Brain and Brawn showcases students’ varied strengths BY ETHAN LEE
team was awarded with anything of their choice within a twenty dollar budget. Junior Naman Singhal paired up with his friends, juniors Ammar Khan and Elina
day of the tournament. Singhal’s team won every event and move on to the next day. Although they fell short of winning, Singhal still had a fun time with his teammates participating in this tournament. “My favorite part of the tournament was the tug-of-war because it was the most intense event,” Singhal said. “All three of us had to work together to win.” The winners of the overall tournament were juniors Hayden Cho, Alexa Kwan and Benjamin Leung. In their championship game, they played juniors Fabio Peralta-Costa, Ishan Saharoy and Dasha Kir. They were able to win the Connect Four and tugof-war event to win the overall Clockwise from top left: tournament. The tug-of-war Juniors Ammar Khan pulls the rope from juniors match was especially close, with Elina Kulakkotial and Anushka Kelkar. Peralta-Costa’s team winning by a Junior Amy Sun looks on as Kulakkotial places a slim margin. ring into the Connect Four board. Athletics Unlimited concluded Juniors Naman Singhal and Justin Dong are that the tournament did not locked in an arm wrestling match. turn out according to their Sun and Kulakkotial play Connect Four as Khan expectations, as they had hoped and Kelkar watch from the side. for more involvement and enthusiasm from the competitors and audience. “We hoped for a little more excitement from people for the tournament, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out,” Atmadja said. “It was a unique experience hosting a new tournament, but as of right now, we do not plan on having this tournament again.” The club has decided to stick to their roots in the future and mainly host tournaments that have MEI CORRICELLO — EPIC already proven to be successful, such as dodgeball, Spikefest, and March Madness. Following the end Kulakkotial, to compete in the tournament. They played against their of the Brain and Brawn tournament, the �irst opponents, a team with juniors Justin March Madness basketball tournament is Dong, Amy Sun and Alex Cheng, on the �irst slated to begin next month.
in competitions. While most students who only take one CTE course opt for Principles of Business, students who take multiple years of CTE can gain more advanced skills through courses such as Accounting and Economics & Virtual Enterprise. Many also anticipate a decline in membership, though, as the prerequisites for competition could discourage many students from joining or cause current members to drop out. These students may opt to join FBLA instead, which requires only one year of CTE. “Considering the volume of people the CTE courses can handle, we’re expecting about a 200-member drop,” said DECA president Rachana Muvvala. “So we will probably have about 170 [competing] members next year.” The new policy will have a strong impact on students’ course scheduling, particularly for students who had expected to participate in DECA throughout high school but not planned to take CTE classes all four years. For this reason, current members have mixed feelings about the new policy. “I really enjoy doing DECA, and it’s something that I want to do all four years,” said freshman member Jeffrey Su. “But knowing that I might not be able to do it next year is worrisome, since the chance of me getting another business course as a sophomore is pretty low.”
Others, including sophomore Marissa Dai, do not plan to request a business class in the upcoming school year. “I was really disappointed when I found out,” Dai said. “A lot of people were frustrated because they had a plan for their four years that’s now been thrown out the window. I would not have joined DECA if I had known [about the requirement]; I was already surprised at the one year [requirement], because I think as an after school club it should not be interfering with school.” Because the number of class periods, or sections, the Business Department supports will likely remain the same, the number of students who can enroll in these classes will not change signi�icantly. Still, some, including Business Department head Andrea Badger, predict that the department may offer fewer sections of Principles of Business in favor of more advanced classes. Should demand increase dramatically, Lynbrook could consider adapting to higher demand by expanding the Business Department. “We have talked about opportunities for dual enrollment with community colleges and grants that could help secure more sections,” Badger said. “I hope that this situation challenges us as a school or a district to �ind a way to make more opportunities accessible to students.”
B
GRAPHICS BY NEWS SECTION
rain and Brawn was a strenuous competition that tested both participants’ physical and mental skills. Hosted by Lynbrook’s Athletics Unlimited Club, the tournament took place during lunches in the quad from Feb. 11 to 14. The competition involved three events: Connect Four, arm wrestling and tug-of-war. Juniors Fred Lee and Eric Zhang came up with the idea for Brain and Brawn, hoping to host a competition that would allow both athletes and non-athletes to participate. It took the pair of them around a month and a half to plan the event, as they had to come up with events and their rules from scratch, and faced many challenges along the way. “In order to host a Connect Four game, we needed the game board, and we couldn’t �ind one,” said Athletics Unlimited of�icer Jessica Atmadja. “Luckily, the LHS staff had one lying around and were so generous to let us borrow it.” Six teams participated in the tournament. In order to compete, each team was required to have three members, one of whom had to be a girl. Two members of each team participated in the Connect Four and arm wrestling events. The two members played cooperatively for the Connect Four game and took turns for the arm wrestling event. All three members participated in the tug-of-war, which was the only event that the third member took part in. The tournament was designed to be bracket style: the winners of each day moved on to play each other throughout the week until the overall winner was determined. The winning
DECA to require concurrent CTE enrollment BY ELENA WILLIAMS
T
he business of joining Lynbrook’s largest business club has just gotten harder. Starting next school year, DECA will require that all competing members be concurrently enrolled in a Career Technical Education (CTE) class in the Business Department. Though previous of�icer teams have chosen to only enforce the requirement for one year of CTE that could be completed concurrently or previously in high school, the national DECA organization has always required concurrent enrollment. In the past few years, the Department of Education has begun pushing California DECA to hold its chapters to that standard. Noticing the trend toward more stringent enforcement, DECA adviser Brad Fulk and the of�icer team chose to adopt the policy in its entirety in the 202021 academic year. “It was my decision to push to be proactive and get ahead of [the regulation],” Fulk said. “I felt like the longer we waited, the bigger the chapter got, the more people it would impact.” Of�icers hope that increased exposure to business education will help members develop relevant skills, enriching their experiences and improving performance
SKIING // pg. 13
Freshman skii instructor