this isn’t true.

I have to keep track of everything lost in my life.

Things Currently Missing: -- Wallet -- Journal -- Headphones -- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (paper and hardback) -- Roughly $20 -- Probably my retainer -- The Office Season 2 DVD set -- Around 50 pencils/pens (from the start of the year) My most prized possession I lost only a few months ago.

Salvaged from a thrift store: green, Velcro and sporting a an opinion of

-retainer -twenty dollars

MISSING: -wallet -journal >>Kennedy Burgess blown-up image of Mewtwo, my Pokémon wallet was home to the Wallet Creeper (a picture cut out of a Barbie Magazine and placed where a driver’s license would go) and all my forms of identification, and about $3 in cash at any given moment. I absentmindedly left that glorious wallet at the library after volunteering for a few hours, and within a few days the bank called saying there was suspicious activity on my debit card.

It’s not that I purposefully make my room a mess—I honestly try to keep it someone organized. But digging through my dresser in the morning for that one T-shirt, I fling all my clothes out of the drawers and onto the floor, and aha! there it is! I could pick up the other clothes, but I’m already running 15 minutes late, so I can just wait until I get home. And then I get home from a long day and I’m tired, and the clothes aren’t hurting anything just staying on the floor. Plus there’s homework to do, and after that I’m just too tired. The next day it only gets worse, until instead of digging through my dresser I’m digging through the piles on the floor.

It’s not just my room, though. My backpack is a jumbled, chaotic mess. Folders have been ripped and repaired with tape so many times the thought of putting just one more paper in makes them whimper. Illegible notes are jammed in every crevice, but it doesn’t matter if I can read them or not because they’ll just be lost by the time I need them. It’s fourth quarter now, so why would I bother reorganizing?

Just a few more weeks, then I can get a new backpack that doesn’t have a hole in the top.

“Hey, Katy, can I borrow your notes from calculus?”

Someone from calculus class will often ask.

“I wouldn’t recommend it....” I say, embarrassed

DIRTY DISASTER: Katy tells you about the messiest places in her bedroom the dresser the desk

The drawers are exploding with T-shirts I barely wear, and most of my clothes are on the floor.

The top is where I throw all my knickknacks that I want but have no where to put: a Snorlax doll, porcelain flowers from my great-grandmother and ticket stubs from The Princess and the Frog and the Blind Side.

Though it’s designed to support a computer and maybe a few books, it’s devolved to a storage facility for papers from elementary school and a broken printer.

Instead of studying at my desk, I prefer to do my homework on my bed: the only clear surface in my room.

And no one else would recommend it, either. My study groups have known for a long time that my notes are inconsistent and that the highlight marks are more from carelessly daydreaming than actually paying attention.

The only thing that’s been organized consistently throughout my life has been my bookshelf. I reorganize my books every time my dad tells me to clean my room, ever since the first day, when I only had the first two Harry Potters and a few picture books. I pulled all 15 of them off the shelves, pushed shoes and clothes and crayon drawings around me in a semicircle, and started organizing into piles.

By author, by title, my own skewed Dewey Decimal system; in order of favorite to least, from most read to unread, first read to latest. And then, after spending hours of meticulously organizing those small, white shelves, I’d ball up the rest of my mess and stuff it in the closet. Why did you decide to organize just the bookshelf? It kind of kills your point, provide a reason.

The shelves are still white, but narrower and taller. The first shelf is for the books I most often pull off the shelves.

Harry Potter, Catcher in the Rye and Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Then they’re separated by size; the “fiction” books being sandwiched by small paperbacks and nonfiction/memoirs, horizontally stacked.

But really, I can’t even keep track of my Harry Potter books.

My bookshelf is the one exception of my life, where things are clean and crisp and organized. But everything else falls apart at the seams. Losing everything from my wallet to my American History notes, I joke that everything I touch is doomed to be lost. My life is almost always in a state of disarray, but it’s nothing I’m not used to.

>>all photos by Claire Wahrer

the floor

the closet

I blame gravity. Things are naturally meant to fall to the ground, right? College advertisements, English papers, math tests, pants, shirts... that’s where they’re meant to be, right?

On the floor, where they can fall no further.

In typical teenage fashion, instead of actually cleaning my room, it’s so much easier to just shove everything into the closet.

Most people might have graduated from this practice after middle school, but it’s one habit I can’t let die.

No place like

Home

>>Grant Kendell

the Perfect

Places Staffers discuss where in the world their “yellow brick roads” would lead to

When it comes to the rest of his life, Senior is not looking any further than his own backyard It’s the tail end of spring break, and my unforgettable European vacation has ended. After a mind-numbing eight-hour transatlantic flight, a prolonged layoff if an airNewark airport >>Sam Kovzan conditionless and a bumpy trip home in a painfully small aircraft, I stagger out of KCI’s Terminal C and into welcoming sunshine. Fresh air enters my lungs for the first time - I swear - since I entered through the airport’s exact same doors eight days earlier. Anticipatory thoughts of home sweet home fill my mind, and suddenly it hits me.

There’s no place like home.

It has taken 18 years and half a dozen trips to other cities, both domestic and abroad, for me to realize that I live in the perfect place.

Yep, Prairie Village and the surrounding Kansas suburbs have everything I want. Save a quickly approaching fouryear stint in a town 40 miles west, I’m not sure I’ll ever want to live elsewhere. This is the place I want to make a living, raise a family and become old.

I can say this with confidence, having traveled to massive metropolises—Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Paris—and a handful Kansas’s agrarian towns—Salina, McPherson, Coffeyville. The way I see it, the Big Apple’s too big and the Little Apple’s too little.

Don’t get me wrong, the big cities are excellent vacation destinations. For about a week, I loved New York for its towering skyscrapers, world-class cuisine, remarkable diversity and bustling atmosphere. For about a week, I loved So Cal’s sun, palm trees and Hollywood vibe. Both trips were a blast, but when they ended, I couldn’t wait to return home. While these places might were far more exciting than Kansas, the quality and comfort of living here is why home is so sweet.

On the other end of the spectrum are the tiny Midwestern towns. If you’ve ever driven an hour north, south, east or west of here, you know what it’s like. Farms, plains, hay bales, tractors, cows, McDonalds and Main Street. I have nothing against the country, but in the eyes of suburbanites like myself, life could get a little boring.

When compared to the country’s largest cities and the Sunflower State’s smallvilles, there are many reasons why I find Prairie Village a more pleasant place to live.

This is an extremely safe, affluent community where the severity of crimes hardly ever exceeds DUI’s. No murders, drug trafficking or terrorist targets. Moreover, our public school system is extremely strong.

The quality of public education here equals that of private institutions, and it doesn’t cost a penny. Public schools of this caliber don’t exist in the larger metropolitan areas.

Unlike the crowded megacities, there’s plenty room to an opinion of

The Island From ‘Lost’

The island from ‘Lost’ would be a great place to live. Not only would i live with interesting friends, but everyday would be a new adventure.

Deadly smoke monster? No problem.

I wont have to find a way off the island because i wont want to!

>>RainaWeinberg

issue 14 opinion page 9

breathe in Prairie Village and the encompassing suburbs.

With countless parks and hundreds of grassy front lawns, green space is easy to come by. It’s easy for kids to enjoy recess, for teens to participate in sports and for adults to remain active. Rather than living on top of each other in 30-floor apartment buildings, residents have quaint houses to themselves, ideal for raising families.

Most people around here also fulfill the Midwest’s reputation of friendliness. If you don’t believe me, ask the Bostonian I met at the Kings of Leon concert who remarked, “Everyone here’s so damn nice! What did I ever do for them?”

Another convenience of living here is that you don’t have to go far for an urban experience. If suburban life ever gets boring and you’re in a big city mood, the Country Club Plaza is a 10 minute drive north, and downtown isn’t much further away.

Trips abroad, namely London and Paris, have provided some of my greatest memories. However, these experiences have only reassured my viewpoint. Sure, London’s history, museums, endless urban sprawl and attachment to soccer make it one of the world’s coolest cities. And Paris—well, it’s probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

But as great as these places are, I’d never choose to live there – that is, if I was ever able to afford it in the first place. $18 for fish-n-chips, $500 for a month-long Underground pass, and a cool $1million for an 800 square-foot flat seems a bit taxing.

Kansans also have the luxury of experiencing the four seasons: crisp, clear falls; snowy winters; mild, humid springs; egg-frying summers. Based on the time of year, we can jump in a pile of leaves, build a snowman, or bake poolside under a layer of SPF 60. In many parts of Europe, the weather isn’t nearly as varied. Average temperatures range from around 40 degrees in the winter to 70 degrees in the fall. And, oh yeah—it rains. And rains. And rains.

Transportation here, albeit not as modern or efficient, is easier and safer, at least in the driving sense. Driving overseas requires skill, bravery and sometimes a bit of recklessness. A Parisian thoroughfare could easily be mistaken for a game of bumper cars on the brink of disaster, with pedestrians given just as much caution as squirrels. A member of the party I was with in Manchester nearly became road kill twice in the span of five minutes. Here in Prairie Village, it’s easy to drive everywhere safely: wide intersections, four-lane roads, minimal highway traffic, considerate drivers.

Then there are the little things that become lost overseas.

No SportsCenter – heck, no comprehensive sports roundup show at all - no Oklahoma Joe’s, no basketball hoops, less green space. Though some may consider these things trivial, they make home that much more enjoyable.

One could argue that my strong feelings about home exist simply because it’s what I’ve become accustomed to my entire life. I won’t deny that this slightly influences my opinion, but let’s be honest: there aren’t too many places more ideal to grow up and raise a family. Traveling the world has always been an aspiration of mine, but I suspect that by each trip’s conclusion, I’ll be thinking there’s no place like home.

Dorothy couldn’t have been more spot-on.

New Zealand The only place I see myself living is New Zealand. They invented bungee jumpings, so you know it’s a fun country. Plus the Lord of the Rings was filmed there, and I’ve always wanted to tour a Hobbit Hole.

>>LillyMyers

Carmel-by-the-Sea

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California is the place for me. Not just because when you tell people, they know that it’s beach-side, but because it has been my dream to live in the same style house as Snow White.

>>TomLynch

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apark sensation Staffer reviews various outdoor destinations

Shawnee Indian Mission 3403 West 53rd Street MAIN ATTRACTION: Historical Site

What used to be a manual training school for Shawnee and Delaware Indians in the 1800s has been preserved as a 12-acre park and historical site. There are historic buildings, period rooms and exhibits to explore. There are lots of flowers in the spring and summer, especially in Mission Park, outside of the buildings. The park takes advantage of its scenery by offering art classes and events throughout the spring and summer. There are “Theme Days” for elementary-aged kids to experience what happened historically in the buildings.

The buildings themselves aren’t the most architecturally stunning, but the history speaks for itself. The information at the Indian Mission focuses on Thomas Johnson, a Methodist missionary with the Shawnee tribes in Kansas, and the trials and tribulations of missionaries in the area. There is also a lot about the civil war and Bleeding Kansas, as well as the initial settlement of the area and the Overland trail that starts in Atchison and goes through Salt Lake City and to Oregon and California.

On June 16, there will be a Native American flute concert by the Spirit Talkers and the Brushy Creek Adult Reading Circle will meet throughout July.

Q&A

Swope Park

4701 East Gregory Boulevard MAIN ATTRACTION: Lakeside Nature Center It’s like the zoo, but free.

Swope Park is also home to the actual zoo, Starlight Theatre, a golf course and plenty of picnic areas. However, the Lakeside Nature Center is more devoted to the natural wildlife of Missouri, rather than the more exotic animals across the Blue River. The most prominent section of the Nature Center is the Birds of Prey exhibit, but there are snakes, amphibians and an aquarium full of alligators and turtles. The park also boasts quite a few nature trails and even an overnight camping area.

They have lists available for bird watchers to keep track of what they’ve seen. The setting is much more intimate than the Kansas City Zoo. The staff is smaller and more willing to help with the scientific aspect of the animals.

The Center also takes in injured or abandoned baby animals.

47th and State Line Road MAIN ATTRACTION: Dog Park Well, alright, there’s not much here to do than throw a frisbee with your dog, but you’ll be in good company. Westwood Park caters to dog owners by providing a secluded area for dogs. The city requires that all dogs be kept on a leash, but the park is still dog-friendly. Though the park is under construction, the playground and shelter keep it well visited in the spring and summer months.

Antioch Park

6501 Antioch Road MAIN ATTRACTION: Turkey Creek Festival The Turkey Creek Festival on May 15 has a 5K Fun Run, a themed parade, an arts and crafts show and plenty of concessions and vendors. The Arts and Crafts show features original drawings, paintings, sculptures and folk art from local and regional artists.

The whole festival starts with a pancake breakfast for $5, sponsored by the Merriam Lions Club. Following the breakfast, the parade begins. This year’s parade theme is “25 Years of Family Fun!” The Fun Run is a MidAmerica Running Association “Grand Prix” event, part of a region-wide series of running events, including the Trolley Run and the Mother’s Day 5K on May 9 at Corporate Woods in Overland Park. The Festival also includes a petting zoo with pony rides and three concerts, featuring bluegrass, jazz and rockabilly music.

Tree climbing, mud fighting, rain dancing, bubble blowing, cartwheeling.

Senior Kiley Lawrence

Q What is your afavorite picnic snack?

Hummus and carrots.

Q a

What is your favorite cool-off beverage?

Frozen almond bubble tea.

What is your favorite outfit to pull out?

What is your favorite park and why?

Loose Park. My friends and I essentially lived there last summer. We just have so many happy memories attached to the entire area.

