VARSITY BASKETBALL UPDATE Boys varsity sees huge success leading the MAC Blue, girls varsity works on rebuilding

The basketball season is in full stride and the boys and girls varsity teams need an update.

The girls team is in their a “rebuild phase” after losing many of their seniors from last year.

This year’s team is young with only three seniors, one sophomore and eight juniors, and for most it’s their first year on varsity.

“We’re still learning to work as a team,“ junior Addison Stuehmer said, “and through each game I feel we’ve gotten better and better.“

It’s hard to work with a team when you haven’t built strong relationships with them.

“It’s just nice to get close with the girls, this being my first year,” junior Addy Johnson said. “We’re just trying to work hard.”

Building a bond with the team has proven to be beneficial with the team’s chemistry.

“This season has been more of a rebuild after losing eight seniors,” senior Natalie Shtogrin said. “I’m just proud of how people have stepped up.”

A rebuild like this will prepare this girls team for the struggles next year will bring.

The boys team, on the other hand, is bringing out huge success and triumph, compared to last year’s season.

Last year ended with a 7-14 record for the boys, and now they are already far ahead at 10-3, finishing week 7.

“We’ve got good chemistry; lots of guys doing their part,” junior Mason Brodi said. “We’re just winning and having fun doing it.”

Success comes with a team working together and this year’s team has stuck with each other through every game.

“What’s great is we know how to balance fun and hard work,” senior Trent McFarland said. “It gives our team great chemistry and it helps us succeed.”

Even though playing a sport like this can be very serious at times, they manage to have fun.

“Nik Gojcaj is my favorite teammate,” junior Mason Brodi said. “He just brings a different aspect to the game that makes it more fun.”

To Brodi, Nik is important on this team.

“I feel like I have a big role on this team,” junior Nik Gojcaj said, “getting rebounds, feeding my guys and helping us win.”

Student Voices And Opinions

Staff Editorial

Bathroom

In order to combat vandalism, vaping, and other inappropriate behavior in the bathrooms, Utica has shut down a majority of the bathrooms during the school day.

Our editorial staff may have differing opinions on many topics, but we can all agree on one thing: we wholeheartedly disagree with this decision. We believe that shutting down bathrooms to “prevent” these issues is just creating more problems than solutions, and it’s punishing students who did nothing wrong.

Students are not informed of which bathrooms are closed during the day, leading to students wandering around the school in search of a bathroom that’s open. We believe students should be informed of which bathrooms are open and which are not in order to prevent us from needing to try every bathroom in the school.

also does not solve the problem of students vaping in the bathroom or engaging in any kind of vandalism. They’ll still be doing it, it’s just now in a more concentrated area instead of spread across the school.

Some students are actively avoiding using the bathroom at Utica now because of this new policy. They are either uncomfortable with the large amount of people in the bathroom, they don’t want to be present in the bathroom if students get caught vaping by a staff member, or they are worrying about upsetting their teachers due to the long wait times.

Arrow Staff Vote

SHOULD BATHROOMS BE CLOSED AT UTICA?

Additionally, when using the bathroom during class, teachers expect us to come back fairly quickly and often get upset with us if we take too long. Coming back in a timely manner is infinitely more difficult when only one or two bathrooms in the entire school are open and we need to find which ones they are.

YES 0 NO 16

This is not fair to students who aren’t vaping or vandalizing the bathrooms. If anything, it impacts students who aren’t doing anything wrong more than it impacts those who are. Shutting down most of the school’s bathrooms may lessen the amount of vandalism and vaping, but it doesn’t completely solve the problem. Students are still going to do these things, the only difference is now it’s causing problems for otherwise uninvolved students.

Some teachers also only permit one student to leave the classroom to use the bathroom at a time. Needing to guess which bathrooms are open holds up other people from using the bathrooms and is a general annoyance for everyone.

The few bathrooms that are open are extremely crowded and practically unusable due to the amount of people in them. This, again, leads to long wait times and frustrated teachers assuming we’re wasting time in the hallways. It

Perspectives

We recognize that this is a problem that has been around for much longer than we’ve been alive, only with cigarettes rather than vapes, and it does not have an easy or obvious solution. Punishing the entire school for the actions of a small amount of students is ineffective and is only going to irritate students, instead of fix anything or make meaningful, long-term changes.

A better solution is to invest in full-time hall monitors, who can check in on bathroom usage throughout the day. Clearly, security cameras are not the answer, and we are definitely worth the investment.

Do you agree with the bathrooms being closed at Utica?

“No, not really, people who go to the bathroom have to go, so the bathrooms have to be open.”

“I don’t. If they close it because people were vaping, they are going to vape with the bathrooms opened or closed.”

“I do agree with the bathrooms being closed because we are not monitoring ourselves as a student body. Someone has got to speak up and we can bring that to a stop.”

Jeff LaPratt

“The reason for all these closures are too many students congregating, along with vaping being an issue.”

Timothy Youngblood