Seniors in Quarantine

excellence balance of20 20

With highly accomplished athletes, artists, scholars, and stewards of service, this special class of 2020 truly embodies the motto “Balance of Excellence.” The following pages feature students who devote themselves to this balanced excellence in these five categories: service, athletics, arts, hobbies, and academics. Not only will the class of 2020 live in infamy for weathering a global pandemic, but also because of their diverse and exceptional repertoire of skills.

LIAM HILL LIAM HILL

“I remember running a sort of hill route through that parking lot,” Hill said. “That’s not ideal for anybody––traffic flow or humans.”

With fellow Eagle Scout Colin Peters, Hill began the planning phase of his project in October 2017. Preparing to construct the trail required talking with school administrators and contacting Sandy Springs for the necessary permits. After organizing a team of volunteers and purchasing supplies, the actual labor phase of the project began in March 2018. Hill estimates that the total work he put into the trails amounted to several hundred hours of planning and building.

“Sophomore year was definitely difficult with that major project going on with all the schoolwork, track, and then having to be at school every weekend working on that for six hours a day in the sweltering heat,” Hill said.

Though the work was difficult, Hill finds it incredibly rewarding to be able to give back to his community and to leave a tangible legacy at HIES. “It’s an indelible mark on the ground, which is pretty cool,” Hill said. “I can go back in 10 years and see how I helped the community.”

To earn her Girl Scout Gold Award, Reid created a culturally sustainable English curriculum for refugee children to use. Her curriculum is a printable PDF called the “Journey Journal,” and this format allows refugee children to improve their reading and writing skills while maintaining their culture. Prompts from the curriculum include questions such as, “What is your favorite meal at home?” so the children can become better writers and readers within the framework of their own unique culture.

Refugees have always had a special place in Reid’s heart. “What they go through is like nothing in the world,” Reid said. “No one can relate to it except for them.”

To bring a greater sense of cultural awareness to the HIES community, Reid founded the Culture Club. The main goal of the club is to facilitate dialogue surrounding unique cultures and traditions.“We talk a lot in that club,” Reid said. “We just talk about culture. We talk about different traditions, differences, similarities, and the importance of each.”

Empathetic. Quirky. Caring. These three words that Catherine Shamanski uses to describe herself makes her an ideal servant leader at HIES. Her work with Path to Shine, which she explains is “a nonprofit organization that really focuses on helping Title 1 children in the Atlanta area,” has inspired a National English Honors Society book drive and has formed the basis of her global capstone project. “Every day at 20 locations, they give out free tutoring and different kinds of experiences for kids to have that they might not get in school or within their situation… a lot of them are immigrants, so they kind of just want to inspire children to actually finish high school. Because a lot of them don’t.” With her Global capstone project that she is collaborating on with Ansley Diaz, Shamanski hopes to inspire more student involvement in the program. She envisions that students at HIES could potentially serve as peer mentors that help the Path to Shine kids with more personal issues, and improve their mental wellbeing. “Our focus would be mental [health] in regard to these … children, these mentors would be someone they could talk to and get advice from with life, but also with school.” To Catherine, service “should be something you do for others, you don’t have to but makes it better… for them, for yourself when you get through it.” Although Shamaski is unsure about her plans for the future, at the moment, she will continue her education at Georgia State University.

SERVICE SERVICE

In primary school and lower school, many girls sell cookies and participate in retreats as members of their local Girl Scout Troop. Ruthie Reid, however, remains an active participant through her work in her troop. “Once you move up into high school, it’s really about serving your community,” Reid said.

CATHERINE SHAMANSKI CATHERINE SHAMANSKI

Matthew Keagle is no stranger in the world of community service. From planting trees to volunteering on several church mission trips, Keagle has always loved community service because he feels, “there is no better way to spend time than doing something that will help others and benefit the world for years to come.” Of all of Keagle’s greatest accomplishments in the world of service, there was better one than leading donations of angel trees. Keagle mentions, “It seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but with a Christmas miracle, we ended up being able to support 44 families through our donations.”

One other significant accomplishment was when he, along with his Eagle scout group, was involved in developing Mountain Way Common, a park in Buckhead. When he started working there, it was “extremely overgrown with invasive plant species like Chinese Privet and kudzu and there was limited access to the back of the park”. Along with his Eagle scout group, he cleared much of the land at the back of the park and constructed a trail system.

Over the course of three years, Keagle had “removed 30 tons of invasive species and planted 144 trees and shrubs”. Throughout Keagle’s time in high school, he has completed an astonishing 650 service hours. In each grade of high school, the minimum requirement for service hours is only 15 hours, but Matthew Keagle takes the requirement to another level. While Keagle is graduating high school this year, he has no plans to stop impacting his community. Keagle concludes, “I plan on getting involved in different clubs and organizations in college,” One organization is Medlife, a “faith-based organization that enables college students to provide medical services to international impoverished communities”.