No matter what time of day it is, you can always expect a friend to be there. It’s the perfect relaxing spot.

>>KatyWestoff

Welcome to fourth quarter. The sun is up, for the most part, and we can all sport shorts. But the pools are still closed and the polar bears won’t be at the zoo until after graduation.

Summer is so close we can already smell the sunscreen. So let’s settle for spring and head for parks where there’s more to do than throw a frisbee with your dog.

Westwood Park

What are your favorite springtime activities?

with

issue 14 outdoors page 11

I pull out my flowy dresses, and completely abandon my shoes.

a

Worst part about senoritis?

I still care about my grades, but I care about the nice weather a bit more. There’s just a bit of a disconnect.

>>all photos by Katie East

page 12 features 04.12.10

A

>>ChristaMcKittrick

lone snowboarder sat at the top of Terrain Park in the mountains of Colorado, sitting silently as other riders flipped, spun and raced by him. Every now and then one of his friends would approach him with encouraging words.

“You got it, it’s easy,” Matt called out.

“C’mon, you can do this man,” Conner encouraged.

Senior Andrew Arnold took it all in, still sitting at the top of the hill. But in his head he fought a battle. To do the Rodeo 540—a back flip with a 180 degree twist—or not.

Back and forth, back and forth. He’d been having this debate for three weeks, ever since he mastered a back flip.

Enough was enough. He got up to try and throw the trick. As he approached the start, there were cheers from his friends. Arnold sped down the hill, adrenaline pumping.

He headed toward the jump, riding with his left foot in front of the right. At the lip of the jump he pushed off the snow on his heel edge and looked over his back shoulder hard. Arnold continued looking over his back shoulder through the flip. He then turned his upper body and followed with his feet to complete a 180 degree turn. Arnold fell on the packed snow but was quick to jump up, throw his arms in the air, and yell at the top of his lungs while fist pumping the air.

It took three tries before Arnold first landed the Rodeo 540 and he still falls occasionally. Despite the falls, his friends still cheer for him.

“When I’m boarding with all my friends, it makes me push myself to do better because they’re doing cool tricks that I want to try,” Arnold said. “You push them and they push you.”

Another trick Arnold’s friends pushed him to learn was the 720—two complete spins—a trick he had wanted to do since he learned how to spin simple 180s. The first trick Arnold ever pulled, the 180, was an accident. He was 13 years old and on an annual skiing and snowboarding trip with his family when he went off a jump off balance. Arnold ended up spinning around and doing a 180 without even meaning to.

Nowadays, Arnold goes for tricks bigger than accidental 180s.

For a month, Arnold has been trying to do a 720, and he finally landed it about a week ago. Once again, it was the encouragement of his friends that made him attempt the trick.

“To me a 720 is a huge trick and I had been wanting to learn it all year long,” Arnold said. “The first time I stuck it, I threw up my arms and yelled as loud as I could in joy!”

This drive for success is what brought Arnold away from his Prairie Village home to Winter Park, Colorado. Arnold even graduated a semester early to pursue his passion for snowboarding and be able to hit the slopes daily.

“I had the idea to get out of Kansas and do something different that no one else does,” Arnold said.

Arnold came to his mom, Kendra, and dad, Richard, at the beginning of last summer with the idea. Kendra initially responded with a “No, you can’t do that!” What parent would

Clearance to Board

Senior graduated early to pursue snowboarding in Colorado

>>photos courtesy of Andrew Arnold be okay with sending their kid to Colorado to board day in, day out? Despite his mom’s skepticism, Arnold refused to give up. He brought up the idea persistently and took the initiative to talk to the counselor and enroll himself in summer school for the one credit he still needed to graduate—a second semester English 12 class.

“When we saw how passionate he was about it, we were all for it,” Kendra said.

Richard agreed, if Arnold could find a way to make it happen, they’d support him. Richard was glad that this was something Arnold would be willing to work for and chase, but he was a little worried about him falling into the stereotype of a “week-day snowboarder”—a kid with no idea of what he wanted to do with his life. But this worry was relieved once Arnold found an upbeat group of friends from Winter Park to snowboard with.

Arnold left to go to Colorado Dec. 28 of last year with his uncle Gary. He left behind Kendra, Richard, and his three younger siblings, Rachel, Elizabeth, and John. A few tears slid down Kendra’s face as Andrew threw his board in the back of the car. Her eldest child was heading off into the world on his own.

Arnold, on the other hand, was stoked.

He now lives with his mom’s brother, Tim Koepke and his family in Winter Park, Colorado, spending up to six and a half hours a day on his board.

When Arnold gets to Terrain Park, he rides up the chair lift talking with his friends about everything from music to other people trying to snowboard. He then stretches at the top of the mountain, taking in the view and crisp mountain air.

Arnold’s first run is a warm-up for the next 25 or so runs down the mountain he’ll make. He spends that first, easy ride down thinking about what he wants to accomplish that day, be it perfecting the Rodeo 540, landing more of his 720s,

Andrew’s Setup

or simply polishing other tricks he knows.

After the park closes, Arnold leaves his boarding friends to head home to do some chores and hang out with another group of friends, Matt Risley, Connor Freed and some other local high schoolers. With them, he hangs out, goes to Winter Park Cinema or play guitar, one of his favorite songs being “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

But with the mountain snow starting to melt and the ski season coming to a close, Arnold will have to leave his friends and the slopes to return to Kansas for the summer.

Arnold plans on working at the Milburn Golf Course and taking trips to Orlando and New Orleans. Then he will return once more to the Colorado mountains not only as a boarder, but as a student at Western State College of Colorado. Arnold hopes to get involved in the business program as well as the outdoor leadership program. The outdoor leadership program is a broad major. It covers everything from golf course or hotel management to helicopter ski guide, which Arnold might consider if going pro doesn’t work out. Along with the actual school, Arnold will enjoy having Crested Butte, a ski resort, only 15 minutes away from his college.

Arnold will continue to snowboard through his years at college in order to try and make it as a pro snowboarder.

The first step towards this is getting a sponsor. Although any sponsor would be great, his top two are K2 and Red Bull. K2 is the board Arnold rides now and loves, and Red Bull is his favorite drink. For now, Arnold will keep riding the slopes and mastering new moves to improve his riding.

“If I keep pushing the limits of what I can do on a snowboard,” Arnold said. “And get some sponsors I think I might be able to work my way up to the pro level.”

>>

To see a video of Andrew Arnold snowboarding, visit smeharbinger.net

A look at the items Andrew brings with him on the mountain

Burton Triads bindings K2 Darkstar board

Billabong Lago jacket

Bern Baker helmet

K2 Darko boots

Oakley A-Frame goggles

issue 14 features page 13

Sophomore describes experience as a foreign exchange student in China >>LillyMyers

As sophomore Sophia Steckelberg sat inside a fast food restaurant, eating with her aunt, uncle and cousin who she hadn’t seen in years, she watched a small 5-year-old boy walk out of the restaurant. He turned around, pulled down his pants and used the outside of the restaurant as his restroom. Then, he bent down and used it again.

Though a shocking sight at first, seeing a bit of excrement as she walked down the street became ordinary. Most shocking scenes became ordinary when Steckelberg spent four months in China.

Steckelberg had decided in June that she wanted to study abroad in China during the first semester of her sophomore year. From August to November, she would walk down streets alongside the Chinese people and converse in the language she has been speaking on and off since birth.

“My mom and I were talking, and I told her that I would really like to improve my Chinese speaking and mostly writing,” Steckelberg said. “I came up with the idea to go to China and basically learn there.”

Steckelberg’s first trip to China was when she was one month old, then at age 4 and again at age 6. Her mother is from China and has family that lives in Qing Dao, a city on the eastern coast of China by the Yellow Sea. Now at age 15, Steckelberg was returning to the country, where she would live with her aunt, uncle and cousin.

Despite the fact that she’s half Chinese and speaks the language almost fluently, Steckelberg couldn’t prevent herself from feeling like a outsider while in China. Every day when she walked down the streets of Qing Dao, she could feel a thousand eyes follow her, their minds picking out her thinner face and out-of-place sweatpants, labeling her as a foreigner.

What made the unwanted attention worth it was the fact that she understood every word they whispered about her.

At the beginning of the trip, when Steckelberg’s mother was with her, the two went to a pottery store, and bought three beautiful but hefty decorative rocks. As they carried the bulky items down the street to their car, a man passing by said in Chinese, “Look at these stupid Americans, they buy everything!”

“I immediately turned around and said in Chinese, ‘Excuse me, I can also speak Chinese,’” Steckelberg said.

“That’s probably the meanest thing I’ve said to someone older than me.

Steckelberg met with other foreigners from around the world every weekday at her Chinese class at Qing Dao University.

She helped Nicole, a 39-year-old from Texas, pronounce the Chinese words she had difficulty with. She occasionally met up with Sebastion, a 22-year-old friend from Libya, after school. During class she could always get a laugh from Damir, a 37-year-old Croatian and resident class clown.

Though her course at Qing Dao University helped Steckelberg improve, she found it didn’t have to be her only classroom. After class got out at noon, she was free to do whatever she wanted in the geographically diverse city of Qing Dao. Right outside her window she saw the beach– a dense mass anytime after 10 a.m. of seaweed infested salt water, sand and pale skinned Chinese people swimming in shorts and a T-shirt.

“There they believe pale skin is best because it represents pureness,” Steckelberg said. “Whereas here the tanner you are the ‘sexier’ you are, if you have a tan in China people look at you as very poor and dirty because you work out in the sun a lot.”

Only a 45 minute car-ride away were the mountains. To reach the top of the mountain could ride a red, ski-lift type ride, or walk an endless flight of stone stairs. Steckelberg visited the top of the mountains four times and took the stairs once.

Going out and immersing herself in the Chinese culture was a second reason for studying abroad. Going to class was not her priority, and with her aunt, uncle and cousin, Jao Xin, Steckelberg took days off and traveled to different places throughout the country, such as Beijing, Hong Kong, and Dunhuang, a desert area in northern China. Aside from the typical tourist destinations, she also visited more isolated places.

“I got to visit the High Priest Monks, which I don’t think anyone in my family has even heard of,” Steckelberg said.

“I felt very honored and grateful that I had the opportunity to be there.”

But Steckelberg learned a lot about China and its culture from her family’s apartment in Qing Dao. Families still hang their clothes out to dry and are lucky if they have a mini-fridge. When she turned on the even smaller television, Steckelberg had a choice of the news, Chinese history shows, anime cartoons or Tom & Jerry, minus the comical

SOPHOMORE Sophia Steckelberg poses in the city of Dunhuang, China. Steckelberg and her family took a camel ride through the desert while in China. All photos courtesy of Sophia Steckelberg

>>

violence. A nice computer in China is the equivalent of a Ferrari in the U.S. Though this kind of lifestyle could be seen as archaic, Steckelberg sees it as simple. She enjoyed hanging her clean clothes out to dry; it made her feel like “one of them.”

“In China it’s about keeping your morals, being a good person and sticking to your roots,” Steckelberg said. “[The past] is probably the biggest part of them.”

Steckelberg brought her personal MacBook and iPod with her to China to make up for the technological differences. But the thing she did not prepare herself for was the extreme poverty she witnessed.

In China, Steckelberg found it right outside her front door. With people from various classes living together, she saw things more shocking than a bearded hobo asking for money at a busy street intersection holding a cardboard sign.

“There were people who broke their own legs just for money,” Steckelberg said. “There was this lady I remember, who for hours would just bow down to everyone that walked by.”

She first encountered of the impoverished people of China in a wealthy part of Qing Dao. A short, dark-skinned lady with a messy braid and torn clothes hobbled around with a tattered sign reading, “Medical money, please help.”

In her arms was an infant that had been burned. Passing by her was a fresh-faced woman, clothed in designer brands, straight from the day spa.

Experiencing this Chinese culture first-hand has made Steckelberg feel lucky for what she has in America. Before her trip, she took things like air conditioning, a car and a house for granted. But in China, she very likely wouldn’t have all of that.

“Americans should be very thankful that they can live in America and that they have literally everything they have” Steckelberg said. “China is a great place to live but I honestly don’t think a lot of high schoolers could live there and be okay with it. Don’t take anything you have here for granted.”

>>

To see a photo album of more pictures from Steckelberg’s four month trip to China visit smeharbinger.net

page 14 photo essay 04.12.10

a final

farewell four out of the five bands at bunch of bands perform their last show

ABOVE: Senior Joe Newman plays the guitar during the song “Pile of Lines” during Kept Mess’ performance at Battle of the Bands “I think Brian and I will stay together because we are going to the same college, but as far as Conner goes we plan on playing over the internet and audio sharing,” Newman said. “Even though we didnt place in Bunch of Bands I’m really happy that Menlo did get the win becuase they deserved it and because it was their last performance. I felt like we gave it a good shot for our last Bunch of Bands ever and I wish we would have prepared more.”

LEFT: Senior Kaevan Tavakolinia gets into the song “Alligator Crepes” with his band Mr. Fish featuring Nathan Goldman on guitar.

BOTTOM LEFT: Senior Max McFarland sings the song “You Want My Adventure” in the band SpaceBear. The band featured seniors Duncan

>>all photos by Mackenzie Wylie ABOVE: Seniors and members of Menlo, Adam Levin and Tim Shedor celebrate after recieving the first place award at Battle of the Bands.

