Issue 15 from 2012

HarbingerSMEHARBINGER.NET

Editor Kat Buchanan presents a satirical view what it really means to be a hipster

Sophomore Sarah Fox juggles school, dance and her cake pop business ‘Great ExpeCAKEtions’

A new take on the New Orleans Saints bounty controversy

p. 10opinionINSIDE

THIS ISSUE: >>>

A closer look at the traditional

Assassins game played by seniors cont’d on p. 4

ISSUE 15 | SHAWNEE MISSION EAST | PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KS | APRIL 30, 2012

BRINGING ALCOHOL INTO THE LIGHTwritten by Evan Nichols | art by Toni Aguiar

East considers implementing AlcoholEdu, an online education program that aims to reduce drinking

p. 18feature

p. 31sports

Story on p. 3

As the child of two therapists and hav-ing years of analyzing human behavior, ju-nior Matt Hanson founded a group known as “The Breakfast Club” this year as a way to bring social change to East. Having met three times so far, the group works to break down social barriers and challenge social norms.

The group meets each Monday after school to discuss the latest lesson and set a new mission each week. For example, say-ing hello to 10 new people each day from dif-ferent social groups. Hanson plans on car-rying the club into next year and welcomes anyone interested in joining hoping to great the maximum impact among students.

On March 20, junior IB Psych students Gabby Magalski, Sam Tulp, Seth Myers, Jack Mitchell and Michael Kennedy approached Kelli Kurle about a psych project that would leave the whole school talking. With per-mission from IB English teacher Meredith Birt, Kurle, associate principal John McK-inney and SRO officer David Parker. They arranged to have Magalski taken out in the middle of class under the assumption she was in possession of illegal substances.

The experiment was designed to test how quickly rumors would spread throughout the school. One rumor even broke about an-other student having “planted” drugs in Ma-galski’s bag. The group learned that students tend to expect all rumors to be true and, in turn, spread them with full confidence.

Senior SME choir members will be sing-ing with their fellow Lancers for the last time at their final concert this Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Dan Zollars Auditorium. The concert has been given the theme Motown, and will be filled of classics such as Jackson 5’s “ABC,” and Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” as well as ending in an emotional finale with Michael Jackson’s “I’ll Be There.”

This year, in efforts to cut-down on time, the spring concert was broken up into two sections, one of which was the classical half that took place earlier this year. The second half, taking place this week, will not only consist of performances from every branch of choir, but will also include farewell senior slideshows as a way to honor the seniors.

Governor Sam Brownback signed the new voter photographic identification re-quirements.

Supporters of the law contend that the law will help to reduce voter fraud. Critics say that the new law will hurt minority and economically disadvantaged citizens. They say that many members of these communi-ties lack any of the accepted forms of ID, but are still legal voters.

To vote, you need to present identifica-tion with a photo. Valid forms include: a driver’s license issued by Kansas or another state or district of the U.S.; a U.S. passport; student ID card issued by an accredited Kan-sas postsecondary educational institution along with other options.

The city swore in three new members of the City Council on April 16. At the meeting, the council also elected a new council presi-dent.

The new members include Ted Odell who replaced 13-year council member Al Herrera. Ashley Weaver replaced four-term-er Diana Ewy Sharp, and Brooke Morehead replaced the former council president, Dale Beckerman.

In an 8-3 vote, the council selected David Morrison as the new president. The mem-bers who opposed the selection cited Mor-rison’s current legal battle in the Kansas Supreme Court.

The case roots back to 2009, when Mor-rison opposed a bond issue and circulated a petition, which the city attorney declared insufficient.

UMKC is offering the Summer Scholars Program again this year. The program is a four week, non-residential educational/pre-paratory experience. It introduces “selected high school juniors and seniors to a myriad of opportunities in the health care field.”

The program seeks to encourage tal-ented minority and economically disadvan-taged high school juniors and seniors in the hopes of encouraging them towards careers in medicine and other helath science ca-reers.

The curriculum for the program includes daily instruction subjects including Anato-my/Physiology, Chemistry and Language Arts, along with tips for ACT Test Taking and interviews. For more info and application proceedures, visit med.umkc.edu.

Spencer Davis

Spencer Davis

Molly Howland

Brendan Duhlohery Junior founds Breakfast Club at East

Psychology students experiment with rumors

Senior singers prepare for final concert

Voter ID law goes into effect

PV swears in new City Council members

UMKC School of Medicineoffering free summer camp

2 | NEWS

JUNIOR MADDISON HATTAWAY, along with the or-chestra, performs a piece by Wagner at the perform-ing arts assembly.

SENIOR JEAN ORR brainstorms skit ideas for the State Junior Classical League Convention held April 20.

Area children participate in arts and crafts activities at the 2012 Earth Fair held on April 21.

CHOIR DIRECTOR KEN FOLEY prepares the Cho-raliers for the performing arts assembly, held on April 19.

NEWS IN BRIEFTHE

SCHOOL

COMMUNITY STATE

PHOTOS OF THE WEEK

written by Kim Hoedel

written by Tom Lynch

SHEDDING LIGHTON ALCOHOL AWARENESS

East considers adopting online alcohol prevention program AlcoholEdu

With the number of in-season viola-tions of the drug and alcohol contract by East athletes approaching 40, principal Karl Krawitz has realized that the current methods of prevention have lost their ef-fect. Although East has tried multiple ap-proaches — the alcohol presentation on Meet the Coaches night, the quadriplegic students who gave a presentation in the auditorium earlier this year — Dr. Krawitz still thinks the administration has done only an “average job of putting the mes-sage out.”

“What we’ve currently been doing [to prevent underage drinking] hasn’t worked,” Dr. Krawitz said.

But a relatively new program may be coming to Shawnee Mission East next year — a program that has already seen success in reducing underage drinking and increasing alcohol-related knowledge among high school stu-dents across the country. Dr. Krawitz is consider-ing implementing Alco-holEdu, an alcohol pre-vention program used by hundreds of high schools across the country, for next year’s incoming freshman class. Shawnee Mission South has an-nounced they will be us-ing the AlcoholEdu for their incoming freshman class — South received a grant for the program from the Johnson County Re-gional Prevention Center (RCP) earlier this year to fund the program.

AlcoholEdu is on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAM-HSA) National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices, meaning the program is based on research studies that support its methods. Dr. Krawitz hopes the program would help cut back on what he considers a “gross violation” of the school’s drug and alcohol

contract. The 120-minute online class re-

lies on an interactive, multimedia format that both educates students and encourages them to make safe decisions when it comes to alcohol. The course begins with an anony-mous survey that polls students’ previous experiences and mindset concerning alcohol. Using the stu-dent’s responses, the course is tai-lored to meet each individual user’s needs. According to John Boynton, National Director of EverFi. Inc. (the company the runs AlcoholEdu), this aspect of the course helps it to be more receptive to users.

“We want to be relevant,” Boyn-ton said. “If you say you’re a non-drinker, and I say, ‘well a good way to cut down on your drinking is X,’

[you’re going to say] ‘What the heck, I just told you that I was a non-drinker, you as-sume that I drink?’ And vice versa.”

The program’s effective-ness is limited by students’ honesty while filling out the survey — “If students lie, they lie,” Boynton says — but the confidentiality of the program encourages honesty.

The college version of the program, introduced in 1999, has been adopted by over 500 college campuses and universities, including KU, KSU and Emporia State — these schools require their incoming freshman to complete the program on their own time before start-ing classes. Bill Arck, direc-tor of KSU’s Alcohol and Other Drug Education Ser-vice (AODES) said the pro-

gram has provided “significant changes in knowledge level, perception of drink-ing and drinking intentions and behavior” among students.

“I think [AlcoholEdu] is the best pre-vention effort I have been a part of dur-ing the 26 years I have been the director of AODES,” said Arck. “There is no proven ‘silver bullet,’ but AlcoholEdu seems to be the very best available today.”

According to Boynton, 35 percent of all incoming college freshman in the country (approximately 600,000 students) took AlcoholEdu last year. Although the statis-tics support the program’s success, former East student and current KSU freshman Andrea Donahue* completed the course last summer and felt it had little impact on her drinking habits and perception of alco-hol. Donahue still drinks 3 days a week.

“AlcoholEdu made me think that all col-lege students who do consume alcohol are out of control with their drinking habits,” Donahue said.

Another former East student Bill Thompson* took the class before starting classes at KU last summer with similar ex-periences to Donahue. The class, although a “solid resource” of information about alcohol, did not change his perception of alcohol or his drinking habits.

“It did not change [my views] at all,” Thompson said. “Honestly, I feel that ex-

perimenting with drinking in high school has its benefits. If I had gone into college without ever having a sip of alcohol before it would have been a disaster. I’m not say-ing I promote underage drinking, I just feel that experiencing it beforehand has its values.”

AlcoholEdu also uses what it calls “Population Level Prevention,” that is, fo-cusing on the community as a whole rath-er than only students who have gotten in trouble because of alcohol. The program strives to make a change within the entire community by offering the program to drinkers and non-drinkers alike.

SAMHSA’s 2008 study of the high school AlcoholEdu program found that it decreased the acceptance of underage drinking — the percentage of students reporting that drinking underage is never acceptable increased from the baseline 37.8 percent to 47.5 percent after course completion. It also reduced the number of students who said they had ridden with a drunk driver from 27.1 percent to 23.5 per-cent.

NEWS | 3

written by Evan Nichols | illustration by Toni Aguiar

10%

20%

30%

40%

10%

50%

60%

19901991199219931994199519961997199819992000200120022003200420052006200720082009

% of students who had been in trouble with the police or college authorities

% of students who had driven a car while under the influence

Implementation of AlcoholEdu

EFFECTIVENESS OF ALCOHOLEDU*

*Based off study of the College of Charleston by Outside the Classroom in 2010

Survey + Pre-Test

Course Lessons

PART

1 (90

MIN

S.)

PART

2 (1

5 M

INS.

)

2nd Survey + Final Exam

Survey 3 + Follow-up Lesson

COURSE BREAKDOWNa look at the different

components of the program

Intersession (30+ days)

CONTINUED ON P. 8

*names changed to protect identity

MENHIT

SENIOR ASSASSINS PARTICIPANTS FALL INTO FOUR MAJOR GROUPS

written by Paige Hess | photos by Stefano Byer

AS NARRATED BY ALEX LAMB

BEGINNINGOF THE

TRADE

PRIME KILLS

MR. DERUSEAU ˙ THE GODFATHER

THE BLOODBATH ˙ 4/15

LET’S MAKE A DEAL ˙ 4/20

CHINESE SOAKING DRILL ˙ 4/23

PAIGE AND KELLYN ˙ THE BOSSES

What began as a regular youth group meeting for Toni Aguiar and Nathan Are on the first Sunday of the game quickly spiraled into a bloodbath of deceit, betrayal and the som-ber realization that no one wins in war. Jack Howland was waiting to assassinate Nathan outside the Village Presbyterian church when Toni saw and assassinated Jack first, inheriting Nathan as her target. She then quickly achieved a double kill in the church van, although was un-prepared for Jack’s vengeful next move: picking up Toni’s assassin Meghan Dickinson and driving her to Chipotle to ambush Toni at the post-youth group dinner.

The one and only time Alex Lamb saw his second target Meara Smith at her fortress of a home, his failed infiltration attempt drew the attention of neighbors and he started to leave. Having been spying on him the whole time, Meara drove up next to Alex and her accomplice hopped out and said they wanted to make a deal, then told him to drop the Super Soaker. Meara of-fered to let Alex assassinate her for $20, but he declined and started bartering with her while extracting information about other players. He slowly inched closer to Meara’s open window and stealthily slid a palm-sized water pistol out of his side pocket, biding his time until the accomplice asked “Do you have another gun behind your back?” Alex responded slyly “Why yes I do,” then swiftly shot Meara in the face, ending negotiations on his own terms.

Chris Heady and Molly Jen-nings, driving home from school, weren’t worrying about open windows, and had no idea that Molly’s assassin Morgan Denton was waiting to strike. As the cars stopped for the red light, Morgan hopped out of his car, darted to Chris’s vehicle and assassinated Molly.

“I hadn’t heard of anyone else setting it up. Then I heard Paige was kind of thinking about it so we started talking about doing it together. It seemed like it would definitely be easier to do with two people rath-er than just one person.”

“It’s a senior tradition. We didn’t want our gradua-tion class to miss out just because no one wanted to organize it.”

Deruseau founded the game in 1984 his senior year. “I was the first one to play it at East. I just can’t believe it’s still played.”

– SENIOR PAIGE KOVARIK

– SENIOR KELLYN HARRISON

THE KING THE RECLUSIVE THE OFFENSE THE JOKESTERScrolling through hundreds

of water guns on Amazon, se-nior Mark Harken anticipates the feeling of his first kill. Har-ken has been looking forward to Senior Assassins for a few years now. His peers began to speculate that his interest in the game would lead him to a win.

Harken spent a lot of his time over the next few weeks researching strategies: asking around with graduated seniors to see what tips they had for him, and reading various sets of rules online. His first step was to make an alliance with a close friend so they could use each other as decoys. Once this was done, he began his list to lure a target out of safety.

“I [knew] what I would do if I was one assigned my ally or vise versa,” Harken said. “Probably the most interest-ing [scenario] is where I would have a jogger run in front of my target’s car while looking at an iPod when my target was leaving for school, and then for the jogger to pretend to get hit so I could take out my target.”

Harken rides his bike ev-erywhere and was able to stay a step ahead of his assassin be-cause they would not easily be able to know if he was home. Harken even went to the extent of locking his Facebook page so that no one could see his profile.

He made sure that no one could look up what he looked like, where his house was, where he went to church, what he was involved in, and what his habits were.

“Somehow my assassin [was] tipped off and waited an hour and a half after his shift to get me [at a friend’s house].

Retreating to a strong-hold is the best bet for someone avoiding the playing field. For the past week, senior Morgan Sat-terlee has been cooped up in her house to avoid the possibility of being killed.

This strategy began last week due to a fractured foot. She stayed in her house to maintain safety and security with this in-jury.

“I knew that if I played it safer I would do much better in the game” Satter-lee said. “Of course I still had several obligations I had to go to but many ac-tivities such as my youth group had to be avoided for safety reasons.”

Other than these nec-essary commitments and school, Satterlee tries to stay inside as much as pos-sible. She spends the ma-jority of her time inside her house doing homework or helping her close friends plot to get their person out.

“I am currently in the game so this strategy has worked for me,” Satterlee said. “I am going to keep with it and see how far it takes me, though I have no expectations of being the victor.”