SAM AIKEN SAM AIKEN

Throughout his high school career, Aiken has learned to balance football and baseball with his schoolwork. He mentions, “I look forward to sports after school every day because it is part of my routine”. He continues, “After practice, I usually get home around 9:00 P.M. and leave for school at roughly 6:15 A.M. Between driving to and from school, studying, and playing copious amounts of video games, baseball and football are one of my few healthy outlets for activity”.

In his time at Holy Innocents’, Aiken has learned many lessons from both sports that might help him later in life. “In football, I learned how to work with authority”, Aiken said. He continues, “Until that final whistle blows, I am part of a unified team motivated by a common goal”. When talking about baseball, Aiken mentions, “It taught me to change the way I approach practice and competition”. He elaborates, “In baseball and in life, you can’t dwell on failure, you have to embrace it. You have to be excited to fail because then you know which parts are in further need of development”.

Unfortunately, for Aiken, the 2019-2020 school year has been his last year playing both football and baseball in high school, and he doesn’t plan on continuing. Aiken concludes by referencing a quote from a film adaptation of the movie, Moneyball. It says, “we are all told at some point in time that we can no longer play the children’s game...we don’t know when that will be”.

DARA GROCER DARA GROCER

Other than tennis, Grocer has been involved in the broadcast journalism program for four years and has been one of the executive producers for the past two years. She also has participated in Golden Bear Guides for three years and is the president of Jewish Student Union. In high school, her favorite teacher was Mr. Lewis. “AP World was literally the hardest class I had ever taken, and he believed that I could do it way more than I did,” Grocer said.

Besides the team aspect, Grocer’s favorite part of tennis is when she gets to see all of her hard work that she has put into practicing pay off in a match. “When you just hit a really good ball after a really long point and you win it, it’s like the best feeling ever,” Grocer explained. One of her favorite memories of playing tennis was when she was in the first round of state in her sophomore year playing. “I started playing at 4:30 and didn’t end until 7:30,” Grocer said. “We had to go to a tiebreaker and ended up losing by three points after spraining my ankle.” Despite losing, the HIES tennis team still stormed the court for Grocer and congratulated her on her tough match.

“That sense of community that I felt that day was truly something that I will never forget because it really shows the true support of Holy Innocents’.”

ATHLETICS ATHLETICS

Since Jada Farrrell was three years old, she has tried all types of sports from dance, to soccer, to track and basketball. However, as many other sports began to slip away, basketball and track were the only two that stuck. Now, a two-time basketball state champion and defending shot-put state champion, it is clear that Farrell has grown and flourished in both sports. Farrell said, “Trusting the process, working hard, and believing in God’s chosen path for me,” when talking about how she reached all of her success. Next year, she will continue her basketball career on the collegiate level at Loyola University New Orleans. While athletics were a priority, it was Farrell’s opportunity to receive a wonderful education that ultimately drove her decision. “It’s a great school, and they gave me a great opportunity to better myself,” she said. She will be a Biology Pre-Med student, with the intention to be an opthamologist. As a member of Science National Honor Society, Farrell has already proved to have the same dedication in the classroom that she does on the court. She is constantly making the extra effort to go to tutorials and prepare for classes. Farrell is a great example of where hard work can take you, in and out of the classroom. “Give 110%, because if you’re not giving 110%, what are you doing it for?” she said.

This athlete’s story is one of tireless tenacity and determination, truly an underdog if there ever was one: Reagan Sherk. Sherk has been a wrestler since his start in sixth grade and has since risen amongst the upper echelon of wrestlers to place sixth in state this past season. He describes his sixth-place finish in state as “bittersweet,” because he placed yet did not place higher. In the sport of wrestling, it is evident that effort and practice prevail over natural-born talent. “Wrestling is the only sport where really your outside work defines how well you do,” Sherk said.

Sherk is not a giant amongst men, in fact, his freshman year, Sherk weighed a mere 83 pounds when the lowest weight class was 106 pounds. Sherk recounts a moment from that season where “[the team] didn’t have anyone to wrestle the 113 weight-class and the other team did. I said, ‘Put me in, Coach.’ I went out [on the mat] and the kid was completely whopping on me and then I got to third period. I was about to lose by mercy rule but in the third period I pinned the guy.” Sherk’s strategy is never to win but rather to pin his opponent, winning the “Pin King” award both as a seventh and eighth grader. When on the mat, his mentality is to “pin this kid and get the hell off the mat. There’s a moment when you’re on the bottom. We kind of decide if you’re going to let yourself lose or try to make something happen.”