“It was bittersweet but it was the way we wanted to go out.” Levin said “I had a lot of fun and I hope everyone goes out and gets our CD and enjoys it,”

A

issue 14 features page 15

>>JackHowland

6-year-old Mary Tanner sits in the back seat of a blue suburban waiting patiently, her eyes fixated on the winding road ahead. The Tanner’s are on their way to Florence, Oregon for a typical family get together. As always, they’ll see relatives, exchange pleasantries, go out to dinner, hit the beach...rinse and repeat.

But Mary can’t wait to see someone who’s not a blood relative. Tango. He’s not a family member, but rather a horse she sees each time she visits. Each trip, Mary drags the family to the beach for some $60 pony rides. The rides are her favorite part of the trip. This is where she first really felt a connection with a horse.

It’s been months since she was last in Florence but she still remembers Tango. She recalls his characteristic mannerisms - his brown and white fur and his slow movement. She laughs every time she thinks about him. In her mind, Tango’s a less than fitting alias for the somewhat drab horse.

As the family arrives and unpacks, says hello and stretches their legs, Mary already persists that it’s time to see her pal. Her brothers roll their eyes, only wanting to ride go-carts, and not go on horses yet again. They’ve done it so many times it’s practically second nature to them.

When it comes time to go, Mary’s brothers are disconnected from their horses, just trying to enjoy the ride. They go out of the barn, through the forest and onto the beach just like they have year after year. But Mary rides up and down the beach for what seems to be hundreds of times. Down and back, down and back. Eventually, sunlight deprives her from any more rides.

The rest of her family trudges home, happy to be off to sleep. But Mary’s already thinking about Tango. Wanting to ride again. *** Ever since her freshman year when she enrolled at White Fox Stables, Mary has been a deeply competitive horse jumper.

Mary graduated early after the first semester of her senior year to pursue riding horses.

She is currently finishing up school online and traveling around the nation, competing in horse shows. Division 1 horse riding may be a possibility next year but she is still undecided due to many different factors.

“I don’t really know at this point, “ Mary said. “I’m still deciding.”

Mary has done jumping competitions since she first started horse lessons as an 11-year-old girl at C&M horse stables. As she’s gotten older the competitions have become more serious and required more traveling. She’s regularly won competitions since she’s started.

Mary has received so many ribbons they are placed into a makeshift tupperware trophy case under her bed. The box consists of what Mrs. Tanner estimates to be upwards of 400 blue, silver and bronze ribbons. Immediately following a competition, the fresh ribbons are carefully placed onto the fridge to display for the family. After a week, new ribbons come in, the old ones go to the bin. It’s a process.

“She always kept those ribbons that I never cared for,” Mary said. “For my mom they were always a big thing.” *** As a 3-year-old girl Mary’s mom bought Mary her very first toy Bryer horse. These miniature animals are basically the horse equivalent of a Barbie doll. Mary loved them.

She asked for stables, barns, accessories and anything else she could get her hands on. She liked to pretend they were her own horses, caring for them.

As she got older, ponies were swapped for larger horses. As an 11-year-old, she was put in a camp in Oklahoma City after seeing it once on a vacation and thinking it looked like fun. The camp introduced her to jumping. After this, the next step was to have her mom sign her up for horse lessons. “[To convince my mom to sign me up for horse lessons] took like a year,” Mary said. “I just kept bugging her about it.”

Mary looked forward to the lessons her mom signed her up for at C&M stables. Most girls her age treated the practices like a new toy - going for a few weeks then recklessly abandoning them altogether. But Mary continued to go week after week.

Her first horse was named Bill. She instantly felt a connection

a drive to

ride

Senior Mary Tanner graduates school early to pursue her dreams of competing with horses

>>

photos courtesy of Mary Tanner SENIOR Mary Tanner with her horse, Skippy. Tanner moved to Colorado after first semester of her senior year to compete in horse competitions. photos courtesy of Mary Tanner

>>

with the steed. At the annual Halloween show that the stables put on, she dressed him up with a big bow-tie and a top hat.

She said it was her date.

In Mr. Peterson’s sixth grade class at Westwood View Elementary, she would write “I love Bill” all over her folders. The teacher found out and was concerned. There was no Bill in the class.

He ended up calling Dana at home warning her of this. She responded with laughter, replying, “Mr. Pete, it’s a horse!”

This was when everyone around Mary knew this love of horses was more than just a fad. She really felt something for them.

Whether they be Bill, Tango or even a doll. *** At C&M stables, a Kansas City area ranch, horses essentially belonged to each girl. They were property of the stables but each one was legally rented out to the riders. Mary loved and cared for the horses she had here, but she still never had her own.

When she started up at White Fox Stables at the beginning of her freshman year, she was still a renter. She had Deb, Bonnie, Sherlock and even one named Frog, and they were each different in their own ways. Mary treated them like they were her own.

One morning during the summer of 2007, Mary was called up by her trainer Julie Pinkering to come up to White Fox. Julie said she had a horse named Skippy and she was from Florida.

She said she was a little rough.

It didn’t make a difference to Mary. She was mesmerized by the horse’s brown, flowing hair and great size. Just as Mary was about to leave, Julie informed Mary that if she wanted her, she was all hers.

“It was her horse,” Dana said. “She went out there every weekend, she could have the trainer look after him for a couple days, but she didn’t want the trainer to take care of her horse, so she went out every day.”

Skippy was classified as having “poor ground manners.”

When she would be taken out on the course, she would often abruptly stop right before making her ascent on a jump, jolting Mary off the horse entirely.

And the kicker: the horse had a debilitating habit of sticking its tongue out on rides. When other girls would ask her about her horse, they’d often respond with, “Oh the one that sticks its

tongue out?”

“I had seen the horse in Iowa with her because we went to an Iowa show,” Dana said. “They were trying to explain to me who this horse was that’d be good for Mary, and [Mary] was always talking about her, and I was like, ‘Not the one with its tongue out?”

But for all the flack Skippy put Mary through, she turned out to be a good horse. Mary had acquired many outside of school friends through horse riding and nearly all of them have since dropped out from horse riding due to their “easy to ride” horses.

Skippy, however, was tough.

Mary moved up to jumping four feet five inches, from her beginning height of two feet six. Once she shifted in height and really started to contend in competitions, she talked to her counselor Laurie Lamb and realized college horse riding was a possibility.

All because of a horse that stuck its tongue out. *** Skippy acted as another trainer for Mary, helping her get better times and higher jumps in her competitions. The most devastating moment in her career was when she tragically lost him.

Skippy had sprained its ankle and reached a level where it couldn’t put any weight on its right foot. They felt it was time to take the horse out of town and have it checked. The doctor said Skippy had cartilage damage in the right foot. He would need surgery.

Before the procedure began, the doctor called Mary, asking for permission to put Skippy down if he felt it was necessary.

Earlier that week they’d gotten a 75 percent chance of the horse gaining its athletic ability back. How could it be?

They immediately told him to stop. They wanted to spend more time with him. Maybe the last time they’d ever spend with him.

“He just looked beautiful,” Dana said. “He was a gorgeous horse.”

About halfway through the surgery, the cartilage began to fall apart. They were going to have to put him down.

A white sheet covered Skippy as he lied on the operating table. Mary asked the doctor if she could go in. Wanting to see him one last time. continued on page 29

>>

page 16 spread 04.12.10

>>KevinSimpson

Perched on a hill in Crimea in 1854, commander Lord Raglan of the British army had a decision to make. His troops were heavily outnumbered, 670 to 5,240, and somehow, Raglan had to find a way to emerge successful from this battle of the Crimean War. Lord Raglan informed a messenger to tell his men down below to, “Charge the guns.”

However, due to a misunderstanding, the messenger mistakenly sent the vastly outnumbered men directly into thousands of snarling Russian soldiers, which led to a massacre of the British brigade. Had Lord Raglan been more up front and direct with his troops, he could have saved many of them. Had he simply held a verbal conversation with them, he could have prevented the massacre.

As Bank of Prairie Village chairman Dan Bolen sees it, this unfortunate cavalry charge is the best example in history about how the wrong kind of communication can yield disastrous results. With a recent study showing a 107 percent increase in text messaging in 2009, Americans are texting now more than ever. Communication has become just a few keyboard taps away. Still, just as Lord Raglan’s men found out, there occasionally is a need for a bit more of a personal touch.

“That right there is the difference between texting and calling,” Bolen said. “Because if you call and say, ‘The only guns in front of me are the whole Russian army, is that what you want?’ [Raglan would respond,] ‘No, you idiot, the guns on the side.”

Bolen estimates that he sends between eight to 10 texts per day, but he utilizes texting for general, follow-up questions that require less immediate action. He enjoys the efficiency and convenience of being able to text anywhere or anytime, but Bolen also acknowledges the fact that there is a fine line between what needs to be handled directly over the phone and what doesn’t.

“The key is to make sure to know humanity does not supersede the technology,” Bolen said. “You’ve got to know when to text and when to call.”

The difference between the two, in Bolen’s opinion, lies in the context of the message. If only a simple date or phone number is needed, a text message is perfectly fine. Bolen thinks an actual conversation is necessary if there is any description on how something should be accomplished.

Even the slightest variations on a text message can yield striking differences. Bolen points out that a text reading, “Close the account,” could

mean a particular checking account, while, “Close the accounts,” plural, could imply to end the entire relationship with that customer.

Text messaging in the workplace recently became a hot topic in the news. A California police officer was granted a reasonable expectation of privacy after sending sexuallyexplicit text messages. The police station took the case to the Supreme Court, due to the fact that the messages were sent on a phone provided by the station.

When asked for his thoughts on employees using office hours or phones for private matters, Bolen put the burden of responsibility on the employees themselves.

“It’s kind of a golden rule,” Bolen said. “You want your employees to be able to handle emergencies, but you have to have enough faith in your employees that you know that they’re spending their time correctly. It’s almost if you have to talk to your employees about it, you probably have the wrong employees.”

His communication philosophy for the workers that he has at Bank of Prairie Village is based upon a set of percentages, Bolen believes that 80 percent of a conversation is voice tone or visual body language, while only 20 percent is the actual content. He believes if there is anything subjective about a matter, a phone call is necessary to give the employee a much higher ability to communicate accurately.

No one understands this potential for communicative blunder like Cindy Post Senning, a co-author of Teen Manners: From Malls to Meals to Messaging and Beyond and director at the Emily Post Institute. The organization, which provides etiquette advice, was founded

by Emily Post in 1946, and Senning is Emily’s great-granddaughter. Senning firmly believes that there are certain occasions when it is inappropriate to be texting.

“Don’t text when you’re in places where it can be disruptive to people around you,” Senning said. “When you’re having a conversation with somebody else, and you’re sitting there texting, how does that person feel?”

Senning advises that it is important for people to remain present where they are.

Texting, she says, can take one out of that presence. While she sees the benefits in utilizing the technology for simply informational purposes, Senning wants people to realize the consequences of texting content that is wished to be kept private.

Once you send something out in that electronic forum, you lose control over it,” Senning said. “If you wouldn’t want to post it on a bulletin board on the front hall of your workplace or school, you might want to be more [careful] of what you’re texting.”

Sophomore Sophia Hitchcock enjoys the control she has when texting, because she’s able to think about a response without the urgency required in a phone call. Hitchcock has been dating junior Zach Colby for eight months, and she estimates that the couple texts around 10 times an hour, depending on the day.

They text casually about the events going on in their days, and Hitchcock thinks that without texting, they wouldn’t talk nearly as much during the week. While Hitchcock enjoys being able to think about how to word her responses in a text as opposed to a phone call, Colby can see the downside of texting.

“It’s so artificial,” Colby said. “To a point, it’s efficient, but it can get excessive and it usually does. It just gets annoying to text people.”

Neither thinks that texting can take too much of a personal touch from conversations, but Colby can think of a few situations where a phone call would be more appropriate.

“Sometimes, spoken word is easier, and it’s easier to say things than to type them all out,” Colby said. “[A phone call is needed] if you were to break up with someone or give more important news.”

Valissa Marston, mother of junior Emma Marston, knows of exactly the kind of important news to which Colby is referring. Emma is a type-1 diabetic, and the two frequently text about keeping Emma’s blood sugars at the correct level. Three to four times a day, Emma and Valissa exchange texts about Emma’s blood sugar, their schedules and even an occasional joke.

“I get an answer faster than if I left a phone message,” Valissa said. “By the time she checks her phone messages during passing time, she wouldn’t have time to call me back.”

It might not just be teenagers like Emma, Colby and Hitchcock that need to learn proper texting etiquette, according to Valissa. As a self-employed communications consultant, she has been in multiple situations where she feels adults could learn a few things on appropriate texting manners.

“There are times when I’m in a meeting with someone,” Valissa said. “And then, they’re responding to the texts or e-mails that are coming in on their phone,

rath than giving me their und vided attention. It feels rude.”

Still, Valissa has found ways to make te ting a positive in her life. She and her hu band, Rick, occasionally send text messa es to Emma and Claire, their older daught to brighten their days. It’s not uncommo for Rick to give Emma some uplifting wor about the “Big D” - which is how he refe to diabetes - or for Valissa to shoot Claire text asking her, “Do you know how muc love you?” Always inspirational, and alwa ending, “XOXO.” Emma appreciates the effort that h mom puts into her texts.

“She just sends funny things to me th she doesn’t even know are funny,” Emm said. “That’s always nice - to have fun texts from your mom, just to kind of pick your day a little bit. She’ll just be at the g cery store and find some really weird pers or something she knows I’ll think is fun and she’ll text it to me during school.”