Senior Grace Fritts crouches behind the front wheel of her first victim’s car. She has been prepar-ing to assassinate this par-ticular victim for a couple days now, asking around to figure out what they do, where they go — taking stalking to a new extreme. Fritts started this game with one goal, but that goal has changed.

“When I signed up to do Assassins, my one goal was to get one kill — and then I would be happy be-ing killed,” Fritts said, “but now I just want to get as many kills I can get before I’m shot.”

Fritts avoids being shot and finished with the game in various ways, but al-ways tries to be on the of-fensive, one step ahead of her assassin.

“Whenever I leave my house in the morning, I have my sister check around for my assassin,” Fritts said. “After work I either have someone I’m working with or my boss check for me. If no one is with me, I’ll just sprint to my car and get in as fast as I can.”

The game that started as something fun to do, has now become a way for bonding for the seniors whether intense or not.

“I think my favorite part of Assassins is how it strangely brings people to-gether,” Fritts said. “It gives you something in common with people that you would not normally talk to.”

Tired of the stress and worry, senior Ryan Mc-Neil decided it was time to throw in the towel early in the game. He contacted his known assassin and they made a deal: a kill for mon-ey. It was simple. McNeil’s assassin receives an easy win, while also getting to count his easy cash-- 20 dollars to be exact.

McNeil knew that he wouldn’t make it until the end – he plays lacrosse, a club sport that is not pro-tected under the assassins guidelines. Since it is not a school sponsored activ-ity, his 4:30-6:30 practices every day after school make him a sitting duck. He knew his playing time would be short, so, in the beginning, he wanted to make the most of it.

“Well, at first, I was go-ing to buy a really nice wa-ter gun and go all out for Assassins, but then I real-ized water balloons were the way to go,” McNeil said. “The satisfaction of hitting someone straight on with a balloon full of water is pretty rad.”

But upon seeing how his chances of winning were pretty slim, McNeil gave up -- and looking back doesn’t regret it. He was amused and humbled by the game.

“My favorite part was how involved everyone gets in the game,” McNeil said. “You have to learn a whole lot about people you’ve never met some-times. It makes stalking people socially acceptable for a few weeks.”

MORGAN SATTERLEE GRACE FRITTS RYAN MCNEIL

He barely got me, but I was glad he did since I knew I wasn’t going to get my target, and that I could finally go outside without checking for my assassin. I had a lot of fun playing, but I think my big-gest mistake was becoming a big name.”

4 | NEWS

MARK HARKEN MORGAN SATTERLEE GRACE FRITTS RYAN McNEIL

The seventh annual Fashion for a Cause event in benefit of Truman Medical Center will feature students from East and around the Prairie Village area in the runway show on April 27 at the Kauffman Center. In pre-vious years, the show has been held at The Midland Theatre, Arrowhead’s Stadium Club Level at the Truman Sports Complex and other premier entertainment venues in Kansas City.

“Many people have been looking for a good opportunity to experience an event at one of the most technically and architec-turally superior performing arts centers in the nation,” Kristen Lewis, adult supervisor for the teen committee said. “Now is their chance, while supporting a great Kansas City cause.”

Fashion for a Cause was created in 2005 to not only showcase Kansas City’s most noted style boutiques and designers, but also support Women’s Health Services at Truman Medical Centers.

“Since its beginning seven years ago, the event has raised over $700,000 to support the vital care given to mothers and their ba-bies,” Lewis said.

To make this year bigger and better than any other Giuliana Rancic, E! News Anchor and fashion expert will be hosting the eve-ning, and DJ Sheppa Peppa will be coordi-nating the music. The marketing depart-ment from Fashion for a Cause and Truman Medical Center’s Charitable Foundation have taken advantage of advertising with several media outlets from magazines to social media. The show is already sold out with 950-1,000 people expected to attend.

This year’s theme is an emergence of trends, design, expression and style. The color red will be dominant in the decora-tions to carry out the theme. The night will kick off at 6:30 p.m. with a Patron’s Party, giving people plenty of time to eat, drink and mingle. Following the Patron’s Party will be the main attraction, an hour long fashion show starring teens from around the city during the “teen-segment” and other professional models. Senior Camille Goehausen will be participating in the show as a runway model for the first time after having attended in past years.

“About 20 other high school students and I are walking in the fashion show modeling

younger, more casual clothing,” Goehau-sen said. “There are about 10 guys, mostly from Pembroke, also modeling.”

SVICA jeans for women and Method for men will be sported on the runway, along with music by DJ Sheppa Peppa. Other fea-tured stores include Feng, Alaskan Fur, Pe-ruvian Connection and Hudson + Jane.

“What’s cool about SVICA jeans,” Goe-hausen said, “is that they have removable panels on the sides, so you can switch up the colors to go with your outfit.”

To prepare for the show the models have gone to three three-hour long practices. During the first practice the models got a chance to get comfortable walking on the runway and listening to the music they will be walking to. At the next practice they had a fitting. Each model is wearing basi-cally the same wash of jeans, while some are skinny and others are flared. Goehau-sen will be in jeans and a black and white strapless top. They were also told about the dance routine that they will be performing at the show.

“I’m not the best dancer so I’m a little nervous to dance in front of thousands of

people, especially Giuliana Rancic,” Goe-hausen said, “but I think I’ll be fine.”

Other teens have also volunteered to work backstage. To promote the theme “emergence,” there will be a red carpet leading into the building.

“We are trying to make the theme seem more realistic,” Victoria Sabates, sopho-more and backstage volunteer said. “They want us to stand around the red carpet en-trance taking pictures and acting like pa-parazzi.”

The teen models not only get to walk the runway during the show, but have the op-portunity to work with the fashion show producer, and choreographer. They also have jobs such as raising money by sell-ing tickets, advertising the event and even hosting and organizing their own parties. Another perk is gaining community service hours for their involvement.

“Ratana Tshibanda, the Fashion Show Producer, really works with them, helping them to gain confidence and poise,” Lewis said. “Which in turn, I think will help them with other aspects of their life. We try to bring out their inner Sasha Fierce.”

NEWS | 5

written by Leah Pack | photos by Claire Wahrer

1 2 3Rancic was born and raised in Naples, Italy. She moved to the US in her early child-hood.

Rancic is most commonly known for co-hosting E! News with Ryan Seacrest.

She founded Fab-FitFun, a site that focuses on wom-en’s fashion, and beauty.

AMODEL

3 THINGSGUILIANARANCIC

to know aboutthe show’s host

The preview of second annual Fashion For a Cause show on April 26cause

information coutesy of imdb.com

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Senior Lilly Myers’ took the methodical approach to choosing colleges to apply to. She applied to six schools, creating a list with both private and public schools, that had a range of admissions difficulties. Although she was unable to visit, the University of Southern California (USC) seemed perfect to her after intensive online research and conversations with an admissions representative. It had stellar academics, a diverse social scene and great weath-er. Myers was elated when she found out that she had got-ten into USC in late March. Unfortunately, Myers is unable to attend due to the great financial burden it would put on herself and her family.

When it comes time to decide what school to attend out of the ones a student got into, price often eliminates some choices altogether. In a Harbinger survey of 104 seniors, 32 percent reported that cost prohibited them from con-sidering at least one of the schools. A restructuring of the university system for better management of tuition funds would allow universities in the U.S. to do more with less.

Cost shouldn’t remain as the determining factor in a student’s decision to attend a certain college or not. Stu-dents shouldn’t be forced to make decisions about which college to attend based on price, and should instead be able to make the decision based upon things important to the experience, such as academics and atmosphere. And while increasing financial aid offerings would help, they aren’t long-term solutions. To solve the problem, the uni-versities need to rethink and completely restructure the methods in which they spend students’ money to make it more affordable for the students to attend first-choice-school.

A student attending the average public university can expect to pay $29,657 a year at sticker price, including tu-ition and room and board, according to a survey by the Col-

lege Board for the 2011-12 school year. However, the most prestigious universities in the United States happen to be private—the top 20 universities on US News and World Report’s 2012 list of the best universities are all private. Pri-vate universities had an average sticker price of $38,589 a year, according to the College Board’s survey. Unlike at public universities, where students rarely pay full sticker price, because of greater government assistance, at private universities students are 10 percent more likely to go into debt to pay for their education, with the average debt per borrower at $28,100.

Student debt is a big problem, and inflation is not to blame for the rise. Tuition and fees at universities for 2011-2012 rose an average of 4.6 percent from the previ-ous school year, which exceeds the rate of inflation of 3.16 percent, according to a survey by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. Instead, the problem rests with inefficient management of tuition dol-lars by schools, where tuition dollars are spent on items of questionable importance to students’ educations.

It’s unlikely that some of the expensive perks that uni-versities are providing to students like free laundry service at Davidson College and free housekeeping at Trinity Uni-versity are improving the quality of education, and can be gotten rid of.

It doesn’t make sense for undergraduates to be fund-ing the university’s research program. Federal grants, in many cases, are unable to fully support university’s re-search programs, and so many schools, like the University of Rhode Island, turn to tuition dollars to bail out research programs. While research is good for the public, English majors shouldn’t be subsidizing physicists. Their money should only be spent on the things that are directly related to their education—most of it should go towards teaching.

Next, the universities need to reorganize their admin-istrative models by eliminating bloat. Schools spend an average of $7,000 per student per year on “administrative support” according to the Economist. These costs aren’t just spent on the deans, but also on psychologists and hu-man resources managers. While these administrators are nice to have around, colleges can educate their students without, or at least with fewer of them.

Schools should also reevaluate class sizes. Studies show people generally prefer smaller classes, but the re-search and studies into the effect of class size are incon-clusive as to whether they provide better education. Large class size does not reduce the ability for students to learn in economics classes, according to a 2002 study published in the College Student Journal. Furthermore, most busi-ness and law schools already do well with large classes. Schools should look into what classes are best served by smaller, discussion-oriented sizes, and which ones can be equally effective with more people. With a larger student to teacher ratio for certain areas of study, schools could save money and be just as effective.

Myers is not alone. She is one of many students who are unable to attend the school of their dreams—ones that they worked hard to get into—because of cost. Schools need to get creative, and soon. Reducing the cost of educa-tion should be a top priority.

THE MAJORITY OPINION OF THE HARBINGER EDITORIAL BOARD

FOR AGAINST ABSENT011 0

Harbinger a publication of shawnee mission east high school7500 Mission Road, Prairie Village, KS 66208October 31, 2011

THE HARBINGER IS A STUDENT RUN PUBLICATION. THE CONTENTS AND VIEWS ARE PRODUCED SOLELY BY THE STAFF AND DO NOT REPRESENT THE SHAWNEE MISSION SCHOOL DISTRICT, EAST FACULTY, OR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION.

Editors-In-ChiefKat BuchananToni Aguiar

Assistant Editors Emma Pennington Evan Nichols

Online Editors-In-Chief

Jeff Cole Duncan MacLachlan

Online Assistant Editor

Becca BrownleeArt and Design Editor

Chloe StradingerHead Copy Editors

Chris Heady Jack Howland

News EditorTom Lynch

News Page Editors Katie KnightEditorial Editor

Matt HansonOpinion Editor

Ian Wiseman

Opinion Page EditorsMorgan Twibell

Mixed EditorTiernan Shank

Spread Editor Andrew SimpsonAssistant Spread Editor Paige HessFeatures Editor

Christa McKittrickFeatures Page Editors

Leah PackEmily Kerr

A&E Editor Kennedy Burgess

A&E Page EditorsAndrew McKittrickWill Webber

Sports EditorAnne Willman

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Freelance Page Editors

Alex GoldmanVanessa DavesKim HoedelHaley Martin

Photo Editor Grant Kendall

Assistant Photo Editor Spencer Davis

Online Photo Editor Brendan Dulohery Jake Crandall

Assistant Online Photo Editor

Hiba AkhtarCopy Editors Evan Nichols

Emma PenningtonKat BuchananMatt HansonAnne WillmanChloe StradingerToni AguiarChris HeadyJack HowlandTom LynchErin Reilly

Will WebberHead Online Copy Editor

Matt GannonKim Hoedel

Online Copy EditorsSami WalterVanessa Daves

Ads/Circulation Managers

Erin ReillyLeah Pack

Staff Artists Sam StevensMatti CrabtreeConnor Woodson

WebmastersChris DennistonChristian Wiles

Multimedia EditorThomas Allen

Assistant Multimedia Editor

Dalton BoehmConvergence Editor

Alex Lamb

Homegrown EditorsAndrew BeasleyAnna Dancinger

Blog EditorZoe Brian

Video EditorDalton Boehm

Eastipedia EditorSami Walter

Podcast Editor Sami WalterLive Broadcast Editors

Connor WoodsonAssistant Live Broadcast Editor

Andrew McWardOnline A&E Section Editor

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Live Broadcast Producers

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AnchorsPatrick FrazellMarisa WaltonMorgan TwibellEmily Donovan

PR Representative/Business Managers

Joe SimmonsStaff Writers

Alex Lamb Greta NepstadHannah RatliffStephen CookEmily DonovanHolly HernandezJulia PoeJeri FreirichJulia DavisAlex StonebargerGrace HeitmannNick MayPhotographers

Spencer DavisEmma RobsonChristian WilesAnna DancigerAnnaMarie OakleyMolly HowlandStefano ByerMcKenzie SwansonMiranda GibbsMarisa WaltonMaddie Schoemann

Multimedia StaffAndrew McWardHaley MartinChris DennistonChristian WilesSpencer DavisAnneMarie OakleyMiranda Gibbs

Adviser Dow Tate

Letters to the editor may be sent to room 521 or [email protected]. Letters may be edited for clarity, length, libel and mechan-ics and accepted or rejected at the editors’ discretion.

Students’ ability to attend schools is increasingly determined by their ability to pay for themACCEPTED**PENDING FINANCIAL AID

$14,44

3

THE COSTS OF COLLEGE

KSUKU

$8,36

4

$6,47

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ARKANSAS $42,30

0

YALE

EDITORIAL | 7

WANT TO GET YOURAD IN THE SENIOR ISSUE?

Interested in putting your ad in the senior is-sue? Not sure what the senior issue is? Not

aware that it’s the last and biggest issue of the year? Or that it’s, on average, one of the most read issues? Sick of rhetorical questions? Here’s what it’s all about.

Dr. Krawitz remains skeptical about the program’s po-tential for long-term success. Not only is the program still relatively young, Dr. Krawitz worries that it may slowly loses its effectiveness.

