FEATURE
SPORTS
Sophomore scores a spot on Princeton team PAGE 19
Walt Whitman High School
CROSSWORD
A backstage look at pre-professional theater programs PAGE 12
7100 Whittier Boulevard Bethesda, MD 20817
The Squeri Root of J² presents: A New Hope PAGE 16
Friday, June 9, 2017
Volume 55 Issue 7
Shot clock, running clock added for 2017-2018 basketball season
Congratulations class of 2017!
by MAX GERSCH
The class of 2017, 517 seniors, toss their mortarboards to the ceiling at DAR Constitution Hall June 5 celebrating their graduation. Students Anna Mcguire, Mason Robinson, Andres Garcia and Alex Parsky shared their thoughts on the occasion and their high school experiences through commencement speeches. In addition to the students, former teacher Joe Mornini urged students to contribute to their communities. This year’s graduation also featured a poem from Whitman Poet Laureate, sophomore Toby Schecter. Photo by ANNABELLE GORDON.
Gap years expand students’ horizons, exploring world outside of classroom by THOMAS MANDE Midway through her senior year, Charlotte Holdrich (‘16) still didn’t know what she wanted to study in college. So instead of enrolling directly at the University of Maryland, Holdrich deferred her admission for a year. She spent the next eight months working at a P.F. Chang’s—then the following four learning Arabic in Morocco. Recently, more students like Holdrich are postponing college and taking a break from academics, said College and Career Information coordinator Anne Hutchens. Next year, 13 Whitman students will be taking gap years, with plans ranging from working in an ambulance in Israel to doing community service projects in Nicaragua. Students who take gap years have two options: planning their own or participating in a structured program designed to provide meaningful gap year experiences across the globe. Senior Marieke Van Rossum chose the latter. Seeking a break from the constant stress of school, she worked with the National Outdoor Leadership School to create a twosegment plan: three months camping in India, then four months studying French in a small town in southern France. “These four years of high school have been a lot of constantly working and pushing on,” Van Rossum said. “So it’s a time to not have to worry about things I should be doing, or have to do.” Colleges and universities have become increasingly supportive of gap years, often encouraging students to take one before attending college. Some, like Tufts University, have even created their own gap year programs. The Tufts 1+4 program allows students to do a year of service with organizations, either locally or globally, before arriving on campus. “Students learn about a different community than their own, get out of their own bubble or echo chamber, learn to communicate with different people and learn to work with others around real problems facing the world,” program
Leor Rosen (‘16) hikes in the Golan Heights in Northern Israel. Rosen spent her gap year in Israel, volunteering at a rape crisis center in Bat Yam and learning Hebrew in Jerusalem. Photo courtesy LEOR ROSEN.
founder Alan Solomont said. “The overwhelming majority of students I talked to that have done this report that it was life changing.”
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The timer is rapidly winding down with just one minute to go. In the final seconds of a boys basketball game, the winning team holds on to the ball while the losing team desperately tries to foul in an attempt to regain possession. This situation was a common occurrence in boys basketball last season, but the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, the administrative group for Maryland high school sports, has added a new rule for boys basketball to prevent it: a 35-second shot clock. Girls basketball will keep its 30-second shot clock. The Association will also implement a running clock for both boys and girls basketball games when a team is leading by 35 points or more. Boys basketball coach Chris Lun calls the shot clock long overdue and says it could change how teams approach late game situations. “I feel like if you’re down six with four minutes to go, you shouldn’t have to resort to fouling to get the ball back,” Lun said. “I think you can play tough defense for 35 seconds and get the ball back.” A shot clock speeds up the tempo of the game and discourages players from stalling, requiring the offensive team to take a shot that hits the rim of the basket in the allotted time. If they fail to do so, the opposing team will get possession of the ball. The Association was previously unwilling to add a shot clock because the National Federation of State High School Associations, the governing body for most high school sports in the United States, does not currently have a universal shot clock for boys basketball. By deciding to implement a shot clock, Maryland will “lose its voice” on the national level, Lun said, meaning that Maryland loses its representation in the National Federation. The second change is the introduction of a running clock into both boys and girls basketball. If one of the teams is winning by 35 points or more in the fourth quarter, then the clock will only stop during a timeout. Lun and girls varsity coach Peter Kenah both said that the rule will have a bigger impact on girls games because boys games are rarely won by such large margins. Kenah thinks that the rule may deprive his players of valuable game time because the games will be shorter if a team is up by more than 35 points. He also worries that his players’ efforts in practice may be wasted because of the shorter games. Girls basketball guard Brooke Gumataotao, however, doesn’t think that having a running clock will alter how the team plays next season. “Our mindset is to play to the very last second and always play as hard as you can no matter what the score is,” she said. “We like to focus more on the game itself rather than the score.”