Beyond funny texts with her mom, Emm is able to send countless numbers of te throughout the day. On April 5, Emma sa she began texting at 5:59 a.m. and cont ued until 8:46 p.m. She says she used to “awful” when it came to her high amoun texting, but has since sent fewer.

Valissa said she would not take Emm phone away unless it was to help her conc trate on her homework. She sees Emma’s c phone as too valuable a tool to be eliminat However, she stresses the importance of membering how to properly hold a oneone conversation, sans technology.

“You can’t really tell what somebody m be meaning unless you’re able to hear th voice,” Valissa said.

If someone had told that to a certain ar commander just over 156 years ago, an en war could have had a different ending. Bo keeps that in mind when he communicate “How many other texts have resu in the fate of the light brigade?” Bolen s “That’s what you always worry about w you’re texting. When I say, ‘Charge the gu are they interpreting it as something enti different? And if so, will it have disastr consequences?”

For now, the world can only wonder h differently the Crimean War would h turned out had Lord Raglan been able to w out an iPhone, finish his game of Monop and inform his troops of his strategy.

issue 14 spread page 17

er di-

Connect

As text messaging increases nationwide at record rates, those taking advantage of the technology attempt to keep their messages from getting lost in abbreviation

JUNIOR ALLIEHUNTER

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>>photo illustration by NathanSimpson

FRESHMAN BRITNEYHINOTE

exusagter, on rds ers ea ch I ays

SENIOR LEAHCHESBROUGH

>>lancervoice

Q: Should parents read their kid’s texts? Why? A: No, because it’s private.

Q: Should employees use work phones for personal use?

A: Yeah, if they want you to carry that work phone around, you should be able to use it as your phone.

Q: How often do you text?

A: Maybe a few times an hour but mostly after school and weekends.

Q: Do your parents text you often?

A: Yeah, we don’t even talk on the phone just text.

Q: Should parents read their kid’s texts?

Why? A: I wouldn’t care because I don’t have anything to hide from them.

Q: Should employees use work phones for personal use?

A: No because it gets in the way of doing your job.

Q: How often do you text?

A: Quite a bit.

Q: Do your parents text you often?

A: My mom texts me all the time to check in on me.

Q: Should parents read their kid’s texts?

Why? A: No, sometimes there may be something you don’t want them to see.

Q: Should employees use work phones for personal use?

A: No, if the work is paying for the texts it’s not their personal property.

Q: How often do you text?

A: Probably 100 texts a day.

Q: Do your parents text you often?

A: Sometimes, it’s annoying when they use short hand.

Q: Should parents read their kid’s texts?

Why? A: No, I don’t care, because if I really don’t want them to see I’d erase it.

Q: Should employees use work phones for personal use?

A: No, because if you’re given a work phone you should use it just for work.

Q: How often do you text?

A: A lot! At least 200 texts a day!

Q: Do your parents text you often?

A: Yeah, a ton, that’s the only way my mom contacts me now.

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Behind the Mask

issue 14 features page 19

Sophomore finds success as the top-ranked ice hockey goalie in the area

>>ColleenIreland

Stuck at the hockey rink watching his older sister practice figure skating routines, six-year-old Stephen Sundberg was drawn to the hockey practices taking place in the same complex. Sundberg’s introduction to the ice from the rink bleachers inspired him to be what he is today: a goalie on the Kansas City Stars. After 10 years of countless practices, hundreds of games, scrimmages and over 10 technique camps through the Stars, his skills have continuously developed and progressed, earning him the rank as one of the top three goalies in his league.

“He’s a kid that shows up for all of the off-season stuff, so he wants to get better,” his coach Gary Emmons said. “Sometimes that’s half the battle, being a kid that just wants to be a better hockey player, and Stephen definitely wants to become a better hockey player.”

He debuted at age six, wobbling on the ice and undergoing countless trips and falls along with his team mates. As a seven-year-old, he knew he enjoyed the sport and wanted to continue playing, so after approaching his father about becoming a goalie, he decided to go out for the position.

“Just doing something little and having the stands cheer for you is cool,” Sundberg said. “I wasn’t the fastest player on the team and I wasn’t the biggest. At that point, I just liked standing in front of the goal and helping out my team.”

After moving through each of the Stars’ sub-divisions of Atoms, Mites, Squirts, Peewees and Bantams, Sundberg competed in the oldest age group this season: the Midgets. Starting with Atoms at age six, players move to each following age group after two years, with Mites starting at age eight. Along with the age divisions, the Stars also have two league divisions, which are House and Travel teams. House team members compete in the KC metro area while travel team members, like Sundberg, compete in games across the Midwest.

The fact that East doesn’t have a school team like Rockhurst or Pembroke doesn’t bother him.

“I like it better that it’s a league team,” Sundberg said. “I think if it was part of the school it just wouldn’t be fair, because then we’d be in the high school hockey league instead of the Midwest travel team league.”

Coach Emmons is a former NHL player who played as a center for the San Jose Sharks, as well as several International Hockey League teams. Under his coaching, Sundberg’s hockey team holds two of the three best goalies, three of the top scorers and the best defenseman in the league. These rankings are decided from stats gathered for each of the players in the Midwest High School Hockey League, based on things like the number of games they’ve competed in, total and average points scored and shots blocked by the goalies. Sundberg’s ability to block 93 percent of shots on goal is what landed him a spot as one of the top three goalies.

Being part of a Travel team is unlike a House team because players have to try out to be chosen. Also, with each age division holding between three and six House teams and the four oldest age groups each having only a JV and varsity travel

THE KC STars

By The

num bers

Formed in 1996

team, the competition to be chosen is high. Tryouts are three days long with two hour scrimmages each day, where players try to show their best moves to the coaches in hopes of snagging a spot. The moves include Sundberg’s favorite, the butterfly, where a goaltender drops to his knees, with his legs spread to the side, to block a shot. The poke-check is another of his favorite moves.

“It’s the funniest to do,” said Sundberg. “You sprawl out and dive out with your stick all the way out and you trip them when they come down with the puck.”

Traveling across the Midwest takes a toll on the players both physically and financially. In addition to equipment expenses, Traveling players must pay travel expenses out of pocket. Also, spending 5-and-a-half hours on the road in a bus filled with his team mates on a trip to Iowa could be seen as a nuisance, but the players know what they are signing up for when they become part of the team.

“It’s really not a big deal, people usually do homework on the road,” sophomore team member Aiden Connelly said.

“You’re gone some of the weekends so sometimes you miss some stuff you want to do.”

As a goalie, Sundberg spends a majority of his time suspensefully waiting for the few seconds of intense action that could confront him at any moment. Distractions like friends in the bleachers, unsportsmanlike opponents and stress can make it difficult for him to focus, but he has learned that it is necessary to stay composed during a game.

“Goalies never get rest,” Emmons said. “Sure, the puck’s not always in their end, but they have to be focused the whole time they’re in a game. Whereas a position player can come sit on the bench for four or five minutes, the goal tender has to be mentally ready to play for 60 minutes, and there are no breaks for a goalie. The goalie is the last stop.”

This ability allowed him to receive the honor of a standing ovation at a game with filled stands, as he stood in the middle of the hockey rink with the other two highest ranked goalies in the league, while he accepted his Silver Glove award.

Along with this honor, his team was also the junior varsity season champion, even with their competition being northern states with a more prominent hockey following.

“There aren’t a lot of rinks here, because this city doesn’t have an anchor, it doesn’t have a National Hockey League team,” Emmons said. “You’ve got to make the best of what you’ve got and that’s why I think in the past we’ve been a little bit behind, but with some of the coaches we’ve got in this city that we’re making tremendous strides.”

The camaraderie he has built with the team he is on, including many players he has grown and competed with since he was an Atom, is one of the things he loves about being on the team. Sundberg hopes to be recruited for a college team, then a junior team and possibly an NHL team eventually.

Things like hanging out with 20 friends in a hotel room before an away game, watching NHL games and cringing at a missed shot that ‘any of them could’ve made’ are memories that will stay with him even after he’s done being a Midget.

Age 18 and under

25 Home and Travel Teams

340+ Players

Youth skates $80-$160

>>

8 Months in the

fall/winter season

>> photos courtesy of the Sundberg family

>>Grant Heinlein

For additional coverage, including photographs of Steven Sundberg in action, visit smeharbinger.net

AAG

Supporting

East Athletics Aguiar Ag. Group Denny Aguiar, President

visit

SMEHARBINGER.NET

issue 14 mixed page 21

{

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a little of everything

The nameGAME

We wash them, we fill them with gas, we park them at East every day, but we don’t all name them. Take a look at three East students who have nicknamed their vehicles:

n

Ow r u o ke Y

“Boris the Taurus”

a

“It’s pretty simple, really. Obviously Boris rhymes with Taurus, and it’s a funny name. It fits my car pretty well.”

>>sophomore Zach Jacobson

“Bianca” “Well one day, one of my friends just said ‘Bianca has a huge ass’ ‘cause my car has a really round and smooth trunk and kinda resembles a rockin’ bottom. And the personification began. I just looked at her and Bianca fit.”

to M w Hdo:

“We were all driving to ask Michael Hill to WPA for Amy Sachse and we were going down Juniper street. I was like “Juniper would be such a good name! Everyone laughed at me, but it’s stuck. I mostly call her ‘June.’”

Now That It'’s Warm Out

1. Fly a kite

No, really! Head out to your nearest park on a windy day and spend some quality time in the sun. It’s cheap, fun and under-rated.

2. Go to a First Friday

The next ones are May 7 and June 4! Enjoy good art in the Crossroads district. Stop for hamburgers and fries at Town Topic Diner (2021 Broadway) and get gourmet snow cones at Fresher Than Fresh.

3. Make popsicles

Use the recipe above to make a delicious (and pretty healthy) snack. If you’re feeling lazy and in need of an icy drink, head to your nearest QuikTrip and make a flavor mash-up with the Freezoni machine.

4. Host a water balloon fight

Get together a group of friends on a Friday and take a nostalgic trip back to summer camp in fourth grade, when you ambushed the opposite gender at every given chance. The competition between teams is a fresh experience.

5. Camp outside

Borrow your parents’ 20 year old tent and dig out your sleeping bags for a fun night under the stars in the wild expanse of . . . your backyard. Or you can get adventurous and go to Woodland Acres (take I-635 North and exit at Riverside).

rawbe

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>> Five Things To Do

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>>senior Jake Johnson

>>sophomore Emily Kerr

es l c i s Pop

30 Q

seconds with senior

Connor Callahan

a Q a Q a Qa Qa Qa

When did you start playing the saxophone?

I started playing in sixth grade, and I played jazz for the first time in the band at Indian Hills.

Are you planning on doing anything with music after East?

I’m majoring in music education— like being a music teacher. But if that doesn’t work out, I could pursue performing.

What is your favorite thing about performing?

I’m not very good with words, so music is really where I can let it all out and express myself.

What’s your favorite type of music to play?

Jazz is definitely the most fun to play, and to listen to.

Do you play any other instruments?

I started piano in third grade, clarinet in sixth, and the tenor sax in seventh.

Why did you decide to play the sax?

All the cool kids wanted to play it. Actually, no, not really. It’s a fun instrument, and sounds the coolest.

page 22 a&e 04.12.10

Mythological Mash-up >>AlexLamb

Furious gods, non-worshipping mortals, a city-leveling sea monster and a half-man, half-god in the middle of it all.

So begins a special effects-driven clash that provides exactly what you’d expect from a blockbuster of this sort—impressive action sequences, enjoyably cheesy dialogue and a simple yet entertaining ride at the movies. “Clash of the Titans” is no epic like “Troy,” but this swords and sandals action flick takes the Greek myth of Perseus studied in sophomore English class and sprinkles it with some “300” flavor, producing a translation of the material that’s you’ll actually want to experience this time around.

The thin narrative starts with foolish humans disrespecting the gods and not offering sacrifices, so Zeus (Liam Neeson) authorizes Hades (Ralph Fiennes) to teach the mortals in the city of Argos a lesson. Hades gives the people 10 days to either sacrifice their beautiful prized princess Andromeda or face obliteration from the unstoppable giant sea creature the Krakken. In response, one of Zeus’s demigod bastard sons, Perseus (Sam Worthington), sets out on a quest to save the city and princess from the fearsome monster by finding a way to kill it and then defeat a weakened Hades, who murdered his adoptive family.

Of course that all sounds like a preposterously impossible task, but “Clash” takes place in the world of fantastical Greek myths, where seemingly anything can happen and realism holds little importance, a detail that improves both the action and atmosphere of the film. So Perseus travels across the land in search of an ultimate weapon, facing many dangers and continually striving to prove his worth as just a man, not part god, all before the Krakken is unleashed.

Compared to the original 1981 “Clash of the Titans,” the story has been greatly altered, dropping the romantic subplot (for the most part), adding Hades into the narrative, involving other new characters and focusing the movie almost entirely on Perseus’s journey. However, many of these changes turn this remake into the superior version. The plot is now even less faithful to the original myth, but the differences do give the tale a bigger and more involving scale, as well as centering the action and development on Perseus.

The one downside being that Perseus is childishly stubborn about not using his godly advantage, so there’s extra, unnecessary characterization stemming from that.

But this film satisfies, the main reason boiling down to the thrilling action sequences and the mythological beasts they involve. Director Louis Leterrier was strongly influenced by the original “Clash” and this can be seen in his respect for the source material and its exaggerated mood, as well as his goal to create a remake that stands on its own and fits in this

‘Clash of the Titans’ successfully adapts greek mythology into a big hit

day and age.