“A program over time will lose its novelty,” Dr. Krawitz said. “[They might be] good programs, but when kids are constantly exposed to the same program over and over, the opposite effect starts to take place.”

On top of that, the program comes with a heavy price tag — a one-year agreement costs almost $5,000, while a 4-year agreement is close to $16,000. Like Shawnee Mis-sion South, Dr. Krawitz is considering applying for a grant through the RCP, which pools the taxes from the county’s liquor sales to provide grants to local preventative agencies such as the United Way, AAA and Alateen.

“If I can’t get the money through grant organizations, then I feel at least it is important to initiate [the program] ourselves and then pursue as many opportunities for grant money possible,” Dr. Krawitz said. “I really think it’s need-ed. This is a tough topic.”

Dr. Krawitz is determined to see this program through after witnessing the shift over time in how teens approach alcohol. His own experiences with drinking as a teenager are a stark contrast to the the type of drinking that happens he sees among youth today. Growing up in New Jersey, Dr. Krawitz would go to parties to have fun with friends, not get drunk.

“On Saturday nights, we would be on the beach, and there’d be people who would bring beer, and people would drink, but I don’t remember people getting ‘stoned,’ or

drunk out of their mind,” Dr. Krawitz said. “Binge drinking wasn’t even a term I was familiar with.”

Today, binge drinking — 5 or more drinks for a male for 4 or more drinks for a female in a two hour setting — is be-come a national epidemic. According to the 2005 Monitor-ing the Future (MTF) study, 75 percent of 12th graders, 66 percent of 10th graders and about 40 percent of 8th grad-ers had consumed alcohol. On top of that, 11 percent of 8th graders, 22 percent of 10th graders and 29 percent of 12th graders had binge-drank in the past two weeks.

With East having, according to Dr. Krawitz, a “pretty ac-tive drug and alcohol student body,” he sees AlcoholEdu as the best available option to increase students’ alcohol awareness and cut down on underage drinking.

STORY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

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College

LISTSenior

COLUMNS

Senior

PROFILESClassBREAKDOWN

A look back

AT THE YEAR

8 | PROMO

INST

SENIORS

INSTAGRAM A PICTURE OF YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS ON YOUR LAST DAY AT SME AND TWEET IT TO @SME_Harbinger

It’s the s e c o n d overtime of the game, and the score is tied 9-9. The kicker locks

eyes with the goalie, each trying to psych the other out. The whistle cuts the tension like a blade, and the for-ward launches the ball into the lower right corner of the net. I go crazy with all the fans, but I’m not in the stands.

I’m on the bench.***

I’ve played in 110 degree weather, watching teammates faint from heat stroke. I’ve played in 10 degree weath-er, sloshing through snow and feel-ing like Frankenstein’s monster with numb, iron boots for legs. I’ve played for 11 coaches with four clubs in more than 1,000 soccer games. To say I’d do anything for the game would be an un-derstatement.

My earliest memory of soccer was from when I was four years old. I re-member I had gone in for a tackle and had gotten a particularly nasty scrape on my knee. Although this was the equivalent of a concussion for most of my preschool teammates, I remember refusing the Disney princess Bandaid from my coach and insisting on staying in the game.

That attitude hasn’t changed in my 13 year soccer career; however, your playing time isn’t guaranteed like it is

in preschool. I’m an average player, but usually not a starter. I’m not the fastest or the strongest person on the field, and long runs are my seventh circle of hell. I’m not saying I’m some underdog or a weakling (I’ve dislocated one per-son’s shoulder and two people’s ankles, thank you very much). I’m just not the best.

But it doesn’t bother me. Nothing could pull me away from the smell of freshly-cut fields, the anticipation right before kick-off and the satisfac-tion of destroying the opposing team. But there are some things you see from the sidelines that you can’t see from the field.

For one thing, while I was picking acres worth of grass and watching my game in my younger years, I got a bet-ter sense of how the game really works. If you figure that I have watched around 60,000 hours of soccer, it’s safe to say I have a pretty firm grasp on what is expected for every aspect of the game. This made it easier to recognize every opportunity during the game, making the most of my play.

Most professional soccer players will only have control of the ball for less than five minutes of every 90 minute game. So when you’re a high schooler playing maybe half of an 80 minute game, it’s even tougher to prove your-self in the time allotted. That’s how I learned that you have to take advan-tage of every chance you have on the field. It may be for two minutes or 10 minutes, but you have to leave every-

thing you’ve got on the field every time you’re out there.

This is especially true if you have a coach who thinks he’s training the next Messi. At some point in their careers, these coaches decided that channeling their professional dreams through pre-pubescent teenagers was a good idea, so they started coaching soccer. Most aren’t willing to face the facts that most fifth graders aren’t getting up for 8 a.m. games on a Saturday to be verbally abused by their coach while watching the “stars in training” for an hour, but would rather play a game they love and enjoy with their friends. For most de-veloping kids, especially teenage girls, excessive criticism and punishment doesn’t have good results. I know my already overly-emotional, freshman self got severe confidence issues from such a coach.

It’s a big reason why I always look forward to high school season. I’m thankful that my coaches in high school have upstanding character as well as soccer skills. The coaches are impartial and play their players based on work ethic and success. It’s in this environ-ment that my skills have improved and excelled, with encouragement and con-structive criticism and actual coaching.

So as I realize that I can count the days left in the spring season on two hands, I am more determined than ever to keep sprinting faster and shooting harder. Whether I’m screaming for the cross or cheering from the side, one thing’s for sure: I’ll see you at the game.

OPINION | 9

FROM

photo by Emma Robson

all photos courtesy mctcampus.com

Second-string soccer player learns lessons on the bench

THESIDELINES

an opinion ofERIN REILLY

STARTING OUT SMALLA look at professional athletes who worked to earn their place

Jeremy Lin, starting point gaurd for the New York Knicks, couldn’t even get a basketball scholarship in college.

NBA Hall-of-Fame star Michael Jordan only made JV his freshman year in high school.

The U.S. Olympic hockey team started out a bunch of misfits, then went on to beat the USSR team against all odds in 1980.

When one is asked about an opinion of Bon Iver, one must always shrug and reply with the line, “I just wish he’d stuck with his roots. Justin Vernon, I mean.”

1.Before trying out a new band, one must always check the band’s rating on Pitchfork. Arcade Fire’s “Funeral” got a 9.7 —It passes the test. 2.

TIPS TO BE HIP

Now, I wouldn’t say that my body is fueled solely by American Spirits and Americanos from Broadway Café in Westport, but I wouldn’t deny the fact, either. Often times I find myself sitting on a bench outside of the café, convers-ing in depth with self-proclaimed “fellow literary critics” on Bukowski’s transcendent prose or Vonnegut’s misanthropic undertones in “Cat’s Cradle.” When I pull out my unpub-lished manuscript by J.D. Salinger, I really turn heads — it’s disgusting, these people’s obvious admiration and longing to be in my place. “He was a good family friend,” I tell them, rolling my eyes at their tongues lolling out of their mouths and their wagging tails sprouting out of the seat of their pants.

If, by mistake, a page of one of my wholesale Moleskine notebooks is exposed on my lap and is read by one of these dogs, I am bombarded with compliments. “How old are you?” they ask me. “When did you come up with the con-cept for a second-century slave overthrowing the bourgeois of that time to publish an incitement for worldwide revolu-tion?”

I will say it now — I reject like the taste of meat in my mouth all claims that my prose is akin to Kerouac’s. It is, simply put, better.

Sitting on these benches, my lit cigarette looks like a quill in my right hand. Broadway frequenters have come to call me “The Bard,” shaming both me and themselves. The dogs ask me to “bum a cig,” as if one of my metaphorical quills will somehow help get their Beatnik-copped manuscripts published. Please. I can see right through their “worldly” facades, can see the Billboard-Top-100-listening skeletons inside of them, whose only aspiration is to be spit on by an inebriated Drake in a sold-out Sprint Center show down-town. I mean, Drake? Please.

Music is one of those things that I have come to think about less and less over time. I can’t risk revealing the art-ists I do listen to, as my writing their band names down for the public eye would squash any chance I might have of ever listening to them again. I can tell you that when Spike

Jonze called me up to inform me that he was featuring Ar-cade Fire’s “Wake Up” in the trailers for his film adaptation of “Where The Wild Things Are,” the Canadian buzzband became D2M (or, in layman’s terms, dead to me). I shortly thereafter took to tuning my car radio to white noise on an AM channel — I bet no one is listening to this, I thought. A Grammy last year? Dead. To. Me. I would’ve snapped my first-edition copy of “Funeral” in half again if I had the chance. I was a level above, am a level above, but you don’t hear me bragging about it.

No offense, but I don’t think there has been or ever will be a baby born with such pristine bone structure as my own. When I was laying in my redwood crib, not but two feet tall, my parents’ good friend Wes (or as most of you know him, Wes Anderson) saw my shining face smiling up at him and halted production on “The Royal Tenenbaums,” for, I kid you not, two weeks, trying to convince his team to wait 20 years until I was old enough to play Margot Tenenbaum. Even at the tender age of nine months, I knew how to turn down a bad offer — and did so, with what my parents docu-mented on VHS as “Baby’s First Eye-Roll.”

Around the time of my 12th birthday, I found myself in an unassuming gas station in The-Middle-of-Nowhere, Wis-consin. As I leafed through the racks of ironic souvenirs in the back, a man that the world has come to know as “Bawn Eye-vuhr” (ahem, it’s Justin Vernon) strolled through the door, slouching and brooding in the manner that I’ve come to know so well in the past six years. We struck up a con-versation, as I had recognized him as the face of Volcano Choir, a project he had posted on a Myspace music page, and he sullenly told me he was currently recording a new album out in the woods. Some of you may know this album as “For Emma, Forever Ago,” but you may not know the part I played in its production. I’ve tried to deny the claims of the media that I am Justin’s muse and the sole influence on “For Emma,” but lying to the general public has just become too tiring. Sadly, I haven’t spoken to Justin since his appearance at the God-Awful Grammys last year and I don’t plan on do-

ing so any time soon.Before that, when I was on my Buddhism kick in the fifth

grade, I sold all of my worldly possessions and moved out of my parents’ home in Fairway, choosing to rent out a single-room loft in the Crossroads district when it was still in its prime. The only items in the flat were my original Salvador Dali pieces that I had collected as gifts from foreign museum curators, who thought that my own street art should be pre-served and hung in their institutions and told me so. Often. “You’re the original Banksy,” they cooed in their respective tongues, hoping I would reveal the secrets of my urban art trade. As if.

After months spent traveling abroad, I would return to my loft for short periods of time to litter the floor and walls with these gifts and focus on my art. I slept on the finished hardwoods, ate organic berries from a neighbor’s unattend-ed garden and had a single exposed light bulb hanging from my ceiling by which to scribe my eventually-Pulitzer-prize-winning works. I sold the place just last year, actually, when I read about the Zuccotti Park protests in my AdBusters subscription and set up a tent outside the Liberty Memorial. What can I say? Activism comes as naturally as breathing to someone like me. I wonder how my low-life classmates feel when they wake up in their Pottery Barn bed frames every morning and eat a meal prepared by their loving mother or father, I think every time I wake up in a damp sleeping bag. They must have nothing to live for.

You might’ve seen me in one of those YouTube (or Boob-Tube, as I have come to call it since its sell-out to Google in 2006) videos documenting PETA protestors who destroy furs at runway shows. When I was 14, I once threw a full liter of stage blood onto Jessica Stam’s fox-fur parka during New York Fashion Week. After the show was over and she had washed the congealed red starch out of her hair, she approached me to tell me that she admired my nerve and asked me out for drinks. I politely declined – “I don’t frater-nize with murderers,” is what I said. You should’ve seen her face. Besides, fur is so 2004.

After years of being labeled a “hipster,” staffer presents a satirical take on what being painfully hip really looks like

A

HIPSTERSPEAKS OUT

an opinion of Kat Buchanan | photo by Grant Kendall

When talking about film, one must never ut-ter “movie” or “theater.” And one also must be peeved that “A Separa-tion” didn’t get best picture.

3.10| OPINION

OPINION | 11

In today’s college admissions game, the path to admission is just that — a game. To get into selective colleges, kids have to learn to play. The rules vary, but the goals of the game are almost always the same. Stack up on extracurriculars. Do community service. Acquire as many distinctions and awards as possible. Do whatever it takes to impress col-leges, because your ticket to admission is no longer just your academic transcript — it’s your resume.

This game may seem simple enough for some kids, but for me, it presents a problem. Because as much as I want to go to a great col-lege, I don’t want to play to get in. I don’t want to suck up to colleges who I don’t believe truly have my best interest at heart. I don’t want to tailor my high school experience to what I think colleges want. And if this means that I don’t get into top schools, then so be it. But

that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. I’m just going to try my way, not theirs.

Throughout my years in high school, I have seen kids who seem to be willing to do anything to get into the right schools. Resume padding is actually quite common at East. In a sur-vey of 153 students, 41 per-cent admitted to padding their resumes with things they didn’t care about, while only 31 percent be-lieved that it was wrong to do so.

To those 31 percent, let me tell you that there is a problem with this type of resume building: it’s disingenuous. Students who play the game pres-ent false versions of them-selves to colleges. You’ve probably heard these kids justify their involvement in activities by saying, “I’m just doing this because it’ll look good on my resume.” Resume stuffers like these lose integrity by doing what they think colleges want them to do and not what they want to do.

This disgusts and sad-dens me, but I don’t judge these students; I judge the colleges who hold them to expectations that are too high for teenagers, even highly talented, highly mo-tivated ones. A study from UC Irvine found that the average age of emotional maturity is 22. Apparently other colleges never read this, because it seems that most of the top schools for-get that their prospective students are still teens, not emotionally mature adults. Kids at our age are more inconsistent and emotion-ally unstable than they will ever be, and top schools

expect them to transcend the turbulence of their development. I mean, lighten up, we’re still kids, not presidential candidates.

Another reason I don’t judge the students who play the resume game is because they’re just trying their best to reach their lofty goals, the ones they’ve been conditioned to have by external influences. The society we live in has exacerbated the problem of admissions competition by evaluating success in relative terms. The kids who so desperately endeavor to get into top colleges often do so because they believe admission to the best schools of-ficially validates their superiority over other students. This equation of success with status rather than happiness lies at the heart of the problem.

If students who play the resume game real-ized that they don’t need to be comparatively

more successful than others to be happy, then more of them would be fine “set-tling” for state schools, which actually offer educations that can be just as good as those offered by top private schools. What many students who play the game fail to realize is that the true value of a college education is determined by what a student puts into it, not where it comes from.