LEXI BAKER LEXI BAKER

Other than orchestra, Baker has participated in golf, the outdoors club, and the stop hunger club through HIES. Baker said that her favorite teacher in high school was Elizabeth Lamback. “She is always excited to see us in class and always seems like she really wants to help us learn the pieces in orchestra,” Baker said. The hardest class Baker says she has ever taken was AP Chemistry. “Just because it was a lot of information in a short amount of time and it seemed like the information was really difficult,” Baker explained.

When asked what her favorite thing about orchestra was, Baker said, “Getting to learn the new pieces and then at the concert seeing how far we have come.” Her favorite concert is always the Spring concert since they get to play newer music. Baker’s favorite orchestra memory is when she went on a class trip to Disney in eighth grade.

In reference to the current situation with the coronavirus, Baker said, “I think it’s had the biggest impact on orchestra because we have to work together to put the pieces together so when we are home we can learn the pieces but we can’t actually work on putting it together.”

ALEXA MARCONTELL ALEXA MARCONTELL

ARTS

For Alexa Marcontell, it’s the people involved that make HIES theater so special to her. “I love the connection that you make with everyone in the cast,” Marcontell said. Though

Brown has been involved with broadcast journalism since a mere freshman and has climbed the so-called “corporate” ladder of the program to become the Executive Producer alongside fellow senior Dara Grocer. Unlike the print journalists of the C&G staff, Brown is comfortable in front of the camera and must look presentable in a suit and tie when in the studio. “I’m very crazy about my clothes, and I have to look very polished on camera,” Brown said. “When I’m in the studio anchoring, it’s the one place that I can be myself and use my knowledge on politics and journalism. It’s right in the studio room with all of the other reporters that is my favorite place to be.”

Although his dream is to one day anchor on national television, Brown understands the challenges inherent with such a challenging profession. “Broadcast journalism has always been the dream. I would love to do that as my career. But eventually, it’s a hard road to get to a network and become a network news anchor,” Brown said. “It’s a very, very cheap road [where] you don’t make any money until you’ve made it.” By additionally majoring in business, Brown reasons he will have a “safety net” to fall back on in case his dream fails to materialize. But I would not bet against Brown’s eventual success as a journalist. “If you like being on camera and you have something to say – you have a message that you want to get across – then broadcast is the place to be,” Brown said. And he certainly has more stories to tell.

In his Non-Valedictory address, Coach Dunn Neugebauer wrote this: “I’ll see you on TV soon, will brag to my college friends while ordering drink number two. No one will believe me when I tell them I know you.” Certainly, this is true of Ben Brown, a graduating senior with plans to study both business and journalism at Texas Christian University who just might anchor on national news as a broadcast journalist.

“Pirates of Penzance” was her first show at HIES in fifth grade, Marcontell considers “Little Women” to be the show that sparked her theatre career at HIES. During her junior year, Alexa had the opportunity to play her dream role in her dream show: Morticia Addams in the Addams Family. “The Addams Family is my favorite show because I got so close with the cast and the crew and everyone involved and it really shows feeling like a theater family,” Marcontell said. One aspect of theater that Marcontell loves along with singing and acting is being able to become someone else just for a little bit. Though one would never know when watching Marcontell perform on stage, she actually really struggles with audition nerves. “For me personally, I get really nervous at auditions and stuff. I think something that I’ve had to work on a lot is preparing audition stuff beforehand so that I am not as nervous and I feel more comfortable,” Marcontell said. Marcontell plans to continue her career in the arts at Belmont University, majoring in music therapy. As she leaves HIES for a bigger stage, her final words for those interested in theater is this: “Don’t settle. Keep trying for your main goal and what you really want to do.”

“I think anything you think of and make it; it’s art,” Emma Schlatterer, accomplished visual artist at HI said. Schlatterer attributes a good portion of her success to the art program at HI, “Our program is like your hype man. Anything you want to do. You will never hear no from our department. Their view on the world is, make anything you want.” Her love and enthusiasm for the art program branches out to all of HI, where she has made her fondest memories over the past four years. Among Schlatter’s favorite moments include, “any time our class did something as a whole.” Also in her memories is the Round Square trip abroad to India. “We did so much during the two weeks we were there. Every night, there was a gigantic rave. It was just everyone from all over the world.” Through it all, Schlatterer wants to be remembered as, by students as the one, “who threw the best parties. By the community, I definitely value myself as a student leader. The green team, that’s something I’m still working on and that I’m very serious about. So definitely I want to leave my mark in that way.” Despite her incredible talent, choosing her path was not easy. Schlatterer’s future lies in New York at the Parsons School of Design at The New School. “There’s no guaranteed anything. And especially … wanting to go to private art school and pursue that that it took a lot. It took a lot for me to … actually go and pursue it and commit every day.”