The original’s monsters were mostly created through dated stop-motion technology and they seem humorously stupid now; Leterrier has crafted intimidating, predominantly CGI beasts in this version that not only look great but make for fierce creatures in battle as well. Gigantic, unrelentingly vicious scorpions and a spidery, spindly Medusa highlight the action, but the real spectacle is seen with the Krakken at the end, the most breathtakingly awesome movie creature since the monster in “Cloverfield.”

Fighting these beasts, Worthington exudes a veteran action star air with his steely stare, stop-at-nothing persona and slow-building charisma. Straight off from his success in “Terminator: Salvation” and “Avatar” and now as this legendary half-god, half-man badass, he has officially earned his stripes and secured his spot as a leading action juggernaut. While his performance here isn’t as strong as it was in those last two films, he’s sufficient enough and his overly mellow-dramatic or half-hearted acting at points is forgivable.

When monster fighting ensues, Worthington is able to quickly raise the audience’s energy and jump right into the struggle, and that’s what really matters in this movie.

Even though the writing and line delivery can be pretty laughable sometimes, the over-serious mood and dialogue acts more as an enhancement of the film’s entertainment value rather than as a detraction—despite sounding like it could’ve been written by awkward dialogue extraordinaire George Lucas. The acting follows a similar pattern but doesn’t really hamper enjoyment because the movie’s monsters, special effects and set pieces stand out so much as to overshadow those flaws.

This is most easily noticed in the scenes of the gods arguing. They’re quite fun to watch, not only due to the gaudy outfits the gods wear, but also the flowing cheesiness of their lines. Zeus dons the shiniest silver set of armor probably ever put to celluloid and bears more glorious facial hair than the Internet phenomenon Epic Beard Man. And when Neeson announces in a booming voice, “Release the Krakken!” you’ll be smiling with giddy delight. Hades, on the other hand, flies around in a cloud of black smoke, with Fiennes rasping out all his lines as if he’s been smoking for forty years straight. While this all feels pretty silly, it’s a clue the film is meant to be taken lightly, and doing so makes it far more amusing.

My only big gripe with the movie where it actually de-

grades the film is the less than half-assed job in making it 3D. “Clash” was originally shot in 2D, and the decision to add the extra dimension didn’t come until late in post-production, meaning very little of it actually feels like it has the added depth. So little in fact that you’d be better off seeing the 2D version, where not only will you save several bucks, but the colors of the movie will pop out more, since 3D glasses darken everything a couple shades.

“Clash of the Titans” resembles the kind of big-budget action extravaganzas we don’t usually see until the summer, and as such provides the large-scale set pieces, intricate CGI and dumb fun that comes with them, a guilty pleasure not usually granted indulgence until June and July. For that, it feels partially refreshing at this point in time, but mostly just a cool journey from beginning to end.

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>>Movieweb.com

A look at Hollywood’s most famous adaptations of greek mythology

The Films

In the myth

In the movie

Fabricated

True to the myth

Hercules (1997)

Hercules endures the wrath of the goddess Hera when she sends him into a mad rage and he kills his wife Megara and children.

Hercules goes from poor farm boy to wealthy hero in a matter of months. Soon after, he falls in love with Megara, who is also a slave to Hades.

Pegasus, Hercules’s, winged horse is not in the myth at all and in the movie, Hercules has to train to become strong, rather than already being strong.

Due to Disney’s childish spin on a fairly serious myth, the only thing that rings true between the movie and myth is the fact that Hercules is half- god.

Troy (2004)

The Iliad takes place a few weeks before the end of the Trojan war and illustrates the battle between the Trojans, gods and Greeks.

This adaptation of Homer’s Iliad stays fairly true to the story aside from Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom parading around in metal skirts.

The Iliad ends with Hectors death, but the movie moves far past that and shows the use of the Trojan horse and Achille’s death.

Other than the movie adding on an ending, everything from the myth is adapted very well. From the war scenes to love affairs, Troy sticks with the Iliad’s story line.

Stay home |

| Rental at best |

| Worth seeing |

| Instant Classic |

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All Smiles Under Northern Lights

issue 14 a&e page 23

Documentary about Detroit band the White Stripes follows them through a tour of the Northern Canadian Provinces

>>DuncanMchenry

Jack White rarely holds on to a smile for longer than a few seconds. They seem to fade from his face as quickly as they arrive, replaced by his usual steely look of Detroit intensity. During interviews in the first fulllength documentary from his most famous musical experiment, The White Stripes,

Tools An inside look at a few of Jack of the Trade White’s favorite guitars JB Hutto Montgomery Airline Jack White: “Playing that guitar makes me feel like I have to take something that’s broken and make it work. It’s hollow, it’s made of plastic, and it feels like it’s going to fall apart.” >>Eastwoodguitars.com

Harmony Rocket The Harmony Rocket is one of Jack’s back up guitars, but he uses it in many of his concerts.

It produces a full, woody, warm tone.

Jack and band mate Meg White reassume their alter egos of the gritty front man and silent drummer girl.

But when they take the stage flanked by their two bearded roadies in dark suits and bowler hats, they emerge from the phone booth as a two-piece industrial factory of grinding rock and emotion. And by the end of “The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights,” it’s clear that neither piece could run without the other.

In typical Jack White fashion, “Northern Lights” follows the band on their tour of an area seldom covered by famous rock musicians: the Canadian territories. And the duo doesn’t call it quits after Quebec, instead choosing to make a stop in every single province. Coming from White, whose idea of creative inspiration includes playing old Plexi glass guitars and placing his organ just far enough from his microphone so that he “has to jump across” the stage to get to it, the idea seems just eccentric enough to work.

And it does work beautifully, as Jack and Meg manage to connect with crowd after crowd on a level that would be impossible in an American arena show. The film opens with a group of local bagpipers playing on stage, and instead of playing along with them as the viewer expects, Jack launches into the frenzied notes of “Black Math,” completely cutting them off. Based on the roar of the crowd, nobody was offended at the interruption.

On the contrary, the people at every concert and impromptu jam session played by the Stripes seem overjoyed at their presence. As they pull out of a show to yells of recognition in a tiny town so far north that

the sun is still out at 11 p.m., Jack smiles momentarily and curtly remarks, “They’re good people in the Yukon.”

Some of the so-called “sideshows” played by Jack and Meg over the course of their travels include a rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus” at a YMCA day care and on an actual bus, Jack bowling a strike with his guitar strapped on and plugged in before playing at a bowling alley in Saskatoon and Jack digging his forehead into the wallpaper of a pool hall in Halifax while singing. As Jack puts it, while playing in these smaller towns, “something interesting will always happen.”

But the most powerful of these spontaneous shows is when Jack and Meg arrange a meeting with a group of Inuit elders. Instead of his usual 60’s Montgomery Airline guitar, Jack brings along his acoustic Gretsch Rancher, named “Rita” for a picture of actress Rita Hayworth on the back. As Jack plucks out a blues pattern and sings the lyrics, “These red-headed women won’t let Mr. Jack White rest,” the Inuit octogenarians can’t help but tap their fingers and feet along with Meg’s tambourine. It’s a beautifully ironic sharing of cultures, and one that Jack embraces all the way through being offered a meal of raw caribou and soy sauce.

Even without these cultural aspects of the documentary, “Northern Lights” is worth watching just to witness the stage presence of Jack White. On songs like “Seven Nation Army” and “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” Meg’s kick drum is the heartbeat that pulses the crowd into a frenzy and Jack is the defibrillator that kicks the energy up several more notches. He bounds and stomps around every stage, alternating be-

tween two microphones, slashing out solos on his guitar, pounding on an organ and any combination of the three at once. The chemistry between Jack and Meg is always evident, as Jack’s second microphone is set up right in front of her drum kit, allowing him to stare at her from behind his strands of black hair and insert her name into screaming lyrics like, “You can do anything you want to Meg!” In fact, the film’s only minor downfall was that at times it tried to be too artsy with shots of random objects in the Canadian landscape instead of focusing on the sonic mushroom cloud that is The White Stripes.

While an amazing guitarist, Jack could never match the technical abilities of someone like Eric Clapton, and Meg’s drumming by itself sounds like something a ten-yearold could bang out on a metal pot. But the emotion and drive behind their playing oozes from every song, as if Jack needed to scream into a pillow and found a microphone instead.

To the untrained eye the White Stripes may seem gimmicky with their red, white and black color scheme and mysterious husband and wife/brother and sister relationship, but as they perform across tiny northern towns it’s evident that they’re in it purely to make music together in an unplanned and unbridled fashion. Who cares if Meg is really Jack’s sister or not. Chances are he’d just flash one of his steely smiles and laugh if you asked him.

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>>pittsburgguitars.com

Gretsch White Penguin Jack White also uses a 1957 Gretsch White Penguin. One of the rarest guitars in the world, it can be seen in the video for the song “Icky Thump.”

>>gretschguitars.com

Stay home |

| Rental at best |

| Worth seeing |

| Instant Classic |

>>AJR Photo

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A couple of KC’s newest burger joints have differing styles, but that did not subtract from their ability to make

BRGR

4038 W 83rd, Prairie Village, KS

>>SarahMcKittrick

Everything about BRGR, the new restaurant in Corinth Square, makes a statement.

From the words “Eat. Drink. Socialize,” that are scrawled across the wall in black paint, to the huge fans that hang from the ceiling, to the unique listing and taste of menu items, all aspects of the restaurant stand out as different and flavorful.

When I went to BRGR, which is pronounced B-R-G-R, it was a Sunday night.

Corinth Square is no Plaza or Power and Light District, and I was surprised that the restaurant was so crowded, especially for a traditionally slow time. The restaurant definitely had a neighborhood feel; I saw several families I knew and people were chatting comfortably between tables.

As soon as I stepped into the restaurant, I was met with the hum of energy. A crowd of young men and women sat at the bar area watching an NCAA game or stood chatting with friends. In the sit-down area of the restaurant, the ages of customers ranged from young families with toddlers, to adults on dates, to a couple of grandparents.

five guys

The décor of the restaurant was very modern and urban, yet still comfortable. The tables were made of wood and were matched with metal chairs. The duct work and beams were showing on the ceiling with lights hanging down. Special accents were every where to be found whether it was a huge clock hanging by the kitchen or several large fans hanging from the ceiling. A mural illustrating an old time diner covered one wall, which perfectly contrasted with the more modern feel of the restaurant.

The service was great from the moment I walked in the door. Waiters were happy to suggest popular menu items or their personal favorite dishes. As they stopped by to make sure the food was okay, the workers offered fun conversation, talking about the history of the restaurant or offering commentary on the NCAA games playing by the bar. Sometimes the service was a little slow, but the quality of the service made the sometimes leisurely pace forgettable.

The burgers were big, juicy, and each had a different flavor. There was only one traditional burger on the menu and all of the others had a unique twist or taste. At first I was wary to try some of the different dishes, but each took an unconventional approach to a burger that made ordering and eating the food exciting.

When I went, we ordered the Juicy Lucy,

a burger filled with American cheese and topped with Worcestershire sauce, lettuce, and mayo, and the BRGR, which is topped with caramelized onions, American cheese, pickles, and mustard. To be honest, I am usually the person who just gets a boring burger with ketchup and maybe lettuce and tomato, so trying these new flavors made me a little nervous. Even though I generally don’t usually like pickles and mustard, the sour taste of pickles and the tangy taste of mustard combined with the onion and cheese surprised me and I really liked the uniqueness of the dishes.

A downside of the restaurant is that the sandwiches and burgers did not come with fries or onion rings, which you had to order on the side. Each side of fries or ring cost from $2.50 to $4, which combined with a $8 sandwich made for somewhat of an expensive meal for the average high school student.

However, the taste of the fries and rings greatly overshadowed the cost. Instead of tasting like a grease-filled plate of fries that were frozen and then simply dumped into oil 5 minutes before being served, the actual taste of potato was apparent and dominant.

We ordered the combo, which allowed you to chose a combination of three of the sides.

The fries and rings lacked the oily, greasy feel of McDonald’s fries and were a nice

change from normal restaurant fries. Like the burgers, they offered a refreshing, more home-style taste.

BRGR seems to have twists that make going to the restaurant a more exciting experience then going to a regular burger joint and bar. The water is delivered in a champagnestyle glass bottle with the label “pure tap water,” the fries and rings are served with BRGR’s original “special sauce,” and the bathrooms consists of a single room with two stalls for boys and two stalls for girls.

Once you get over the initial weirdness of the bathrooms, you can see that BRGR is just trying to make your restaurant experience as unique as possible. With its easy access location, scrumptious food, and inviting personality, BRGR has the makings of a great neighborhood restaurant.

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12025 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park, KS

>>SamKovzan

You’ll have high expectations upon entering Five Guys – even before you catch the scent of fresh, never-frozen, lean ground-beef patties being flipped by crimson-clad cooks.

The restaurant’s red-and-white-checkered interior is covered with plaques of acclaim from various critics – “Heaven on a bun,” tells “The Tampa Tribune;” “Willy Wonkas of burgercraft!” wails “The Washington Post.”

While Five Guys may be lacking modesty, it’s nothing short of a hamburger haven serving some of the finest sandwiches ‘fast-food money’ can buy (main items range from $3.39 to $5.79, fries and drink not included). Not only that, but it deviates greatly from your typical burger joint. Kudos to whoever’s idea it was to provide customers complimentary peanuts while they wait for their greasy brownbag of food.

As for the heaping sacks of potatoes mounted along the dining tables, well that’s just unique.