But because many kids my age don’t realize this, or just don’t agree, they con-tinue to play the game. They cut corners in school, they dip their feet in activities here and there without ever really com-mitting, they cheat and they give effort only towards their resume. This grow-ing behavioral trend has diminished the educational quality of high school. When kids and parents only care about their grades and the end result, they take shortcuts and often fail to benefit from the real purpose of education: learn-ing. In the modern high school, where getting into the right college rather than learning is the end goal for students, knowledge becomes lost in translation.

After considering all of this, I came to a conclusion that I have stuck with ever since: I will do the things I love. When I apply to colleges next fall, I will pres-ent to them the true me, not some fake type-A teenage powerhouse. If the best me isn’t enough for the schools I want to go to, then so be it. After all, if I have to change who I am in order to go to a school, then I’m probably not meant to go there (nor do I want to).

Since I stumbled upon this revelation, I’ve done things differently. I’ve poured my heart into journalism. I started “The Breakfast Club,” a club that combines my love of people with my passion for writing in an effort to help break down social barriers and promote social toler-ance. I’ve invested myself in classes to learn, not to get A’s (although that’s an added bonus). Above all, I’ve stopped doing things just to impress colleges. By doing what I love and doing it to the best of my abilities, I’ve learned to play the game by my rules, and not theirs.

You should too. I understand that not all of you can. Financial considerations, among others, force many students to play the game. But if you aren’t burdened by a less-than-stellar track record or the need to get scholarships, then I ask this of you: just consider whether admission is really worth it.

If a school expects you to be in five AP classes, four clubs and three sports, and you’re bending over backwards to meet their expectations, then do you really want to go there? Do you belong there?

After all, college should be about hav-ing fun as getting a good preparation for the future. But so should high school. So go out, have fun, be yourself, do what you want to do. And if you can’t get into your dream school by being you, then remember: it’s not the end of the world.

It’s just the beginning of one that might just be better.

*a poll of 153 SM East students

How important is college in picking clubs, honors classes, sports, etc?

Not important

Very Important

Important

Somewhat important

10 %21 %

33 %

36 %

41%pad their resume with things they don’t care about

31%think it’s unethical or wrong to do so

Padding your resume to put on a show for colleges means trading integrity for success

written by Matt Hanson | photo by Jake Crandall

A PAWN INTHE GAME

HOWLANCERS

PLAY THE

GAMECOLLEGE ADMISSIONS

THESECRET

LIFEOF THE BEEKEEPER

Nash Reimer doesn’t flinch at the question, “What are you going to study in college?” like most of his junior class-mates. Instead, he answers matter-of-factly that he wants to be an engineer. It seems to make sense; he’s an intelligent member of the IB program, the focused pitcher for the base-ball team and the robotics team leader. It also makes sense because over the past five years, he’s had the opportunity to collect inspiration and knowledge from the best engineers in the business.

All he has to do is walk outside to his backyard and pry the lid off his beehive.

* * *Seven years ago, Nash’s dad, James, walked into his usu-

al barbershop for his usual cut. As he stared in the mirror, a glass jar in the bottom right corner caught his attention. It was a standard mason jar, sitting on his table at his barber’s station, filled to the brim with honey. James, having recent-ly read about and researched the impressive life of honey-bees, asked his barber where the honey came from. What he learned was this: he was a newly bred beekeeper, thanks to the help of the accomplished and retired WWII veteran beekeeper down the street from the barbershop. The barber told James to go see him. After his cut, James did just that.

“It just seemed so natural,” James said.With the advice and connections of his new beekeep-

ing friend, James’s hobby was finally taking flight. He pur-chased three hive building kits and 30,000 bees from his supplier, Fischer Bee Supplies. Nash helped from the very beginning. The two began by building the hives, a stacked series of four boxes with raised hexagons on the plastic walls — a blueprint for the bees to start building their comb off of. The bees came all the way from California in three three-pound boxes, each filled with 10,000 bees and one queen bee in a separate container.

“I had them all in my minivan and it was pretty loud,” James said. “They don’t like being in the car.”

Nash became interested in the bees as soon as his dad brought them home. He became the beekeeping appren-tice of his father: he helped him check on the hives, while observing the bees and reading Beekeeping for Dummies — basically absorbing all the information he could. He was immediately fascinated by their organized structure and dedicated work ethic.

“Being able to see these amazing engineers at work in nature is amazing. They are so efficient, like perfect,” Nash said

He sees them as more than just pests that swarm the

courtyard trash cans and make freshman girls squeal. Even though he’s been stung five or six times, he agrees with his dad that their hobby as well as bees are under appreciated.

“Because there are a lot of misconceptions, I think peo-ple are a little afraid of it,” James said.

But listen to Nash and his dad talk about the dynamics of the hive and beekeeping for just five minutes, and you’ll understand what all the buzz is about.

* * *“Beekeeping is really just being guardians,” James said. According to the James, the phrase “busy as a bee” is val-

id one — but beekeepers do their fair share of work as well.The first things they do is transfer the bees to the hives.

The boxes of bees the Reimers purchase last for years on end, as the queen bee reproduces at a rate of laying 1,500 larvae a day, in her prime, to keep the hive thriving. The boxes include a corked smaller box inside that contains the queen bee, or the “VIP” bee as Nash describes her. They replace the cork with a small marshmallow that the worker bees eat through as a process of releasing and getting ac-quainted with their queen.

Next, all of the bees get dumped into the hive. They’re so anxious to be with the queen that they “pour out like water,” though the action isn’t quite as safe. Thus, the hive is born, and the intricate life of bees begins.

Bees are hard workers from birth which is Nash’s fa-vorite quality about them. They spend the first two weeks of their lives as nursery bees, cleaning out the comb they were born in so it can be used again. Next, they work as hive bees. They meet the forager bees, the ones that go out and get the nectar and honey, to transfer and process what they brought back and turn it into fresh honey. In the final stage of their life, bees act as foragers. Foragers travel up to six miles in any direction, make six to eight trips a day and have to make two million flower visits to produce one pound of honey.

Foragers also perform what beekeepers call a “waggle dance”, where they fly and spin in circles to describe where resources or enemies are in relationship to the sun.

In total, the Reimers have eight hives; one in their back-yard, two in Liberty, two in Butler and three in eastern Kan-sas City. They look for families who want to host bees on their land, which can be beneficial for farms.

A new hive has to be checked on once or twice a month, but an old one only needs a post-winter checkup to make sure the colony survived. One of Nash’s hives died out in his second year, which was disheartening. Thankfully, it was

followed by a successful year. “I was really excited when I was able to get a good har-

vest the next year,” Nash said. “It picked my spirits up.” The majority of the work for the beekeeper comes in

late August, which is honey harvesting time, Nash’s favorite part of his job. At its best, the hive can produce up to eighty pounds of honey for the beekeepers to take.

Nash and his dad go around to all the hives and take the top box, which is filled with extra honey that bees won’t need to survive the winter. They take it back to their base-ment and pick the wax caps that the bees put on to preserve the honey off of each comb, the most labor-intensive part of the job — Nash estimates there are 250 combs on each frame that are only half a centimeter wide. The empty comb is then saved to be put back into the hive so the bees can re-use it. Next, they put the frames in a centrifuge, which looks like a 15-gallon bucket with a handle on top. They spin it around for a few minutes until centrifugal force pushes all the honey out of the combs and into the container. Nash and his dad emphasise that it’s a sticky job.

“You’re up to your elbows in honey,” said James.Finally, they put it through a sifter to make sure there’s

no unwanted wax or pollen. And that’s that; the honey is made, pure and simple.

The Reimers enjoy their honey so much that they’ve re-placed all the sugar in their house with honey. It goes in their tea, on their toast and in their oatmeal. It even ends up on the table in quite a few Kansas City homes. Nash sells the bee’s honey for $5 per one pound tub to family and friends and gets more customers by word of mouth. It looks the same as the honey you’d buy at the store, but a bit darker since the bees made it from the pollen from purple lilies, a commonly used flower for pollination. According to Nash, it tastes the same as store-bought honey but has the local, organic appeal. Even though making money isn’t the point of the hobby, Nash was able to collect about $250 in profits last year. He recognizes that he’s essentially stealing the product he’s then selling, and he’s grateful for it and the bee’s hard work.

“You have to be thankful for whatever you get,” Nash said.

As for the future, Nash hopes to come home from col-lege to be able to check on his hives at the beginning of the season and later in the season to help with the harvest. It wouldn’t hurt for him to take a quick break from school to see the best engineers in the business at work, after all.

Junior Nash Reimer tends to two beehives and harvests and sells the honey his bees produce

written by Chloe Stradinger | photos by Grant Kendall

12 | FEATURES

Serbia is far from the normal stomping grounds for SME students studying abroad in AP European History teacher Michael Chaffee’s opinion, especially since most students are drawn to western Europe like Italy or France rather than central Europe.

For starters, Serbian isn’t exactly the most popular lan-guage course taken at Shawnee Mission Wonderful. Also, the country is brand new, just recently separated from Yu-goslavia and became its own country in 2003. And, most of all, Serbia is nearly 5,600 miles away from the United States.

Some students take trips to England to see the funny-looking guards with the big black hats, and ride on those double-decker buses. The Amigos program sends students to Central American countries to carry out service projects and live with host families. Serbia, on the other hand, isn’t the most commonly-visited country for foreign exchange students.

Ask Sophomore Lauren Brown why anyone would go to Serbia, and she’ll give you all the reasons in the world.

“Lots of people wouldn’t have Serbia on their bucket list to visit, but I’ve been researching it and it’s actually a really neat place,” Lauren said. “This is really nerdy but I think the architecture is really pretty; it’s a new city, but it’s older looking. Also, we’ll travel on trains to Hungary and back, and between the two is really gorgeous, with all the rolling hills you could imagine.”

Lauren’s interest in visiting central Europe was sparked the day Chaffee relayed a message he received in an email that day. The Shawnee Mission Social Studies Chair, who is also Lauren’s mother, Debbie Brown, sent him infor-mation on The Youth Leadership Program with Central Europe (YLPCE), who was sending a group of 52 students from across the country to Serbia and Hungary. Chaffee mentioned the program in passing, neither him nor Deb-bie expecting anyone to respond as strongly as Lauren did. Against both of their initial thoughts, Lauren went home that night begging her mother for more information.

“When [Lauren] came home and said ‘Mom, Mr. Chaffee

put this up on the bulletin board,’ and I’m just going ‘No way!’ First of all, I was like, of all the emails a teacher could open up, he puts out this one.”

YLPCE is a national program that works towards bring-ing together high school kids that possess leadership potential; their goal is to make ties with other countries through service projects. First, in late July, the American students will make their two-week trip to Serbia and Hun-gary to build leadership skills; quickly following, their Ser-bian coworkers will make the trip to the United States.

“I know [Lauren] will make the most of her experience in all of its aspects,” Chaffee said. “Working with a group of unfamiliar people; being away from home; coping with new and, perhaps, strange customs and languages; ap-preciating new vistas and villages and cities; being slightly changed by a new phase of her life.”

After spending hours finishing her application and completing four extensive essays over winter break, Lau-ren was “called back” to interview two of the YLPCE chairs, and was officially accepted nearly a month later. She will live in Serbia and Hungary for two weeks with a host fam-ily.

“I was extremely excited [when I got accepted] because all of my hard work paid off and that they had seen me as a good candidate for the program,” Lauren said. “That was basically a huge compliment because it was such a selec-tive process.”

One of the things that drew Lauren to YLPCE in the first place was her love for international relations and being ex-posed to new cultures. She plans to major in international relations in college and hopefully study abroad while doing so.

“I’ve always been interested in international relations and I’ve always thought that’d be a good career path for me,” Lauren said. “I’ve always been interested in languages and communicating with other people that aren’t necessar-ily like me. But I really haven’t had opportunities to use those skills with people from different countries.”

According to Debbie, one of Lauren’s biggest strengths

is adapting to new situations and communicating with people she doesn’t know well, both of which will come in handy on her trip to a whole other continent.

“I just like the whole idea of being some place that not very many people will get the opportunity to be in,” Lauren said. “Just being out of my element is something that most people would be nervous for but I’m excited to be chal-lenged in that area.”

Though Debbie is grateful and excited that Lauren is getting the opportunity to learn new cultures, languages and lifestyles, what she wants the most is for Lauren to gain a wide perspective.

“I really want her to learn about what the world is like outside of Kansas City, Prairie Village, or ‘Perfect Village’ that we have,” Debbie said. “We see everything through the eyes of the United States. I want her to see things through the eyes of another country.”

Despite all the benefits and the excitement from the trip this summer, there are a few negatives. In addition to the 18-hour flight she will have to sit through, Lauren will miss getting her favorite lemonade and waffle fries from Chik-Fil-A with her friends on the weekends. She’ll be leaving her group of close friends behind to have end-of-the-sum-mer parties and comparing their newly-received school schedules for common classes, both of which she will be missing out on. Also, in the back of her mind, she is wor-ried about making solid relationships with the people she will be working with.

“I’m hoping to build relationships with the people that I’m going with and that will have commonalities,” Lauren said. “I really hope that we as American teens represent our country well because I’m sure they have all these pre-determined opinions about what life in America’s like.”

But the anticipation outweighs her fears. In the end, Lauren believes this will be the experience of a lifetime.

“I’ll gain so much of a more globalized perspective and viewpoint, and I’ve always wanted that,” Brown said. “You don’t really gain that unless you go abroad and see these places. And I’m excited for that.”

written by Katie Knight | photos by Jake Crandall

FEATURES | 13

A

PERSPECTIVESophomore will spend her summer studying abroad in Serbia

NEW

In one corner of the room sits a pol-ished 2006 Porsche Cayman S resting on hydraulic lifts. In the other corner, se-nior Jonathan Granstaff wears earplugs and safety glasses as he stands over a buzz saw cutting support ribs out of alu-minum. Granstaff has spent nearly 90 hours here this past semester.

Granstaff worked to build a rear spoil-er. He is in his second year in the auto program at East. He has always enjoyed reading about cars and would consider working on them as a job if the opportu-nity arose. His idea to design and build a spoiler was something entirely new to East auto teacher Brian Gay.

“[No projects] have been aerody-namic like this,” Gay said. “This was the first that needed to be designed on [Computer Aided Design]. Usually they are more physically challenging, but this was more of a design problem. He almost could have decided on building an air-plane body and had similar problems, it just so happens that we put it on a race car.”