The rapidly expanding (three new KC area locations) Washington DC-based franchise scores further bonus points – remember I’ve yet to even bite into my burger – during the ordering process. There are four burger options: regular, cheese, bacon and bacon cheese respectively, each served with two third-pound patties. Can’t stomach the task of

Check please |

Goodburgers >>Michael Stolle

page 24 a&e 04.12.10

downing a double? You have the option of downsizing to the single-patty “junior” burger.

Now here’s the best part: the restaurant’s 15 toppings, ranging from lettuce and tomato to fried onions and grilled mushrooms, come absolutely free of charge. You could conceivably build a castle of toppings on top of your already colossal burger without spending a penny extra. Other entrees on the menu include hot dogs (regular, chili and chili cheese), the Veggie Sandwich and grilled cheese.

Oh, and don’t fret about inadequate side orders. Just as “The Long Island Press” put it, “fries alone are not to be missed.” Though the burger is its undoubted specialty, Five Guys takes plenty of pride in its hand-cut French fries imported from Rigby, Idaho. Cooked in cholesterol-free peanut oil, the fries taste similar to Chick-fil-A’s. Unless you’re bringing the entire posse, a regular size ($1.99) is more than enough. Not only could a large order feed an entire Girl Scout troop, but it’ll cost you $3.79, 40 cents more than a junior hamburger. I recommend getting them Cajun style for a spicy kick during the meal.

And once it’s finally time to eat, don’t blink. My one regret was chowing down too fast and failing to register more details about the sinful sandwich. This much is certain: my

| Lukewarm |

>>Lindsey Hartnett

| Dietary Delight |

burger – dressed with lettuce, grilled onions, pickles and ketchup – was juicy, tender and seemingly melted in my mouth. I was slightly concerned upon learning from the menu that their burgers were cooked well done, but all worries were wiped away after the first bite. The high quality of the meat itself is very noticeable. ‘Hot and fresh’ sums it up perfectly. Unlike the perfect circles at Mickey D’s and squares at Wendy’s, the shape of each patty varied, and every mouthful was extremely tasty.

My friend faced a similar problem of eating too fast. His burger looked much prettier than mine for the very brief period of time it was both unwrapped and uneaten. I can picture it now: two patties, melted cheese, lettuce, tomato and a bit of mayo nestled between a sesame seed bun. I want one right now, really badly.

A few tips: if you want ketchup, mustard or mayo on your burger, refrain from telling the cooks when you order. Instead, keep your sandwich dry and go to the condiment area next to the soda machines. Get as much of the given sauce as you want and apply the desired amount to your burger. I ordered mine with ketchup, and the cook got Heinz happy and slopped on twice the amount of ketchup that was needed.

Also, don’t get caught eating too many peanuts while your food is being prepared. Just calm down and know that a big, tasty gut-bomb awaits, which will likely obliterate your hunger for the remainder of the day.

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issue 14 a&e page 25

Chez

Kansas City to r o v a fl n a e p lle’ brings Euro E z e tween two h ‘C e ri e p New cre choices. Finally I settled on the

>>KikiSykes

As my family and I walked up the thick cement steps of Chez Elle creperie towards the French doors, I was overpowered by the drifting aroma of fresh baked pastries and worked my way inside to find the source of this scent. A line about 10 people long greeted me and I had to budge my way inside the quaint creperie. The walls were splashed with a calming orange color that complements the Parisian feel of the restaurant. Paintings and artwork done by local artists line the walls, giving the restaurant an upbeat and welcoming feel.

A huge chalkboard hangs high on the wall displaying the countless options of crepes to choose from. I read through the swirly writing of the neon colored menu noting the impressive number of options as well as the creative name for each. The names of each crepe ranged from Acropolis to Jambon to the classic Chez Elle. A crepe is basically just an extremely think pancake. Each crepe had its own unique ingredients with both vegetarian and regular options.

As the line in front of me slowly diminished, I was still torn as to what to order. Should I choose the Jambon with black forest ham, pesto spinach and mozzarella cheese, or the Acropolis with roasted chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, baby spinach and cucumber Tzatzki sauce? There were too many options and being a bad on-the-spot-decider, I still hadn’t chosen even once I got to the counter.

The cashier was patient and waited as I oscillated be-

BELOW: The Jambon crepe is just one of the specialty lunch crepes chez elle offers. Chez elle uses special crepe griddles imported from france. The batter, once poured is swirled around with a utensil resembling a windshield wiper in order to distribute the batter evenly.

Jambon. I also had to decide on the dessert crepe to complete my meal. There were even more options of dessert crepes that all looked equally delicious. Finally, I settled on the Citron - lemon curd and strawberries with whipped cream on top.

We ordered drinks off of the yet again never ending beverage menu, took our number and scoured the restaurant for a place to sit. The dining room consists of a plethora of couches and comfy chairs as well as little tables to sit at. We chose a table near the back, close to the bar where you could watch the chefs busy at work creating tantalizing crepes. Each table is adorned with an Eiffel tower shaped number holder as well as a vase of flowers that give the restaurant give a cheery feeling and add to the overall experience.

As we waited for our food to arrive, I sipped my vanilla cappuccino and was thoroughly content with my last minute decision to order it. It is the perfect drink for people like me, who are just beginning to enjoy coffee but still need the espresso to be basically drowned out by sweetness.

The cappuccino had just enough coffee flavor to Located in the historic summit building, Chez Elle is just minutes from the Sprint ensure me that I would be getting the necessary Center on the other side of I-35. >>all photos by Michael Stolle afternoon buzz and alertness I expect from my coffee drinks.

After a few more minutes the crepes finally arrived, and I was anything but disappointed with my order. I was instantly satisfied. This crepe tasted light and fresh with the pesto flavor really coming through. It was the perfect Sunday afternoon lunch I was looking for. I tried the crepes my family ordered, and although they were quite good, none of them lived up to the Jambon. Some of the flavors in the other crepes were too overpowering and the crepe didn’t have a well balanced palate of tastes. My dad ordered their special, supposedly the best selling crepe, but I was surprised that it was so highly rated. It tasted a little off and the cheese was too strong. But it was satisfying none the less. This is definitely the type of restaurant you want to go to with people you are comfortable One of three dining rooms at Chez Elle, this room features art from local artists in with, because I can ensure you, you’ll want to be addition to comfortable seating arrangements. passing plates around and trying a bite of all of them. how fresh it is.

Overall the meal crepes were pretThe lemon crepe was incredible too and I knew that on ty good but they didn’t quite astound the dessert menu, you could order any of the crepes and me. However, as soon as I took one be equally satisfied. This Creperie was the perfect addition nibble of the dessert crepes, Chez Elle to the restaurants of Kansas City and just what we needed. became my new favorite restaurant.

It is an elegant yet homey restaurant with a European flair The Patriote crepe consisted of strawthat makes it unique. The food is filling and delicious. Alberries, bananas and blueberries filled though the meal crepes may have a little room for improvewith creme Anglaise and topped with ment, the restaurant is new and working out its kinks. And whipped cream. It was basically to die even though it’s so new to the neighborhood it is already for. The two crepes sat on the plate bustling with people and an instant success. topped with raspberry sauce and a dollop of whipped cream to complete the perfect presentation. They tasted even better than they looked. It was sweet

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and fruity and stimulated all my senses. It was a refreshing dessert; it was one of those desserts that almost makes you feel healthy because of

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| Lukewarm |

| Dietary Delight |

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For an interactive map of all the restaurants reviewed in this issue, visit smeharbinger.net

| Delectable |

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page 26 sports 04.12.10 >>Photo illustration by Anna Marken

When the ball

leaves their

court

Two coaches plan to depart for the new Blue Valley Southwest next year

head coach Scott Dowis both announced that their final Lancer season was this year. Both received an offer to coach at Blue Valley Southwest high school, a new school opening this coming year.

After their resignations, Athletic Director Jim Ricker found new applicants through a large pooling process. Rosacarla Ribeiro will follow in Dowis’ footsteps and former girls’ assistant basketball coach Scott Stein will become the new girls’ head basketball coach. “[Both coaches will] continue to move the program in the right direction,” Ricker said. “Both coaches did an outstanding job of building these programs. We’ll continue to build and become more successful in postseason play and still keep the community wanting to be a part of the program. The kids will learn a lot and continue to improve their game.”

This year, the girls’ basketball team won the District title for the second year in a row and had a winning record in the mid-20s. The volleyball team concluded their season with a 21-7 record.

Former East Athletic Director Gary Howard is currently the BVSW Athletic Director. However, the school had hired all of their coaches for the next school year, and does not plan to challenge East in season play unless via a Quad or Tournament.

Rhodes described several challenges facing the school.

As 2010-2011 is BVSW’s maiden year, the school hosts only 50 seniors, and the majority of enrolled students are freshmen or sophomores with no Varsity experience. However, Rhodes looks forward to the challenge and cites proximity as a reason for leaving East.

“That’s my community that’s where I live, it’s less than a five-minute drive,” Rhodes said. “The opportunity to start a brand new program [were on of the reasons to support my decision] and I know the school is going to grow.”

Ricker began the new selection process by posting advertisements on every frequently-trafficked coaching site.

The SMSD home page, Kansas Coach’s Association’s space,

anywhere a notice could be seen. At first a lot of queries poured in, but once Ricker replied that the positions were strictly coaching and did not have a teaching job attached to them, the pool was lowered to roughly 10 applicants per coaching position.

Ricker then evaluated each candidate based on criteria that he and principal Karl Krawitz had previously discussed: the new coaches had to have prior and successful coaching experience, good communication skills, and knowledge of the game. But most importantly, the coach had to enjoy working with students.

“Everyone’s passionate about the game,” Ricker said. “But if you don’t care about the kids, I don’t care how good you are.”

According to Ricker, Ribeiro’s application “stuckout.” Living in Brazil, she had played volleyball for 11 years and coached for six years, both club and college.

Last year, Ribeiro led the team at St. Pious in North Kansas City to a district title. She was later named “Small Class Missouri State Coach of the Year.”

“My thoughts about coming after a good coach and a good program, it will push me even harder to keep up the program,” Ribeiro said. “I know the girls and families are very involved with volleyball and they should be more excited because it’s always awesome to have positive support.

I’m very focused.”

Ribeiro also describes a dedication to the coaching criteria originally written by Ricker: a drive for the students and a willingness to work with teens.

“My philosophy is more the kids will have to earn things to be on the team,” Ribeiro said. “I plan to bring a lot of competition not only among the players just to get them to become better players. Fight for what they want. Not to get the best in the district, but to be the best they can be.”

With basketball, Rhodes feels confident in his successor, a former assistant basketball during the 2000-2001 season.

Before his first season at East, Stein had coached at four high schools and one college, never taking a year off from coaching since he began in 1973 at St. John’s College. He currently

LE vs SME

l ba SME: t Overall: 18-3-0 ke

>> CB

SS

po

r

ts SME: Home: 6-0-0 Away: 7-0-0 National: 550 Neutral: 5-3-0 State: 10 SME: Schlagle: Schlagle: Sunflower National: 9352 Overall: 11-10-0 State: 200 Schlagle: Home: 6-3-0 Kansas City, KS Away: 5-4-0 Neutral: 0-3-0 G

Gir ls Ba s

>>TimShedor Girls’ head basketball coach Rick Rhodes and volleyball

HLAG :l SC

LEAGUE AREA

SME: Prairie Village, KS 6A school Schlagle: Kansas City, KS 5A school

IN R A NK STATS T ASCO M S R E Y A KEY PL SME: SME: Lancer Senior Janna Graf Season Avg.: 16.0 Schlagle: Stallion Schlagle: Junior Erin Copeland Season Avg.: 15.3

teaches at Schlagle High School, and his record totals over 400 career wins and a State Championship. “[Stein’s] a great choice,” Rhodes said. “He has a lot of the same philosophies that I do and he was definitely my first choice to succeed me. I want this program to stay what its been, to stay strong and competitive. And he’s the man, he’s a really good coach.”

Rhodes leaves a six year coaching history and Dowis leaves after a three year career, leaving behind notable and memorable players.

“I still care a lot about the players that are still here, that played for me,” Rhodes said. “You know I’ll follow them every step of their career here and I wish them will and wish them well. I want them to succeed and keep the pride and tradition that we’ve built here the past six years.”

MAKING THE GRADE

issue 14 sports page 27

Athletes and coaches alike remain annoyed with the current policy regarding eligibility cards

SECRETARY Diane Murdock sorted through the latest batch of eligibility cards last Monday. Murdock says that she “dreads” the process, which includes alphabetizing the hundreds of cards by sport, then athlete.

Claire Wahrer

>>

>>MattGannon

“We know kids are forging these cards,” athletic director Jim Ricker said. “And I’m pretty good at catching the sneaky ones. I know almost all of the teachers’ signatures and I can tell when a kid changes an F to an A or a B. And I could kick these kids out of sports for the entire semester, but I usually give them a warning and if it happens again, they’re done.”

Eligibility cards have caused messes and mayhem throughout the years. Student-athletes struggle to keep up with the task of running from teacher to teacher on early Thursday mornings, gathering signatures every week. For those who forget, forgery becomes their next best option.

The Harbinger investigates the how much of each team turns in the cards The rules of eligibility are different in almost BOYS’ BASKETBALL every sport. In cross-country, all athletes have to “School is important. We’ve got study hall turn in the cards regardless of the grades they rebefore school for kids that don’t keep a ceive. If they’re passing, they competed. For other C-average. I firmly believe that athletics are an extension of the classroom.” sports such as golf and baseball passing isn’t always good enough. Golfers must have at least a >> Head coach Shawn Hair D to practice and a C to play in the tournaments.