Granstaff built the rear spoiler to go on a Porsche Cayman S owned by a friend of Gay. He built it to help increase

the traction of the car. The spoiler does this by causing air to flow over the top of the car. It then pushes down on the spoil-er, which pushes the car into the track on curves, increasing speeds.

“On race cars, in general they have spoilers and just other aerodynamic parts that help them out on the racetrack to give them grip,” Granstaff said. “That is what you’re going for, as much grip as you can get with as little weight added so you can go into turns faster.”

The car started off as a standard Porsche Cayman S worth approximately $60,000. Last year, Gay had his begin-ning auto tech class strip the Porsche and rebuild it into a racing Porsche wor-thy of use in the interseries races — an American car series with car designs based off of historic racing Porsches. Af-ter two semesters of work from the auto tech class, the car’s value has risen to about $80,000.

“[The owner] would be allowed to use the car if he joined the interseries, al-though they would have to make a cou-ple little changes,” Gay said. “We built the car up with the idea that if he decides to go racing he has the set up all the mod-

ifications we do are good for that.”Gay suggested that Granstaff expand

off of what the auto tech class did last year when they changed the Porsche’s transmission, suspension and over-hauled the interior. Granstaff looked at Porsche interseries cars and their rear spoilers; this gave him the idea to design and build one.

“I went into CAD and drew it out,” Granstaff said. “It took about a week to figure out how to make it structurally sound because you don’t want it to fall off. Then I printed it off to scale on paper so I could print off all the pieces.”

Granstaff started off by cutting out all of the ribs from aluminum using a jew-elry saw. After all of the main pieces were cut out, he riveted them together with the help of Gay. He used about 300 rivets in total to attach the ribs to each other and to a piece of L channel aluminum, a bent piece of metal used for strength. The fi-nal step was to wrap the entire spoiler in a thin sheet of aluminum.

One of the main problems that Grans-taff ran into while building the spoiler was ensuring the structural stability. With speeds approaching 175 mph and

nearly 200 pounds of down force being applied at the most critical angle, the wing had to be built stiffer than expected.

“We didn’t really account for having to put in the L channel aluminum lining the entire wing,” Granstaff said. “He just told me we needed ribs but it turned out we also needed a lot of other support.”

According to Gay, all of the hard work paid off as he was able to take out the Porsche for a day a couple of weeks ago.

“With Jonathan’s spoiler it was just a little bit slower on the straight away,” Gay said. “But it was much more stable in the corners. On a racetrack, you are happy to give away a bit of straight away speed to make it up in all of the corners and it does a good job of that.”

Granstaff said it is also a possible ca-reer path. Next year he is attending the University of Kansas and is planning on majoring in mechanical engineering.

“I really enjoy doing stuff like that so if there is an opportunity I definitely will pursue it,” Granstaff said. “I like working with my hands and I love CAD, I don’t know what I’m planning on doing with my degree but I would like it to have something to do with cars.”

MADE TORACEHAND Senior designs and constructs a wing for Porsche race car

1. 2. 3.

written by Andrew McKittrick | photos by Jake Crandall & Andrew McKittrick

TRANSMISSIONSUSPENSION WEIGHTReplaced the transmission with a limited-slip transmis-sion to make the car come out of the corners faster.

Replaced the suspension with Race Coil Over suspension to increase corner speed.

Removed almost 450 Ibs of unnecessary material from the car. This improves the acceleration.

1. 2. 3.

WWW.SMEHARBINGER.NETFOR ADDITIONAL PHOTOS & AUDIO, VISIT

Official name: WING or SPOILERDesigned by SENIOR

JONATHAN GRANSTAFF

Granstaff designed the wing using AutoCAD Classic, screenshot below.

THE ‘FIN’QUICK DETAILS ABOUT

Computer design: 2 hoursPhysical construction: 85 hours Material: AluminumNumber of Rivets: 300

Other changes Autotech students made to the Porsche Cayman

14 | FEATURES

FEATURES | 15

It’s a constant game of who can make who smile larger when se-nior Emily Frye and junior Scott Slapper are together. He’ll sopho-morically tease her, pinch her leg and call her a brat. She’ll jokingly scoot away from him, eyes trans-fixed on his. When together, all the two see are each other.

The past 157 days have been filled with quintessential high school moments for the couple.

They went to WPA together, saw “Project X” and frequently run away to Crown Center or the Lib-erty Memorial to be by themselves. They go on walks after church, both listen to country and agree “Inception” was good but too hard

to follow.They bicker. She blames him for not answer-

ing the door the first time she met his family. He argues he was too busy playing Madden.

They talk about everything with each other. But there is one thing they don’t like talking about: The future.

Four months from now, Frye will be studying at Kansas State University. Slapper will be a high school senior, 124 miles away. Or in their terms, around 20 trips to Liberty Memorial from Frye’s house.

Next year is full of ambiguity and uncertainty for the couple, but

before they worry about any sepa-ration, they’ll have one last high school memory to make: Prom.

They’ll dance at Union Station together. Frye will be too ener-getic and all over the dance floor. Slapper will laugh and tease her about it. And throughout the night, they’ll try to forget about next year when Frye won’t be able to smell Slapper’s shirt when he comes back from making pizzas at work. Or how they won’t be competing in gingerbread house building com-petition with Frye’s family next De-cember.

And they’ll ignore statements about how this might be their last dance, together.

THE LAST DANCE

EMILY

Awritten by Chris Heady | photos by Hiba Akhtar

A look behind a few Prom couples, in 300 words

‘PROM’ISING NIGHT

SCOTT“It’s our last dance together so I want to make it memo-rable. I’m going to miss seeing her face to face everyday,” Slapper said.

and

6:30. Junior Parker Johnson has

no time to spare today. No time to hit the snooze three or four times. No time for an extra yo-gurt for breakfast. He has plans this morning.

6:40. Sophomore Annie Kuklen-

ski wakes up like she would on any Monday. Slowly. She crawls out of bed and begins her regu-lar routine. No need to rush to-day.

7:00.Johnson hops in his car and

rushes off to school, handmade poster in hand and trickery up his sleeve. She’s not going to know what hit her.

7:20.Kuklenski worries about

track practice on her way to school; her coaches told her it’d be a hard one today. She pon-ders how she will do her Alge-bra 2 assignment before sixth hour. Mondays are never her days.

7:25. Johnson prepares his sur-

prise for Kuklenski. He checks to see if his button-up is tucked in. If his hair is just right. The sign is readable. Everything’s set. He takes his place behind Senora Myers’ desk next to his accomplice, the one he calls “Maximo,” and the star of his “one act.”

“Do you know which one to dance to? Blonde curly hair. Sits at that desk.”

“Maximo,” really freshman

Maxx Lamb, nods his head, he understands.

7:40. Kuklenski walks in room

506 to find “Carlos,” the fake iguana they often joke about, siting on her desk. Next thing she knows, “Vamos a La Pla-ya,” a song she and Parker joke about, starts blaring from Se-nora Myers’ projector.

Maximo emerges, clapping. Dancing. Cartwheeling around the room.

Then Johnson emerges. Smile on his face. Sign in hand.

“I’m not as good of a dancer as Maximo, but will you go to Prom with me?”

Kuklenski responds with only a shocked look. A nod. And a hug.

THE JOKESTERS

“I asked her in a way that was kind of a mix of inside jokes thrown together. She was laughing pretty hard and seemed to enjoy Maximo’s dancing. We’re going to dance at Prom, but I don’t think anyone can dance as well as Maximo,” Johnson said.

ANNIEPARKERand

An orange heart drawn with window paint on the top-right corner of senior Calvin Handy’s Honda Accord lights up with each passing streetlight. The blar-ing of “Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare” by Matt & Kim shake blow-up flamingos in the packaging in the backseat, as he makes the routine voyage to his best friend, senior Lanie Leek’s house.

For Handy, it was never who he was going to ask to Senior Prom, but how.

He and Leek grew up together. Scraped knees in the creek behind Leek’s house playing tag. Spent days riding bikes up and down Ensley Lane.

It makes sense for them to go to Se-nior Prom. They went to their first high

school dance together -- why not finish the way they started?

Handy approaches Leek’s car with care, window paint and two inflatable flamingos in hand. He tip-toes around sticks and leaves, carefully hoisting himself onto her maroon Ford Escape, hoping not set off the motion sensor light above the garage.

They’ve gone on vacations to Colo-rado, run up and down hills in Law-rence at KU football games and gotten in trouble for playing with the hose when Handy’s mom told them not to. They’ll both head off to KU next year and take on college. Prom will be their final high school hurrah. Together.

“If these flamingos fall off her car, I’m going to freak,” Handy says, scoot-ing off the hood of Leek’s car.

The bright green paint on Leek’s windshield radiates in the dark night. He makes finishing touches, skitters to his car and bolts.

Ten minutes later, Leek gets home from swim practice. Walking up to her car, she reads the sign.

“Lanie: Will you Flamin-GO to Prom with me?”

-Calvin. She laughs. Of course, he didn’t even

need to ask.

THE LIFE LONG FRIENDS

CALVINand

“He has been my best friend since I was born and we went to our first and last dance together so it will be so fun and spe-cial,” Leek said.

LANIE

16 | SPREAD SPREAD | 17

Head Coach Shawn Hair describes this team as the most over achieving team he’s ever coached. With only two Varsity players returning, it seemed like it would be a grim year for the Lancers. However in the quarterfinals, seniors, Johnny Delgado and Charlie Ludding-ton worked together, both having career highs for scoring and were able to beat Olathe East by single digits for the second time in the final month of the season.

Just hours before game time, senior star quarterback Curran Darling was diagnosed with mono. The coaches had no choice but to put their faith in sophomore John Schrock; with three hours, a 15-minute bus ride and the most important game of his life to look forward to, they gave Schrock the keys to the Lancer offense.

Early in the second quarter, the Lanc-ers were down 16-0. Schrock responded by leading four Lancer scoring drives, giving the Lancers the advantage at 24-16. The team was no longer thinking about the loss of the senior star quarterback, because they had a new one on their hands, as well the lead.

With only minutes left, South ran the ball right over the left side of the center and walked easily into the endzone.

The entire field stopped as the referee blew his whistle and tossed his flag

to the ground. “Holding, on the offense. 10 yard penalty.

Repeat 3rd down.”East had another chance to make the

stop they needed to win the game. With the announcement, the South quarterback came rushing in with his own rendition of the “George Brett Pine Tar Incident”. Another 15 yards was taken away from the play. And just like that, it was 3rd and 25 from the 25 yard line with 11 seconds left. One more play for the win. As he took the snap, the South quarterback dropped back in the pocket, the pass went up and senior Marcus Webb knocked it down.

“This game is why we have rivalries,” Webb says. “It was the best way to finish my career against the Raiders.”

With the win came the rebirth of a long standing rivalry.

Olathe East had one of the best teams in state history. They were projected to win the Sunflower League championship by 60 points, later this season they won state. However, at League, the Lancer Swim and Dive team had other plans. According to then-freshman Corbin Barnds even on a down year for East Swimming the Lancers “swam perfectly” in this meet. They only won by one small point, but it was a huge upset victory.

According to senior Conner Schrock to win in high school golf your team has to be consistent. This is something that the Lancer Boys Golf team has seen a lot of. With two straight state championships, the Lancers have consistently beat their competition. Three years ago the Lancers went to the largest high school boys golf tournament west of the Mississippi River when each player golfed under par, some-thing nearly unheard of in high school golf. They also set a new tournament record.

This team was built on ugly basketball. Not because they were bad, but because they were scrappy and they made other teams stoop to their level. According to head bas-ketball coach Shawn Hair, this was how his team won games.

“We had a chance to win at the end of regulation, at the end of the first overtime and the second overtime, but we were not able to make shots,” Hair said.

This was a game in which nothing went right for the Lancers; a “roller coaster” as Hair describes it. A game where his Lancers were not able to convert in the final seconds when it counted.

“It really showed how raw energy isn’t always enough,” Hair said. “We played hard but at the end of the day we let a necessary win slip away from us.”

In the fourth quarter alone the Lancers missed seven free throws. Had they made them, they would’ve won the game. As the buzzer sounded with a score of 40-40 the Lancers were not happy.

“I just kept looking at the scoreboard and saying to myself ‘how in the world are we not winning this game’,” Senior guard Jackson Harter said.

Harter was the leading scorer for the game, racking up 20 points for the Lancers. With a final score of 64-64, both teams came close to doubling their scores from regula-tion.

This game could not have ended worse for the boys basketball team as they lost by two in the final overtime; however the “roller coaster ride” was enjoyed and will be remembered by all the fans.

The Lancer football team stunned SM Northwest in Chip Sherman’s first season as head coach. With a small lead that was about to be taken, Sherman called a timeout. He looked his players in the eyes and assured them they were better than Northwest. After the timeout, the Lancers stopped the Cougars on the goal line four straight times setting the tone for the “new” East football team under Sherman.

Sitting through an ugly basketball game with the score of a football game on a 90 foot court, the fans were still pumped up. With a score of 14-10 at halftime, head coach Shawn Hair describes this game as a game his Lancer team “had no business winning”. But through scrappy play and tough defense, the Lancers were able to pull off the upset with a score of 34-32.

George Brophy may have been listed at 6 foot 2 and 230 pounds, but just then-junior SM West quarterback Armani Williams would tell you that Brophy played much larger than that. And along with his Lancer teammates, he played with a huge heart. According to head football coach Chip Sher-man, Brophy along with the entire Lancer football team had the game of their lives against SM West in the fall of 2010.

“Everything seemed to fall into place at the right time for us,” Sherman said. “But that can be attributed to the hard work of our boys.”

This Lancer football team not only went down in history as the winningest team the program had ever seen, but also brought the Nut Cup back to East for the first time in 14 years.

This game was highlighted by touchdown passes and runs by senior quarterback John Schrock, an airborne touchdown by then-junior Adam Lowe and a quick field goal by senior Chase Woofter. But what really made this game so special was the way the Lancer defense took control of the Vikings. At half-time, although the Lancers only held a single touchdown lead over the Vikings, they had been able to hold them to only five passing yards and just over 80 rushing yards. With SM West being a offensively driven team, this was impressive.

The Lancers were able to hold with a 21-10 victory over their district rival securing their spot in the record books as the greatest team in school history.

To have a good track and field team, you have to have a field team. According to Head Track Coach Brie Meschke what wins state championships is having good field events. In the spring of 2011, the Lancers had that

going for them. Not only did shot put thrower Brian Williamson break a 50-year-old school record early in the season, but Kyle Engelken placed first at state.

Coming off of a state championship and an undefeated start to their season this Lancer team knew they could beat anyone. However the Rockhurst Hawklets seemed like a difficult task. The closest East has ever come to beating Rockhurst was last season when they lost 13-6. Rockhurst had never been beaten by a Kansas team, but the Lancers changed that winning 9-7.

With two minutes remaining, it was go-ing from bad to worse for the Lancer boys soccer team. They were losing 1-0 to the inferior SM West team. It was senior night and someone needed to step up and make a play for the Lancers. Senior Jake Seitz was that somebody. As Seitz dribbled in and out of defenders he saw a wide open junior Tyler Rathbun gliding toward the goal. Seitz sent a pass hurling past defenders, leading Rathbun for the easy score in the back cor-ner of the net. Just like that it was all tied up and the Lancers were going to overtime.

What makes this score by the Lancers even more impressive was that they were playing with a man down. Early in the sec-ond half a red card was awarded to senior

Nathan Ross. However this Lancer team did as they always did and kept on playing.

In high school soccer overtime is played with a “golden goal” style so whichever team scores first wins. With this in the back of their minds Jamie Kelly’s team took the field. The first three minutes were back and forth; neither team could get an effective shot on goal. Three and a half minutes in, junior Austin Wilcox played the ball ahead of Rathbun once again. The pass looked to be heading too far in front of him, but with a magical diving header he was able to find the back of the net and finish off the win for the Lancers. The term golden goal really was fitting for the Lancer team in this win.

Every year the East vs. Rockhurst basket-ball game redefines school spirit. It is a day circled on calendars year in and year out. This year the JV game took center stage. With stunning play and leadership by junior Con-ner McGannon, the Lancers were able to not only bring the students to their feet but were also able to pull off a close win igniting the atmosphere for tip off of the Varsity game.

ADAM’S 2012

DREAM TEAMLANCER

SCHROCK’S DEBUT AT SOUTH

SHANNON McGINLEY

REDEMPTION FROM WEST BOY’S SOCCER’S GOLDEN GOAL

BOYS BASKETBALL AT OLATHE EAST BOYS SWIMMING WINS LEAGUE BY 1 POINT BOYS GOLF DOMINATES AT HUTCHINSON THE GOALLINE PUSH TO THE PLAYOFFS SCRAPPY BUT STRONG THE YEAR OF THE TRACK EVENTS BOY’S LACROSSE DEFEATS THE DYNASTY JV BOY’S BASKETBALL THE REAL SHOW

THE FOUR-OT ROLLERCOASTER ‘10-‘11‘09-‘10

SEPTEMBER DECEMBER ‘09 OCTOBER ‘10 OCTOBER ‘11

COACH SHERMAN

written by Adam Lowe

Photo by Grant Heinlein Photo by Katie East Photo by Jake CrandallPhoto by Grant Heinlein

‘11-‘12‘08-‘09

SENIOR RELIVES HIS FAVORITE SPORTS MOMENTSDURING HIS HIGH SCHOOL CAREERMOMENTS IN TIME

GRANT MINICK

WWW.SMEHARBINGER.NETFOR MORE OF THE DREAM TEAM, GO TO

FOOTBALL’S O-LINEFive beefy seniors led the high

power scoring offense of the Lancers football team this year. While the skill players of the team battled injuries the entire season these seniors helped put the team on their back.

After recovering from a broken leg Mincik was the fastest leg on a state champion 200 and 400 free-style relay team. Grant Minick also placed second and third respective-ly in the 50 and 100 freestyle.

ZACH SCHNEIDERSchneider’s coming out party actually

wasn’t a party. It was a three month rave. No one game was better than the rest. If he wasn’t vacuuming up boards, he was stroking from deep. He was the most consistent player for the Lancers this year.

Not only did Sherman beat cancer while in the midst of the football season but he also helped lead his injury stricken team to a second round playoff berth for the first time in a decade. Sherman continued to battle cancer throughout the entire season only missing two practices.

Since her freshman year McGinley has been tearing it up on the Varsity stage. Her leadership on the basketball court and fastball on the softball diamond have set her apart from other Lady Lancer athletes.

‘08

16 | SPREAD SPREAD | 17

Head Coach Shawn Hair describes this team as the most over achieving team he’s ever coached. With only two Varsity players returning, it seemed like it would be a grim year for the Lancers. However in the quarterfinals, seniors, Johnny Delgado and Charlie Ludding-ton worked together, both having career highs for scoring and were able to beat Olathe East by single digits for the second time in the final month of the season.

Just hours before game time, senior star quarterback Curran Darling was diagnosed with mono. The coaches had no choice but to put their faith in sophomore John Schrock; with three hours, a 15-minute bus ride and the most important game of his life to look forward to, they gave Schrock the keys to the Lancer offense.

Early in the second quarter, the Lanc-ers were down 16-0. Schrock responded by leading four Lancer scoring drives, giving the Lancers the advantage at 24-16. The team was no longer thinking about the loss of the senior star quarterback, because they had a new one on their hands, as well the lead.

With only minutes left, South ran the ball right over the left side of the center and walked easily into the endzone.

The entire field stopped as the referee blew his whistle and tossed his flag

to the ground. “Holding, on the offense. 10 yard penalty.

Repeat 3rd down.”East had another chance to make the

stop they needed to win the game. With the announcement, the South quarterback came rushing in with his own rendition of the “George Brett Pine Tar Incident”. Another 15 yards was taken away from the play. And just like that, it was 3rd and 25 from the 25 yard line with 11 seconds left. One more play for the win. As he took the snap, the South quarterback dropped back in the pocket, the pass went up and senior Marcus Webb knocked it down.

“This game is why we have rivalries,” Webb says. “It was the best way to finish my career against the Raiders.”

With the win came the rebirth of a long standing rivalry.

Olathe East had one of the best teams in state history. They were projected to win the Sunflower League championship by 60 points, later this season they won state. However, at League, the Lancer Swim and Dive team had other plans. According to then-freshman Corbin Barnds even on a down year for East Swimming the Lancers “swam perfectly” in this meet. They only won by one small point, but it was a huge upset victory.

According to senior Conner Schrock to win in high school golf your team has to be consistent. This is something that the Lancer Boys Golf team has seen a lot of. With two straight state championships, the Lancers have consistently beat their competition. Three years ago the Lancers went to the largest high school boys golf tournament west of the Mississippi River when each player golfed under par, some-thing nearly unheard of in high school golf. They also set a new tournament record.

This team was built on ugly basketball. Not because they were bad, but because they were scrappy and they made other teams stoop to their level. According to head bas-ketball coach Shawn Hair, this was how his team won games.

“We had a chance to win at the end of regulation, at the end of the first overtime and the second overtime, but we were not able to make shots,” Hair said.

This was a game in which nothing went right for the Lancers; a “roller coaster” as Hair describes it. A game where his Lancers were not able to convert in the final seconds when it counted.

“It really showed how raw energy isn’t always enough,” Hair said. “We played hard but at the end of the day we let a necessary win slip away from us.”

In the fourth quarter alone the Lancers missed seven free throws. Had they made them, they would’ve won the game. As the buzzer sounded with a score of 40-40 the Lancers were not happy.

“I just kept looking at the scoreboard and saying to myself ‘how in the world are we not winning this game’,” Senior guard Jackson Harter said.

Harter was the leading scorer for the game, racking up 20 points for the Lancers. With a final score of 64-64, both teams came close to doubling their scores from regula-tion.

This game could not have ended worse for the boys basketball team as they lost by two in the final overtime; however the “roller coaster ride” was enjoyed and will be remembered by all the fans.

The Lancer football team stunned SM Northwest in Chip Sherman’s first season as head coach. With a small lead that was about to be taken, Sherman called a timeout. He looked his players in the eyes and assured them they were better than Northwest. After the timeout, the Lancers stopped the Cougars on the goal line four straight times setting the tone for the “new” East football team under Sherman.

Sitting through an ugly basketball game with the score of a football game on a 90 foot court, the fans were still pumped up. With a score of 14-10 at halftime, head coach Shawn Hair describes this game as a game his Lancer team “had no business winning”. But through scrappy play and tough defense, the Lancers were able to pull off the upset with a score of 34-32.

George Brophy may have been listed at 6 foot 2 and 230 pounds, but just then-junior SM West quarterback Armani Williams would tell you that Brophy played much larger than that. And along with his Lancer teammates, he played with a huge heart. According to head football coach Chip Sher-man, Brophy along with the entire Lancer football team had the game of their lives against SM West in the fall of 2010.

“Everything seemed to fall into place at the right time for us,” Sherman said. “But that can be attributed to the hard work of our boys.”

This Lancer football team not only went down in history as the winningest team the program had ever seen, but also brought the Nut Cup back to East for the first time in 14 years.

This game was highlighted by touchdown passes and runs by senior quarterback John Schrock, an airborne touchdown by then-junior Adam Lowe and a quick field goal by senior Chase Woofter. But what really made this game so special was the way the Lancer defense took control of the Vikings. At half-time, although the Lancers only held a single touchdown lead over the Vikings, they had been able to hold them to only five passing yards and just over 80 rushing yards. With SM West being a offensively driven team, this was impressive.

The Lancers were able to hold with a 21-10 victory over their district rival securing their spot in the record books as the greatest team in school history.

To have a good track and field team, you have to have a field team. According to Head Track Coach Brie Meschke what wins state championships is having good field events. In the spring of 2011, the Lancers had that

going for them. Not only did shot put thrower Brian Williamson break a 50-year-old school record early in the season, but Kyle Engelken placed first at state.

Coming off of a state championship and an undefeated start to their season this Lancer team knew they could beat anyone. However the Rockhurst Hawklets seemed like a difficult task. The closest East has ever come to beating Rockhurst was last season when they lost 13-6. Rockhurst had never been beaten by a Kansas team, but the Lancers changed that winning 9-7.

With two minutes remaining, it was go-ing from bad to worse for the Lancer boys soccer team. They were losing 1-0 to the inferior SM West team. It was senior night and someone needed to step up and make a play for the Lancers. Senior Jake Seitz was that somebody. As Seitz dribbled in and out of defenders he saw a wide open junior Tyler Rathbun gliding toward the goal. Seitz sent a pass hurling past defenders, leading Rathbun for the easy score in the back cor-ner of the net. Just like that it was all tied up and the Lancers were going to overtime.

What makes this score by the Lancers even more impressive was that they were playing with a man down. Early in the sec-ond half a red card was awarded to senior

Nathan Ross. However this Lancer team did as they always did and kept on playing.

In high school soccer overtime is played with a “golden goal” style so whichever team scores first wins. With this in the back of their minds Jamie Kelly’s team took the field. The first three minutes were back and forth; neither team could get an effective shot on goal. Three and a half minutes in, junior Austin Wilcox played the ball ahead of Rathbun once again. The pass looked to be heading too far in front of him, but with a magical diving header he was able to find the back of the net and finish off the win for the Lancers. The term golden goal really was fitting for the Lancer team in this win.

Every year the East vs. Rockhurst basket-ball game redefines school spirit. It is a day circled on calendars year in and year out. This year the JV game took center stage. With stunning play and leadership by junior Con-ner McGannon, the Lancers were able to not only bring the students to their feet but were also able to pull off a close win igniting the atmosphere for tip off of the Varsity game.

ADAM’S 2012

DREAM TEAMLANCER

SCHROCK’S DEBUT AT SOUTH

SHANNON McGINLEY

REDEMPTION FROM WEST BOY’S SOCCER’S GOLDEN GOAL

BOYS BASKETBALL AT OLATHE EAST BOYS SWIMMING WINS LEAGUE BY 1 POINT BOYS GOLF DOMINATES AT HUTCHINSON THE GOALLINE PUSH TO THE PLAYOFFS SCRAPPY BUT STRONG THE YEAR OF THE TRACK EVENTS BOY’S LACROSSE DEFEATS THE DYNASTY JV BOY’S BASKETBALL THE REAL SHOW

THE FOUR-OT ROLLERCOASTER ‘10-‘11‘09-‘10

SEPTEMBER DECEMBER ‘09 OCTOBER ‘10 OCTOBER ‘11

COACH SHERMAN

written by Adam Lowe

Photo by Grant Heinlein Photo by Katie East Photo by Jake CrandallPhoto by Grant Heinlein

‘11-‘12‘08-‘09

SENIOR RELIVES HIS FAVORITE SPORTS MOMENTSDURING HIS HIGH SCHOOL CAREERMOMENTS IN TIME

GRANT MINICK

WWW.SMEHARBINGER.NETFOR MORE OF THE DREAM TEAM, GO TO

FOOTBALL’S O-LINEFive beefy seniors led the high

power scoring offense of the Lancers football team this year. While the skill players of the team battled injuries the entire season these seniors helped put the team on their back.

After recovering from a broken leg Mincik was the fastest leg on a state champion 200 and 400 free-style relay team. Grant Minick also placed second and third respective-ly in the 50 and 100 freestyle.

ZACH SCHNEIDERSchneider’s coming out party actually

wasn’t a party. It was a three month rave. No one game was better than the rest. If he wasn’t vacuuming up boards, he was stroking from deep. He was the most consistent player for the Lancers this year.

Not only did Sherman beat cancer while in the midst of the football season but he also helped lead his injury stricken team to a second round playoff berth for the first time in a decade. Sherman continued to battle cancer throughout the entire season only missing two practices.

Since her freshman year McGinley has been tearing it up on the Varsity stage. Her leadership on the basketball court and fastball on the softball diamond have set her apart from other Lady Lancer athletes.

‘08

written by Julia Poe | photo by McKenzie Swanson

It’s nearing 1 a.m. on a Thursday morning and the lights are still on in the Fox kitchen. Sophomore Sarah Fox is bent over the coun-ter, zeroed in on the work in front of her. Her friends often share complaints with her of overworked nights full of flashcards, essays and textbooks, but homework isn’t the rea-son Sarah’s still up tonight. Sarah is on her feet mixing batter, preparing icing and pack-ing dozens of cake pops in plastic wrapping to be delivered to one of her many custom-ers. Although she sometimes misses sleep or an episode of “Glee” in order to bake, Sarah finds enjoyment even in the toughest parts of her work.

“There are some nights where I’m up un-til one or two or three in the morning,” Sarah said. “I’m basically just motivating myself with the thought of sleep, but I also know that it’s to-tally worth it. I enjoy the baking, and I’m gon-na make people happy with what I’m doing.”