The baseball players may suit up if they are passing five classes, but they can’t hit the field until BOWLING “If they don’t turn them in, they don’t get to they are passing all seven. Then, there are the bowl. That’s the bottom line. I’ve got extra sports like track, where if you are an A and B stupeople, or I can bowl shorthanded. My bowlers dent, the cards are not required. are student-athletes, student first and athlete second.”

“Different coaches have different rules,” Ricker >> Head coach Patti Kennedy said. “When I coached the soccer team, if you had straight A’s and one D, you weren’t playing. Even CHEERLEADING the volleyball team has to turn in cards, and their “They’re important because the number team G.P.A. was almost a 4.0.” one reason you’re at East is academic. All If a card does not meet the requirements or an the other things that go along with that are great opportunities, but if they’re not able athlete forgets, they may not take part in the comto be the student that we need them to be, petition, regardless of grades. Sophomore Tyler then we need to revisit our focus.”

Germann learned this the hard way, after forget>> Head coach Kelly Chapman ting to fill out his card for cross-country after being sick for most of the week.

GIRLS’ BASKETBALL “It was kind of upsetting. Everybody else got “Even if our kids are on the honor roll, you still would like to know how they’re doing in class. to compete that Saturday morning and I had to sit If it comes back with problems, then we deal out because I just forgot,” Germann said. with it in practice in our own special way.”

Many students know that eligibility is very >> Head coach Rick Rhoades important, they just believe it could be handled differently.

BOYS’ SWIM AND DIVE “The cards are a good idea, and it is a good way “It’s mostly just varsity kids that turn them in, and those are the ones that get to check up on your grades in your classes to see good grades anyway. There wasn’t much how close you are to an A or a B, Germann said. checking.”

“But it is really annoying for both the students >> Assistant coach Wanda Simchuk and the teachers to deal with this weekly hassle.”

Eligibility cards are not only used at East, WRESTLING though. They are used district-wide and they “I tell them to turn their eligibility card in or we’re going to run. It’s not a punishment; it’s must all follow the same regulation of all athletes just to help them remember, get oxygen to passing at least five classes. If a team plays with their brain and remember to turn it in.” an ineligible player, it becomes a forfeit. >> Head coach Chip Ufford

Only minutes before track practice starts, a cluster of athletes huddle in the locker room, scribbling chicken-scratch all over a simple blue card. Some use pens, others pencils.

One is even using a crayon found on the dirt-covered floor.

The forgeries get worse and worse as they fill this plain piece of paper. These kids don’t care though. They are just trying to keep their athletic careers alive.

BY THE NUMBERS...

100%

83%

74%

53%

32%

22%

Statistics are from the week of Feb. 12, and courtesy of secretary Diane Murdock

“This has been a district policy for the past 30 years,” Ricker said. “I used to have to fill out to fill out a card and bring it in every Thursday when I played soccer at Shawnee Mission North. I remember that the athletic director would just come out to field and point at those of us who forgot and tell us to get out.”

Ricker is always trying to find a way to improve the system. He strives to help the teachers that have to deal with an extra hassle of signing cards every hour. He attempts to make things less tedious for the straight A kids that have to fill their card week after week. He works to make sure that the coaches can coach instead of having to check on all of their athletes cards.

Ricker thinks that a good alternative could be checking grades four times a semester. The cards would start at the beginning of the fall season at progress reports. Then he and the coaches would check at the quarter, then once again at mid-term and end of the semester. If they are any D’s or F’s, then those kids would turn in weekly cards until the next big check.

Yet some coaches, such as football coach Chip Sherman, think that this policy works well and should be continued.

“The main thing about eligibility is it needs to be checked, and with the cards everyone is one the same page,” Sherman said. “The bad grades are recognized along with the good grades. Yes, the system is not always convienent, but it’s for the greater good. The kids are always being looked out for, which is the important thing.”

Students don’t always agree with the system though, especially honors students that average straight A’s and B’s.

Freshman Joe Bahr has always been recognized as a great student, and he finds the current system very tedious.

“I find them to be a waste of paper and a waste of time for both teachers and students,” Bahr said. “It’s especially a pain for students with consistently good grades. Maybe if things were handled electronically or something, it would work better.”

Other students, like sophomore baseball player Billy Kirkpatrick, seem to think the system works well and causes few issues.

“It does take time away from the classroom, but it has to be done, and if they are done early then it is really stressfree,” Kirkpatrick said. “I guess teachers could e-mail the grades to the coaches, but the cards provide a convenient and hands-on way to check up with all of your teachers.”

While the cards do bring many issues, they also drive home the point of eligibility and its importance to high school sports.

“Kids need to remember that it’s student and then athlete,” Ricker said. “Playing high school sports is a privilege.”

page 28 sports 04.12.10

Push Pull to

SOPHOMORE Brooks Sargent (third from front) practices rowing at Kansas City Rowing Club. Eden Schoofs

>>

5rowing basics of

1

Spandex-- “Our uniforms are basically just a one-piece spandex suit so that nothing is loose and nothing gets caught on anything”- Brooks

2

Sculling vs Sweeping Two types of rowing

Sculling is having one oar on each side of the boar per rower Sweeping is each rower having one oar on one side of the boat and the side that the oar is on alternates down the boat

3

Parts of the boat

Port is to the rower’s right Star is to the rower’s left Bow is the front of the boat Stern is the way the rowers face

4

Bowseat/Coxyn

Bowseat/Coxyn is a position on the rowing team. They call out which side, what stroke, and how much pressure to row with

5

Oar Depth

Oar Depth is important because the further under the water your oar is, the harder it is to pull. Your oar should be 1 inch under the water

Sophomore competes in rowing competitions >>MorganChristian

Sophomore Brooks Sargent had been playing soccer since kindergarten. As a defender, his first recreational teammates at Leawood Park and then his Kansas City Legends teammates counted on him to clear the ball if it ever made it past midfield.

As a freshman at Bishop Miege, Sargent hoped to continue to compete in the sport he loved. But because of his late enrollment, he missed tryouts and was relegated to the C-team, unable to move up. The ultra-competitive Sargent was frustrated.

But that May he learned that small moments can lead to big turning points. It was an ad in the newspaper that caused his athletic career to change direction. It was then that his mom Susan saw an ad for the Kansas City Rowing Club in the “Kansas City Star.” “Prior rowing experience or not,” it said, there was a place for everyone.

Susan mentioned it to her son. He said he would think about it.

Sargent’s next nudge toward rowing came soon after. An avid electric bass player, he spotted Rockhurst junior and guitar player Nick Massey wearing a KCRC shirt at Guitar Center. Sargent introduced himself and asked about Massey’s experiences as a competitive rower.

“Nick told me some things about how they practiced and it sounded like a good change [from soccer],” Sargent said. “He mentioned that they have pretty tough practices and that he’d get a lot of work done…It seemed [there was] a different sense of motivation throughout the team.”

About a month after that meeting, Sargent decided to try rowing, joining the club and practicing with the team. He was just in time for the start of the season. His first day he was put in a boat, also called a shell, with three other guys. They were sculling, or rowing, with one oar in each hand. He sees this immediate immersion as an advantage compared to practicing on an ergometer, or “erg,” a machine which can simulate the stroke and help novice rowers to learn its motion.

“Getting thrown right into a boat and getting critiqued early on everything I was doing—there was definitely a lot of good input from the team and the coaches,” Sargent said. “Everything I was doing was criticized to the point where I developed a good stroke pretty early on because of how much that was going on.”

Waking up at 4:30 a.m. every day took some getting used to.

The first week Sargent slept during the 35-45 minute car rides to Wyandotte County Lake, where the team practices, until his body developed a routine. But then he came to enjoy waking up before everyone else.

“That’s a nice feeling, to get out of the house early,” Sargent said.

“By the time everyone else is waking up or maybe still even asleep in the summer, you’ve already practiced with your team and you’ve already got your exercise for the day and you have the whole rest of the day to do whatever you want.”

That first season Sargent didn’t compete in many regattas—rowing’s equivalent of a track meet, except without team points—but instead focused on developing his technique. Then, after transferring

“

Brooks’ top tip to remember when

Rowing

What we are consistently told in practice is look at the person’s back in front of you. That tells you when to start, what type of stroke, and when >>Sophomore Brooks Sargent to go to catch.

{

”

}

Catch: A position in rowing when your body is forward and your oars are behind you

from Miege to East for the bigger environment, he worked to stay in shape over the winter months with a high-protein diet and a regimen of weight lifting and running.

This season Sargent looks to compete in singles races. Monday through Thursday, from 3:45 to 6:15 p.m. and Saturdays from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., he’s practicing with his team. Three separate four miles runs serve as warmups, while inter-squad races and erg workouts help develop his stroke.

Sargent thinks the hard work pays off, especially at the halfway mark of rowing’s 2000 meter races.

“Once you hit that 1000 meter mark…you just want to quit,” Sargent said. “But it’s also kind of a motivation thing for me personally when I see…that we’re halfway. I just go all out to the point where I have trouble getting out of the boat sometimes because I’m so worn out.”

Sargent prefers the position of bow, the person at the forward section of the boat who crosses the finish line first. His job is to direct the motion of the boat through commands such as “Power 10,” which signals the rowers to increase the pace during a straightaway.

Sargent feels that he can do that while also maintaining a powerful stroke. However, he also acknowledges the importance of teamwork at a regatta.

“You’re so busy as a rower out there,” Sargent said. “If you’re not racing you’re helping someone else who’s going to a race...making sure their equipment is down by the dock so they don’t miss the race or become late for the race.”

But once a boat is on the water is when the magic happens.

“When you finally get everyone going the exact same pace—oars coming out of the water at the same time, oars going in the water—it feels really nice,” Sargent said. “It feels like nothing’s between you and the finish line.”

Sargent still appreciates the small moments though. But now they happen out on the lake.

“When you get the whole smooth motion going through the boat, and you’re just gliding on top of the water and it’s early in the morning when the sun’s just coming out, it’s a really nice experience,” Sargent said. “It’s kind of hard for anyone when they’re rowing to not enjoy it.”

on theRacetrack Relatives Brothers compete against each other on the varsity track team >>CorbinBarnds

When junior Connor Wilkins cocked into the spring-loaded start position for his time trial of the 100 meter sprint, it wasn’t the normal “no pressure” time trial. But it also wasn’t the pressure of beating his teammates and crushing his personal best time bearing down on his back.

In the previous heats, one runner’s time had impressed everyone. Had it been a different newcomer it wouldn’t have mattered to Connor, but this time it belonged to his brother, freshman Troy Wilkins. Although he did not know Troy’s time at the start of the race, by watching the race Connor knew it was fast. Connor thought to himself like he had many times before “no way I could lose to my younger brother.”

During Connor’s time trial, it became clear to the coaches that the race was going to be close, not close between Connor and the field but between Connor and Troy.

Connor crossed the finish line. The time on the stopwatch baffled the coaches, the track team, and most of all the two brothers. Their times were exact. They both ran 11.41.

According to track coach Brie Meschke, the coaches knew Troy was going to be fast but not this fast, and no way was he supposed to tie his brother.

“I knew [Troy] was fast,” Meschke said.

“But a lot of the time, kids claim they are fast, before they actually run. So you don’t believe it before you actually see it, and he

Sibling Showdown A quiz to see which brother knows the other one better

is the real deal.”

The time of 11.41 was fast enough to have placed eighth in last year’s state track meet.

With that same time, Troy would have been the fastest freshman in the state.

From an onlooker’s point of view, this sort of competition between the two may be hard to fathom, but according to the two brothers, this drive they share has always been there and the desire not to lose to the person they live with continues to make them work harder.

From a game of 1-on-1 basketball to comparing grades of past classes, Troy and Connor have found a way to compete in everything and it has become a major facet of their lives.

Just like any pair of close friends, the brothers had their moments of rage. Whether it was someone not doing their share of the chores or winning a game of NFL Blitz on the Nintendo 64, the game would sometimes be taken away from the virtual world and be fuel for a take down and wrestling match. With the age separation between the brothers, Troy was left at a major disadvantage physically. Being the younger of the two, Troy had the privilege of having the sympathy of their parents. Troy used it to his full advantage when he was younger.

“I would tattle on [Connor] all of the time,” Troy said. “I would hit him and then tell my mom that he did something and he

Connor

issue 14 sports page 29

>>photo illustration by Sammi Kelly would end up getting in trouble for it. Typical little brother stuff.”

Although they may have outgrown the amateur wrestling matches, the fights have turned more playful and become more verbal. Connor’s jokes about Troy usually revolve around calling him fat or ridiculing the way he talks to girls, while Troy makes fun of Connor for being extremely skinny, and small, as well as for “that high pitched voice, and being squeaky. Dr. Squeaky, that’s his nickname.”

Ever since the insertion of a Nintendo 64 into the basement of the Wilkins’ house, their rivalry reached a new dynamic. With Super Smash Brothers being their game of choice, they would set wagers of either money or small tasks to up the ante.

Although they give each other trouble, they are still brothers and throughout the

Troy

Connor’s Answer

What Troy thinks

Troy’s Answer

What Connor thinks

Favorite music genre

Hip-Hop or Rap

Rap

Rap

Rap

Hours a week spent playing video games

6 to 7

4 to 8

14

10

Hollywood look-alike

Will Smith

Chris Rock

Jay-Z

Denzel Washington

5’ 9”

5’9”

5’ 8”

5’ 7”

800 meter run

400 or 800 meter

200 meter run

200 meter run

Winning nationals in 7th grade for the 3000 meter run

Winning nationals

Making varsity track

Undefeated football season in middle school

Height Best track event Most impressive accomplishment

Senior Mary Tanner rides horses in competition She touches her hand to his long, agile body one last time. Mary’s trainer Julie Pinkering arrives, consoling both Mary and Dana The three cry right there in the operating room. Mary lost a friend. *** Following Skippy’s Mary moved on to Connor and Quattro, who both have offered their fair share of successful competi-

tions. She started visiting universities last fall -- Southern Methodist University, Oklahoma State, Auburn and Georgia have been the top picks thus far.