For the last thirteen months, Sarah has been the sole owner, manager and employee of her business, Great ExpeCAKEtions. The sophomore caters cake pops - a treat consist-ing of a ball of cake on a stick - to local clients and events. While juggling drill team and tack-ling honors classes, Sarah devotes hours each week to filling two to three orders for dozens of the immaculately decorated treats. Sarah’s business has already gained local popularity, garnering orders that range from a few pops for a friend to an order of 900 for the Royals’ 2012 home opener on April 13.

Sarah first heard of cake pops from a fami-ly friend in St. Louis who suggested that Sarah and her mom try out the new recipe. Since she had always loved to bake, Sarah thought that it would be fun to experiment and make sev-eral dozen pink and white pops for her brother Billy’s 2011 Valentine’s Day party at Prairie El-ementary School.

Sarah’s cake pops caught the attention of Jill Machovsky, a mother at the party, who also owns Social Suppers, a catering business in Corinth Square. Machovsky offered to sell Sarah’s treats at her store. This gave Sarah and her family the idea that her cake pops could become something more than a hobby.

“I’ve always wanted to find new ways to make money, other than just baby sitting,” Sarah said. “[Machovsky] said that it would be a good way to make money, and then we got such good reactions that we decided to make it a real business and get an LLC [Limited Li-ability Company].”

The family decided to create an LLC for Sarah’s business since their family kitchen didn’t meet the necessary requirements to ca-ter through Social Suppers. The LLC provides legal benefits and protection to the Fox family without the complications of incorporating. Sarah’s mother, Sybbie Fox, described the cha-otic process of attaining the LLC and acquir-ing inventory as a “whirlwind.” After several weeks of preparation, Sarah was ready to start working on orders.

Business was very slow at first, with only a few orders trickling in a month. In the summer of 2011, however, opportunity struck. Kansas City Star writer James Fussell was writing about the newfound popularity of cake pops and wanted to feature Sarah’s business in the article.

“The article in the Star really got the busi-ness going,” Sarah said. “My friends and fam-ily thought it was cool, obviously. After that people kinda knew who I was and I began get-ting more and more clients.”

An increase in orders was the beginning of a time-management struggle for Sarah between baking, school and dance. On aver-age, she will put in 13 hours a week at Nallia School of Dance, Diamond Dance Academy and Jody Phillips Dance Company. She often spends the half hour breaks and car rides be-tween classes bent over her laptop and text-books in the passenger seat of her mom’s car. Sarah’s mom takes her from class to class and also stays up late to help her daughter finish orders. Although late nights can be difficult, Sarah finds a way to enjoy baking and creating new, unique designs for each cake pop -- even at 1 a.m.

“Those nights are just crazy,” Sybbie said. “Sometimes I ask her if she’s doing too much, but she’s always like ‘mom, don’t worry, I can handle this’ and just keeps on baking.”

To create each treat, Sarah must first crum-ble baked cake, mix it with frosting and mold the crumbs into balls. The balls are then fro-zen solid and dipped in different candy and chocolate melts. The last step is the most time

consuming: decorations. Each of Sarah’s cake pops are decorated with a unique pattern of swirls, polka dots and sprinkles. No two look alike.

Filling a typical order of one or two dozen cake pops can take anywhere from one to two hours -- an order for 180 extravagant cake pops for a wedding took three days. Although it’s time consuming, Sarah loves the baking so much that turning down an order when she’s busy is very difficult.

“There’s some times when I just have to say no to an order because of time,” Sarah said. “Around dance team tryouts, I don’t do any or-ders, and it’s the same for finals. But usually, if I have a big order and a big test or something at the same time, it’s stressful, but we make it work.”

As if balancing time wasn’t a big enough challenge, Sarah faces another challenge: she and her brother both suffer from celiac disease, a condition that makes the siblings dangerously allergic to gluten. Unable to taste test any of her own recipes, Sarah relies com-pletely on clients, family and friends for input on different flavors and icings. Sophomore Ali Manske is one of many friends who enjoyed taste testing Sarah’s cake pops in the past.

“I love them so much,” Manske said. “They’re all different -- I’ve never seen a single one that looks the same. And they taste really good too.”

Sarah’s main concern when baking is to make sure that she uses different cooking utensils for gluten and non-gluten foods, and to wash her hands to avoid a reaction. She doesn’t mind that she can’t eat her own treats; instead, she takes joy in making art out of bat-ter and chocolate and in providing for others.

“Sarah’s never been the type of kid to com-plain about [her allergy] or just decide to eat [gluten] anyways,” Sybbie said. “I just think Sarah gets a kick out of making other people happy, seeing them look at her work and knowing that they enjoyed it.”

As a sophomore, Sarah’s goals for the fu-ture aren’t completely set in stone. Sarah says that she probably won’t be able to continue catering in college because she won’t have a properly-equipped kitchen in her dorm. How-ever, the adventure of creating and managing Great ExpeCAKEtions has interested her in a future in business. She is uncertain of what the future holds for her fledgling business, however, Sarah is focusing on enjoying the success she has now.

“I’m not sure what I’ll do with it in college and beyond,” Sarah said. “But I love [my busi-ness] and already I’ve learned so much more than I could have at a business class at school. I’m so glad I decided to stick with it.”

SARAH’SORDERS OVER THE YEARS

180

CAKE POPS FOR A WEDDING THIS PAST

SUMMER

40-50

CAKE POPS FOR A WEDDING SHOWER

900

CAKE POPS FOR THE ROYALS OPENING

18 | FEATURES

THE ICING ON THE CAKESophomore Sarah Fox balances a growing business with school , dance

What is a cake pop?

A cake pop is a ball of cake creamed with icing and dipped in more icing on a stick.

Go to: http://www.great-expecaketions.com

?

If you would like to order from Great ExpeCAKEtions:

MIXEDTV FOR TOTS

STUDENTS REMINISCE ON THEIR FAVOR-ITE TV SHOWS FROM THEIR CHILDHOOD’

It wasn’t airing when I was a child, but more like 10 years before so they con-stantly played re-runs of it and it was so exciting. It left me on the edge of my couch! FRESHMAN SYDNEY BAHR

I loved everything purple. I had a Barney backpack that I took to school with my everyday. My mom had to put a Barney cassette in when she needed me to shut up so she could get work done. JUNIOR MOLLY HALTER

BARNEY AND FRIENDS

LEGENDS OF THE HIDDEN TEMPLE

SCOOBY-DOO

30 Q:

SECONDS WITH...SOPHOMORE TOMMY LARSON

A:

Q:

A:

Q:

A:

What is your favorite child-hood memory?

Running down my street naked, by myself.

What famous person do you want to meet?

Will Ferrell because he is hilarious and I feel like we would hit it off im-mediately.

What it your big-gest fear?

Being eaten alive by a shark.

Nintendo

GAME BOY1989This Nintendo creation brought gaming to the palm of your hands. With LCD technology and a cheap price, the Game Boy outsold its competition and set the standard for devices for the future.

GAME BOY COLOR1998

GAME BOY ADVANCE SP2003

GAME BOY ADVANCE

NINTENDO DSI2008

2001The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was invented a few years later. It had a wider screen and brought color into the handheld gaming world for the first time since Nintendo took off. It was the first system that allowed to play games from other intended servers, like the GB or GBC.

The Game Boy Color (GBC) brought a whole new level of handheld devices to the table when it invented, increasing visual and innovational quality. People were mesmerized by the device that provided enter-tainment with them wherever they went.

Resembling a pocket-size laptop computer, the new-and-improved Game Boy Advanced SP (GBA SP) fixed many of the problems from the GBA, such as the dark lighting on the screen. The GBA SP came with a backlight, allowing users to play it in any lighting.

The latest gaming system from Nintendo, the Nintendo DSi, is a larger, sleeker model of the Game Boy that not only has lighter screens in color, but also touch screens.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GAME BOYA LOOK AT THE POPULAR HANDHELD GAMING DEVICE THROUGH THE DECADES

A PAGE ABOUT CHILDHOODwritten by Vanessa Daves | photos by Brendan Dulohery

Information courtesy of ds.ign.com

MIXED | 19

Every episode, they went on a new exciting adventure and the mysteries were always fun to watch and try to solve. SOPHOMORE LUKE HAVERTY

&Nelson Hartman

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First, pagers bit the dust. Next came the demise of black and white “candy-bar” phones. After that, flip phones saw their rise and fall, and now smart-phones are the hot ticket. Now with Google’s Project Glass looming in the horizon, it sadly appears that the sun could also set on touch-screen phones — meaning that any kind of hand-held phone or de-vice would be made obsolete.

Project Glass is essentially a small mechanism that you wear on your face similar to glasses, but with a small, transparent, augmented-reality dis-play instead of prescription lenses.

This technology isn’t entirely new; augmented reality (also known as AR) has existed in various, and useful, forms for quite awhile now. You can get “AR” apps on your smartphone that use the device’s camera to display your surrounding environment enhanced by overlaying graphics and info, such as directions or reviews about nearby stores in real-time. In other words, it enhances, or “augments”, reality.

The glasses aspect is also being used by some car manufacturers, such as BMW. These devices give the mechanics step-by-step directions and al-low them to know exactly what to fix on the car -- all right in front of their eye on the small digital screen.

Google’s glasses are to be used to perform tra-ditional smartphone to perform tasks — such as looking up reviews, navigating a city or taking pic-tures — but the user will control the special pair of glasses by speaking commands. This device would do the same things that a smartphone does, but in-stead of holding a phone in your hand, it is essen-tially on your face, directly in front of your eyes.

Currently Project Glass is still at a conceptual stage, but Google plans on testing a working proto-type in the near future. Although there is no actual device at the moment, I have no doubt that this kind of technology can be made available to the public — but that’s what scares me.

The public already struggles with information overload: constant Facebook and Twitter updates from their friends, new text messages and e-mails are always coming and going from their phones. But with a Project Glass device on your face, you will no longer have to take out your phone to check for new notifications, it will constantly be in front of your eyes.

For example, texting and driving is already a huge and hazardous problem. Now imagine how many more accidents would occur if instead of us-ing a phone while in the car, the driver’s glasses could instantly call up information, give them no-tifications, weather updates and more. The police would also have no idea if the driver was abus-ing this technology while driving. After all, they wouldn’t be able to tell if the user was innocently us-ing the glasses for directions or if they were watch-ing a video.

Not only does this create safety issues, it also poses a problem of people becoming even more used to not talking to somebody face to face. If you can video chat with somebody right from your glasses, why would you need to spend the time to meet up with them in person? Additionally, we’ve all had experiences where the person we’re talking to face-to-face pulls out their phone and starts texting, tweeting at or Facebooking someone else. Think about how easily it would be to tune someone out if you were wearing these glasses. You could be look-ing right at them, but be viewing your friend’s recent vacation photos the whole time.

Now, I’m not saying this kind of technology is the devil, I’m just saying that it’s definitely not something that America needs strapped to their faces during their entire day. Let’s face it, the time we spend using technology is only increasing, and while that can improve productivity, how many hours of Facebook, YouTube or Twitter do we still log each day?

The bottom line is when this technology does become available to the public, it will ultimately be more of a hindrance than a help. It will no doubt, it will be great for specific purposes, such as athletics, learning or technical careers, but it shouldn’t be at-tached to your face all the time. Our society already has a hard enough time dealing with electronic dis-tractions as it is.

GOOGLE-Y

AREAS WHERE GOOGLE IS ALREADY ADVANCING

CAMERA

GPS

VOICE RECOGNITION

LCD LENSES

EYESA look into the new features of the Google Glass project — glasses of the future

Instantly capture a photo by simply pressing a button on the

device

Use the glasses to record a reminder or look up a restaurant

review using only your voice

NOVEMBER, 2010 MARCH 30, 2011 JUNE 28, 2011

Get walking directions to your destination using the built-in

location finder

INSTANT PREVIEWS THE + 1 BUTTON GOOGLE +

written by Stephen Cook | art by Kennedy Burgess

A&E | 21

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A&E | 23

For the past four years Disneynature has produced a documentary the week-end of Earth Day. In 2009, “Earth” came out, followed by “Oceans” and “African Cats”. Their newest documentary which came out April 20 is called “Chimpan-zee”.

“Chimpanzee” is a wonderful movie full of scenes of rarely visited regions in the jungles of Africa. It takes audience members deep into the habitats of wild animals that overcome struggles with themselves and the society they live in.

The film follows one young chimp in particular named Oscar as he learns to survive in the African jungle. His mother, Isha, is responsible for his education un-til he’s five. With Tim Allen narrating, the audience watches him grow from a baby chimp who can barely climb a sapling, to one who can swing through the trees in pursuit of his friends.

Oscar and 25 other chimpanzees eat together, nap together and hunt together. The alpha male of the group is named Freddie, who leads the group in search of food each day.

Watching little Oscar grow up is truly beautiful, and it’s amusing watching him trying to mimic the adults. “Monkey see, monkey do” (technically, it should be ape)

applies to Oscar perfectly. Five minutes of the film are dedicated to simply watching him try and fail to crack open a single nut. First he tries a stick, then a branch, and finally goes for a rock to crack it open. Hu-morous moments like these result in Os-car having a small tantrum, like any child would, which is so much fun to watch.

Oscar’s mom is killed in a dispute over territory boundaries between Fred-die’s pack and another group under the command of an ape named Scar. Oscar is orphaned, and at a very young age, he is dependent and alone. None of the other adult females will take him in, as they have their own babies to care for. The plot of the story takes an emotional twist when Freddie, the highest ranked male, adopts Oscar, the lowest ranked male.

Freddie grooms and teaches Oscar, who had become malnourished, to find food. At times it would have been best to silence Allen and let the chimp’s actions speak for themselves. For example, when the adult chimps are annoyed with the younger ones for being loud during the adult’s nap time, the audience does not need any help from Allen describing to them what’s happening.

Another thing Disneynature shouldn’t do is manipulate the audience’s feelings.

Scar’s assigned name makes him instant-ly disliked -- simply because he was given a cruel name by a filmmaker. Freddie, on the other hand, is a kind name that forces the audience to root for him. Scar’s group of chimps was never shown with baby chimps or recognizable females, and it was always referred to as an “army” or a “gang”. There are no good or evil monkey cults in the jungles of Africa. Disneyna-ture simply added this to thicken the plot and make the chimps more relatable to a human audience, which isn’t true to na-ture at all.

The word choice used by Allen also swayed the audience’s feelings. Whenev-er Freddie crossed the border between the two territories, they were simply “search-ing for food.” When Scar and his chimps crossed the border, they were “invaders,” or “attackers,” even though their main drive was the search for food as well.