But even if she decides to not pursue Division 1 horse riding, she really sees no stop in the competitions.

“I’m not going to stop any time soon,” Mary said. “I’m going to keep doing this through college whether it’s Division 1 or on my

fights they encountered at a younger age they still have remained close; Connor being a veteran at East has helped Troy out.

“He gives me tips about how to survive at East,” Troy said. “Stuff to do and stuff not to do — how to get on a teacher’s good side or how to get on a coaches good side.”

The more competitive of the two is Connor, whether it be a time trial or a race at junior nationals, he can’t stand to lose. Confidence is also a contributor to Connor’s success. Meschke points out that Connor is no stranger to friendly banter, and so far he has backed it up. At age 13, Connor was the junior national champion in the 3000 event, pegging him for stardom in the track landscape. Early in this season, he is already considered the favorite to win the 400 meter race at state.

“If [Troy] beats me in anything, I will be really pissed off,” Connor said. “And no one really knows it, but I always try a lot harder when we are at some of the same workouts.”

Troy and many of Connor’s friends and track partners are all used to Connor’s prerace antics.

“He always says that he just going to absolutely dominate me,” Troy said. “That he is going to burn me and leave me in the dust, and it helps, because it makes me run faster I feel like — more of a reason to try and beat him.”

More mellowed out, Troy isn’t as talkative as his brother. While Connor is built more like a track star: thin and lanky, Troy is built like a running back. With a low center of gravity and a fast turnover, he is more suited for running the shorter sprint events.

Had Connor and Troy both been in the same heat at that time trial, a tie would never have happened.

“He probably would have beat me,” Troy said. “He takes things a lot more seriously than me, and he gets really mad; he has anger management problems. (Laughs) It has gotten better, but still pretty bad.”

>>continued from page 15

own with a trainer like I am now.”

And for the rest of her life - she feels it will be filled with more competitions, more horses and more personalities. She’s already dealt with so many, it’s hard for her to keep track. But she wants to keep riding and getting to know more horses.

Whether they stick their tongue out, stop before jumps or even act as date.

page 30 sports 4.12.10

Full time teacher, full time father Athletic Director Jim Ricker will return to a full-time teaching position to spend more time with his family

>>AnneWillman

It is the beginning of first block and the office of the athletic director is silent, dark and deserted.

There is no one to answer questions or anyone to receive phone calls. The room will not come to life until the sun is high in the sky, when a teacher will have to become an athletic director in the second half of the day.

Shortly before spring break, East was faced with a decision that had to be made due to district budget cuts and that would impact the athletic program. Jim Ricker, the current athletic director, is passionate about coaching, but he has chosen not to coach any high school sports next year and instead coach his daughters.

“Budget cuts are made at the district level,” principal Dr. Karl Krawitz said. “The district tells you that you have to reduce by so much, if it’s money, teachers, or support staff.”

When East was notified that cuts had to be made, Dr. Krawitz thought it would be a logical decision to make the position of athletic director parttime next year. Three years ago, the athletic director worked part-time as a teacher and part-time as director. Reverting to the past, Dr. Krawitz thought because the change was so recent, it would be easier to make the job part-time once again.

When Ricker found out that the athletic director position was being modified to a part-time job next year, he also had to make a decision. He said that would be difficult to step away but he has missed the environment of being in the classroom. While deciding, he thought of the time commitments the two jobs would bring and how it would impact his family. The athletic director spends a lot of time working after school hours which weighed heavily in his decision making.

“Dr. Krawitz and I discussed the pros and cons of me doing both,” Ricker said. “We decided it would be better for me to go back to the department full time.”

When Ricker returns to the World Geography and U.S. History classrooms next year teaching, he will have more time to spend with his four daughters who are between the ages of 10 months and eight years.

“I plan to coach my 7 and 8-year-olds on the same U-9 soccer team,” Ricker said. “It will be nice to spend time with my family and to coach two of my daughters.”

Although Ricker says that he enjoys the job of athletic director, the job also brings commitments — scheduling games, monitoring

the budget and making sure all players are eligible to play. The position requires time outside of the school day to attend events and games. This time consumption is immense and made it difficult for Ricker to spend time with his family in the evening. Teaching full-time provides more free time and other opportunities.

Ricker is also looking forward to getting back to the classroom, a veteran of economics and U.S. History for 15 years. Ricker says that although he is teaching full-time where he will have to be dedicated to grading papers and creating lesson plans, it is a different type of time commitment than being the athletic director.

“Being in the classroom is fairly fresh in my mind,” Ricker said. “I would by lying if I said I didn’t miss the kids. When you get a student who didn’t think they could learn something and they do, it is something special.”

When the position became available, Dr. Krawitz felt that the person best suited to take Ricker’s spot would be Jeremy Higgins, currently a chemistry teacher. Last year, Higgins was the administrative assistant. Dr. Krawitz found that he would be a good fit for the job because Higgins had an immense amount of experience.

“Dr. Krawitz and Mr. Lowe approached me for potential interest,” Higgins said. “They saw the position I held last year and thought that I could handle it.”

One of the responsibilities Higgins had last year while being administrative assistant was to organize the standardized testing. This meant that he had to coordinate the schedule for each class to take the test. Organization is one of the skills that Higgins finds will benefit him in the job of athletic director. Dr. Krawitz saw that his past experience would help him with this new job.

Higgins will teach Chemistry part-time while juggling the job of athletic director. He will be teaching chemistry during first, second, and third block. Taking on both positions will lead to more responsibilities and other commitments. Higgins coaches two sports now, which gives him an idea of what the time commitments will be like at night.

As Higgins steps away from coaching, he says that he is looking forward to interacting with coaches on a professional level.

“I am excited to see more kids outside of the classroom,” Higgins said, “but it will be tough stepping away from football and baseball.”

the new director

>>Anna Marken

— When were you asked to take the position of AD? Who asked you?

Mr. Loe and Dr. Krawitz approached me about the AD position around the end of February. I expressed to them that at this point I would be interested in the position. As they continued to work on the schedule and staffing for the 2010-2011 school year, we continued to have discussions about the position and what would be best for all parties.

Athletic Director Jim Ricker poses with his with his wife and four children. Ricker chose to reAnna Marken turn to full-time teaching since it will allow him to spend more time at home.

>>

Getting to know Jeremy Higgins, next year’s A.D.

— Do you plan on making any changes to the direction of East athletics?

— What will your schedule be like next year, — What is your favorite sports team here at East?

We have great athletic programs already here at East. We have great coaches, seeing as you will be a teacher and AD?

great facilities, and great student-athletes. So no, I don’t envision myself stepping into this position and making sweeping changes.

One project that I do want to take on next year is possible looking at a way to improve the weekly eligibility card system that is currently in place. I am sure that every student-athlete and most teachers would agree that there have been times when they have been frustrated with having to fill their eligibility cards out and at times have seen them as a major hassle. Hopefully we can come up with a new eligibility system that is more efficient and will help to reduce this frustration.

Busy! I will be teaching three classes of Chemistry I - 1st, 2nd, and 3rd hours. I will then have the rest of the day to make sure everything is running smoothly in the athletic world. While I know that I am going to be taking on new responsibilities (in addition to teaching) that are going to keep me busy, I am very much looking forward to this new opportunity and challenge.

To be completely honest with you, I am a sports nut, so I would say that my favorite team here at SME the entire “athletic program team.”

I am a huge fan of every athletic program, every student-athlete, and every coach here at East.

issue 14 sports page 31

how to the team

:03......... games

THURS.-SAT., 4/15-4/17 -Track & Field @ KU Relays

JERROD RYHERD BASEBALL COACH coaching at South has it been tough to Q.After put the rivalry aside to get down to business? just a bit, but you know both A.Yeah schools have got great kids and I

1

Q.

3

knew that because I’ve been here before, too. Being a head coach is what I really wanted to do so it was kind of hard to leave behind those boys I’ve been with all these years. Leaving a relationship with those kids was tough to do although the guys we’ve got now are just great and ready to have a good season from start until the end.

You’ve got eight seniors on this squad, how are you looking for them to step up and lead?

A.

They’ve been real good so far.

They’ve contributed and been great leaders throughout the season and have been doing a good job of getting done the things that need to get done. They’ve all been helping out and playing big roles on this team which is what we need them to do if we’re going to be successful. They’re going to have to keep that up and set good examples which I know they will do.

going to be the most important part to Q.What’s rebuilding the team before season’s end? what we want A.It’stoallgetestablishing done here. I’m not a big

5

fan of the term “rebuilding” because I know our team will always stay as competitive as anyone else as we get better from day-to-day and game-to-game no matter if its year one or year five of being here. The guys will need to stay focused and do the things they’ve been doing to get us at a level of play that we can all be happy with,

Q.

2

Q.

4

Sometimes considered the biggest meet of the year, the track and field team is no stranger to having success against the best competition the entire region has to offer at the annual Kansas Relays. The girls’ team won the Kansas Cup last year and will hope to do the same this weekend with strong performances in the relays, particularly the 4x800 You play South tomorrow at Kauffman Sta- while senior Chris Clarke should have a big performance in the 100 meter sprint that could boost the boys’ team to have just as quality of results. dium. Bittersweet matchup or blood bath? it’s going to be fun. It will A.Ohbe ano,great game, our teams usually match up well so it should be exciting. I always put an emphasis on beating our rivals- and I did the same thing when I was over at South and we did pretty well- so hopefully we can do a nice job of it over here, too. It will be a good game if we can do what’s expected of us... You couldn’t play at a better place than Kauffman either.

The team has struggled in the past few seasons, what’s your plan to make the team successful after the eight seniors are gone?

got to develop players and A.You’ve start them down at the freshman level and get them through C-Team and JV before they get to varsity.

We’ve gotten lucky to have great assistant coaches to help with that, too.

We’ll work with all of the teams over the summer also so that when next year comes around we’ll be ready to roll for another season that meets our expectations.

can we expect from you and the team by Q.What the time the last out is made this year? will be really competitive.

A. We Once it comes to regionals

6

and late-season play we can have a great opportunity to win if we can make some big plays that I know we are capable of. That could get us to state- and I think there’s a great chance of us getting there- but we’ve just got to come out and play our A-game to make sure we will always be up there with anybody else in the league.

FRI.-SAT., 4/16-4/17 -Baseball @ River City Classic

After starting the season with a win, the baseball team fell to 2-2 as of April 7, a stat that was hindered by a couple of rain-outs. They hope to turn it around this weekend when they travel to St. Louis for the River City Classic, a tournament where they will meet up with Warrensburg High (MO) and Heritage High (AR), two strong out-of-state opponents.

TUESDAY, 4/20

-Girls’ Swim & Dive vs. Free State

Despite having beaten the firebirds at the Sunflower League meet last year, Lawrence Free State ended up topping the Laners in the battle for the state title as they won their first in school history. Next Tuesday the two teams will meet up again in a duel meet at the East pool for Senior Night at 4:00pm.

:02......... names

TROY WILKINS- TRACK & FIELD- 9

After tying his brother, Junior Conner Wilkins at the team time trial at the start of the season, Troy as set himself up to be one of the top freshmen runners in Kansas, having times in his events like the 100 meter sprint that would be good enough to have placed him in the top eight at the state meet last year. >>see more on pg. 29

JIM RICKER- ADMINISTRATION- A.D.

Coach Ricker, who has led girls’ and boys’ varsity soccer teams throughout his years at East has spent his last two as athletic director. Because of a change in the position’s daily duties he will be stepping down next year to be able to spend more time with his daughters and return to teaching in the classroom. >>see more on pg. 30

:01.......... frame

>>Mackenzie Wylie RUNNING the 110 meter high hurdles at the SM East Quads held at Shawnee Mission West on March 30, senior Beck Johnson pushes to the front of the pack in a race that he won. The team also finished first overall for both the boys’ and the girls’ standings.

page 32 photo essay 04.12.10

‘EYE’forART

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East artists showcase their talents during First Fridays at the Third Eye art gallery ABOVE: Junior DJ Burton folds T-shirts that he created for the fashion show. Behind him on the wall is a chalk graffiti piece he and junior Whitney Kerr composed together. “The third eye [in the mural] represents how I want people to open up their minds and see things from a different angle,” Burton said. The art show was held at the Third Eye Gallery in the Crossroads district on April 2.

>>Lindsey Hartnett

ABOVE: Posing for the judges at the end of the runway, junior Polly Mytinger fights off her nerves. “I was really nervous, but I felt really strong,” Mytinger said. “[Walking down the runway] I was wearing three-inch heels, so I felt really fierce.” >>Lindsey Hartnett RIGHT: An eye shaped purse that sophomore Sarah King designed plays into the Third Eye Gallery’s theme. King had three other pieces in the show that had buttons as prominent features.

>>Sammi Kelly

LEFT: Celebrating the warm weather, sophomore Jane Turner performs for the crowd at First Fridays. This form of fire dancing is called Poi. Turner doesn’t perform in a troupe, but she often dances with the same group of people. “When I get up to perform, it’s definitely a rush,” Turner said.

>>Lindsey Hartnett