This was also a problem in Disneyna-ture’s movie “African Cats.” There were two groups consisting of lions and lion-esses, and one was painted in a positive light while the other was the bad guy. “Earth” and “Oceans” were wildly popu-lar, and made large profits, while African Cats failed to attract movie-goers. It’s too early to tell how “Chimpanzee” compares

to the other Disneynature films, but it’s storyline is easily much more entertain-ing than 2010’s “African Cats”.

Among other things, “Chimpanzee” is an educational film. The filmmakers catch footage of how the chimps make their nests to sleep in, how they eat their fruit, how they crack open nuts to eat and, most disturbingly, how they hunt. Chimpanzees are not herbivores, they will eat meat. One of Animal Planet’s fa-vorite topics is how the chimps will set up a strategic attack to get their prey, which sometimes includes monkeys. There’s a chase scene in “Chimpanzee” where Freddie leads an attack to get a monkey. The attackers are adult males, and they work together to bring down their prey. Once the monkey is dead, the whole group of chimpanzees eat it, but the cam-era steers clear of the actual corpse, in the expected family-friendly fashion.

From beginning to end, “Chimpan-zee” is exciting and entertaining. Chimps are mankind’s closest relative, and there isn’t that much difference between a baby chimp and a baby human, which is what makes the movie so much fun to watch. If it weren’t for Allen’s ubiquitous com-ments and word usage, “Chimpanzee” would be the perfect documentary.

MonkeyBusiness

SKIP IT NETFLIX SEE IT OSCAR WINNER

Staffer goes to see Disneynature’s newest animal documentary and is pleasantly surprised by the films’s humor and narration

Disneynature’s first documentary fol-lows three different species through their journey in their habitat. The film stars the humpback whale, polar bear and the African bush elephant as they learn to adapt to today’s rapid environmental change. “Earth” was a major success and grossed over $100,000,000 and is nar-rated by the one and only James Earl Jones.

Earth

The documentary explores all five of the planet’s oceans and was filmed in 50 dif-ferent locations. It took four years for Disneynature to finish this high-grossing film. The movie features several kinds of aquatic animals and was shot from boats, submarines and scuba divers. Just like Earth, Oceans reflects on the negative activity by humans on the waters.

Oceans

Samuel L. Jackson narrates this film that follows two different cat families teach their cubs how to survive in Africa’s wild. The movie uses real life footage with the cheetah family as well as the lion family. Some of the proceeds of the documentary were donated to the African Wildlife Foundation and to help preserve Kenya’s Amboseli Wildlife Corridor.

African CatsDISNEYNATURE

throughTHE YEARSFounded in 2008, Disney-nature has released four documentaries in the U.S. before Chimpanzee. Here are their top three grossing films.

written by Greta Nepstad | photos from allmoviephoto.com

I wanted to l-o-v-e it.I wanted to love it like I loved the en-

ergetic, upbeat songs that Jason Mraz used to create by the dozens. I wanted to love it like I loved “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.” I wanted to love it like I loved the nerdy white guy raps that Mraz spit out in the early days of his career. I wanted an album that would make me feel crazy happy as I sped down 71st street to Baskin Robbins to escape the warm weather. I really, really wanted to love it.

If you are determined to love Jason Mraz’s fifth and newest album, “Love is a Four Letter Word”, my advice would be to go into it without any expectations. Let me be clear -- this album is not by any means bad. It occasionally provides hits like “Everything Is Sound,” which is so catchy it’s impossible to not to keep hum-ming it all day. It’s a good album, and maybe it’ll grow on me the more I listen. It’s just not quite what I was hoping for.

Mraz’s music is known for the happi-ness and positivity you’d associate with any avocado-farm-owning California hippie. He’s been able to keep that same feeling of relaxed elation in his music since his big break, “The Remedy,” in 2002. And for the most part, that feeling is still there. But what this album lacked that his others had was excitement. I was looking forward to lighthearted, fun songs that I knew Mraz was capable of from past album hits like “Geek In the Pink” and “Curbside Prophet”. Though this album feels quietly, peacefully con-tent, it didn’t deliver the pick-me-up I wanted or expected.

There are, of course, a few things that we can expect from Mraz that he deliv-ers immediately. He opens up with “The Freedom Song,” in which he recreates the ecstatic energy of his past albums with a brass band and soulful backup singers. For the most part, Mraz is able to continue with the relaxed, laid-back

sound that has gathered him so many fans. I only noticed a couple of variations from the sound of his previous albums, like a bit more of a country twang in “The Woman I Love,” whose uncreative and repetitive lyrics make it worth skip-ping. A better change can be found in “5/6,” which opens with a sound almost reminiscent of the Black Keys. It could fool you for something you’d hear in the background of a jazz club, until Mraz brings the acoustic guitar back in.

Mraz wraps up the album with his signature sense of ease and exuberance, with his final song, “The World As I See It.” The first time I heard it, I was sure that this was my favorite on the album. I was thrilled to finally hear the sweet and won-derfully apparent delight that Mraz takes in his music that was so present in older albums. I was reminded why I liked Mraz so much in the first place -- he is an ex-pert at mixing the soothing and the joy-ful into a sound that is entirely his own.

With the rest of the album sounding like a collection of lullabies, “The World As I See It” was the only song I really heard the old Mraz in.

For those of you hoping for an album full of poppy, exciting hits like “The Dy-namo of Volition” off Mraz’s previous album, you’re going to be sorely disap-pointed. This album definitely included a few catchy tunes, but none of them have the same carefree sound that was preva-lent in older albums. They all have the potential to be hits, but they’re just too sweet and sentimental to be something you would listen to to get pumped before a big game.

You’re not going to hear Mraz un-leashing the optimism and unadulterat-ed energy of his past albums in this one. But if you’re in the mood for a great back-ground to a comfortable, super lazy day relaxing in Prairie Village, this album is sure to satisfy the granola-eating flower child inside you.

written by Hannah Ratliff | photos courtesy of www.jasonmraz.com

IF YOU LIKE JASON MRAZ, CHECK OUT THESE ARTISTSTristan Prettyman

Top Song: MadlyTop Album: HelloTop Song: I’m Yours

Top Album: I’m Yours

The ScriptTop Song: Breakeven

Top Album: The Script

Jack JohnsonTop Song: Better Together

Top Album: In Between Dreams

24 | A&E CHANGE STATIONS OSCAR WORTHYBUY the ALBUMPANDORA

Jason Mraz

Last.fm plays: 42,686,111Last.fm listeners: 1,563,532

First Album: Waiting for My Rocket to Come

*more songs means a higher similarity

Pop song-writer Jason Mraz’s new album Love Is a Four Letter Word provides a peaceful but unenergetic listen

Junior Ryan Dugan, left, performs in Junior AJ Orth’s show. “[My show]

is about a boy going through life dealing with constant criticism and

bullying... I based the play on my own experiences with teasing and

how I learned the importance of self-acceptance.”

photo by Spencer Davis

Junior Maggie Niven , far below, directs her show’s final rehearsal. “I have a very specific directing style

and vision,” Niven explained. “But the cast still felt creative and free.

The show is a lot of fun.”photo by Grant Kendall

Junior Josh Light , above, rehearses lines with Junior Hannah Dahlor. “Working on Rep Shows is interest-ing,” Light recalls. “The biggest chal-lenge is that everybody in the class has a show; that means your actors will be in several different shows. Overall though, the process is really creative and insightful. ”

photo by Grant Kendall

Junior Roberto Sada, right, finalizes the technical aspects of his show.

“With these shows, each person in the Rep Theatre class is able to produce an original one-act. It’s a

really cool opportunity because my show reflected things I had actually

experienced. ”photo by Grant Kendall

PHOTO ESSAY | 25

Repertory Theatre students write and direct their original one-act shows as their final class project

FINALTHEACT

26 | A&E

I fall for it every time. Boy meets girl. They fall

in love. An initial problem attempts to tear what they have apart, but, in the end, they realize that they are meant to be together.

Call me a sap, or a total sucker for Nicholas Sparks love stories but I just melt at movies like “The Lucky One.” Even if they may be totally predictable and my friends make fun of me for it, I still love them. “Dear John.” “The Last Song.” “The Notebook.” All of them.

Logan Thibolt, played by the charming Zac Efron, had me reeled in the mo-ment the sun hit his scruffy face as he walked down that dirt road with his adorable German Shepherd Zeus by his side. Just thinking about his character makes me have to fight the over-whelming urge to squeal. It could have been the fact that he was on a journey to find his “lucky girl,” but most likely it was because I was pretending that he was on his way to find me. Ei-ther way I was happy with this initial appearance.

Beyond Efron’s appear-ance, I was drawn to the overall plot from the be-ginning. Throughout the movie, there is a prominent showing of fate’s roles in the characters’ lives – a sort of “everything-happens-for-a-reason” theme. Each event leads Logan and Beth (Efron’s love interest,

played by Taylor Schilling) into each other’s lives. Beth is at a rocky point in her life, dealing with the end of a previous relationship and trying to care for her son. Both characters are dealing with their own struggles, but I think that is what draws people to this film; their life stories merging in a way that an audience can relate to.

Centering around Lo-gan’s journey to find Beth after his last tour fighting as a Marine in Iraq, he finds a photograph of her in the midst of a night raid but at the time didn’t know her name or who she was. The only thing he knew was that ever since he found it, he had survived attacks and incidents that he felt he shouldn’t have. At first, he wanted to find her to thank her for saving his life so many times. But when he meets her, plans changed.

Once Logan finds Beth working at her Nana’s ken-nel in Hampton, LA, and he recognizes her from the photograph, he gets the job working there to be close to her. Being reluctant to the whole thing, Beth wonders why on earth her Nana, played by well known ac-tress, Blythe Danner, would hire him considering that he’s the new mystery guy in town. The entire time she is falling for him and doesn’t realize it – the only thing I kept thinking was, Oh snap what is going to happen

when she finds the picture he has of her?

I’m pretty sure I was even more worried what her reaction would be, when she found out why he was really there, than Logan was. There seems to be at least one solid fight in every good love story, but in this one the story ended just the way the entire audi-ence wanted. It makes you wonder about your own life’s sequence of events, and makes you feel for the characters pain and hard-ships.

All of the moments that Logan has with Ben, Beth’s son played by Riley Thom-as Stewart, just made me smile. I fell in love with the relationship between Beth and Nana, especially Nana’s clever remarks. And don’t even get me started on the tragic scene with Clayton, Beth’s ex-husband played by J R. Ferguson, in the riv-er…I was this close to tears.

This movie is not just a love story, but a story about fate’s connection to the things that happen in life and each character’s in-dividual journey along the way to where they’re sup-posed to be.

That’s what I really love about the movie. It was more than the typical love story. It was something that could be relatable while still desirable. It made us all feel like we were in Beth Green’s shoes; like we were the lucky one.

I HATE NICHOLAS SPARKS MY GIRLFRIEND MADE ME TEARED UP ZOMG ZAC EFRON

WHAT NICHOLAS SPARKS MOVIE ARE YOU?

New Nicholas Sparks movie adaptation triumphs with timeless love story written by Holly Hernandez

SPARKS

FLYphoto from filmofilia.com

Dawn RingFloral Manager

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SHANNON McGINLEYSOFTBALL UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Senior Shannon McGinley has played softball for 13 years. She started in kin-dergarten and never stopped.

McGinley has always looked up to her father, who played college baseball at Baker University. McGinley knew that she wanted to do the same thing.

“In sixth grade, we went to a tourna-ment in Oklahoma and so that tourna-ment falls at the same time as the college world series,” McGinley said. “When you go to that tournament, you get free tick-ets. I remember sitting out in the outfield, my mom told me that I told her that she and my dad would come watch me there

someday. That was when I decided that I wanted to [play softball] in college.”

McGinley started the recruiting pro-cess her sophomore year by creating a profile with newspaper articles and sta-tistics that she sent to college coaches.

She also created skills videos that she also sent to coaches. McGinley sent her information all across the country, hop-ing that they would read her profile.

“You know that there is a slim chance that they will actually pick it up and so many of [the coaches] kind of toss them aside,” McGinley said. “I had to regularly email them. You were lucky if you would

get a response back, too.” McGinley took unofficial visits to

Brown University, Washington Univer-sity in Saint Louis and the University of Virginia in the fall.

After she took her visits, she commit-ted to play at the University of Virginia.

“I liked the whole feel [of Virginia], just the atmosphere,” McGinley said. “They are really into sports there and that is what have been used to my whole life. I felt more comfortable there. The connection started early on.”

CAROLINE NICKBASKETBALL EMPORIA STATE

1.

2.

OTHER SIGNEES

CONNER SCHROCK

HENRY SIMPSON

KYRA SLEMP

MEGHAN DICKINSON

MOLLY YOUNG

SHANNON McGINLEY

MARSTON FRIES

MIMI FOTOPOULOS

TONI AGUIAR

DAKOTA COLLINS

KARA HINES

CAROLINE NICK

HALEY HANSFORD

MOLLIE COOPER

MEARA SMITH

ALEX DRESSMAN

K-STATE

K-STATE

JCCC

K-STATE

VIRGINIA

UCONN

TENNESSEE

DARTMOUTH

PITT STATE

MIMI FOTOPOULOS 3.

SUCCESS IN COLLEGEA LOOK AT SOME OF THE EAST GRADUATES ATHLETIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS

LIBBY JANDL

SCOTT WILLMAN

JANNA GRAF

DUKE UNIVERSITY

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

YALE UNIVERSITY

THREE-YEAR LETTER WINNERJUNIOR AT

SENIOR AT

SOPHOMORE AT

SOCCER

GOLF

BASKETBALL

SELECTED TP THE ALL-IVY ROOKIE TEAM

BIG 10 PLAYER OF THE WEEK (TWICE)6 TOP-10 FINISHES THIS SEASONLEADS TEAM IN STROKE AVERAGE (72.17)

Senior Caroline Nick knew that she wanted to play basketball. She knew that she did not want to give it up and she knew that she wanted to be in a program where she felt like she was a part of a family. She chose somewhere that satisfied all of her wish-es. Nick chose Emporia State.

During the recruiting pro-cess, Nick looked at smaller colleges.

“I was looking at smaller NAIA colleges like Benedic-tine,” Nick said.

Emporia State invited Nick to their elite basketball camp over the summer after seeing her play in an AAU game for

her team, The Eclipse. They kept in constant contact until Nick committed in July 2011.

“Both my parents, grand-parents and aunt and uncle went to [Emporia State].” Nick said. “I guess you could say that I am following the rest of the family.”

Nick thinks that the pre-season workouts and com-mitment will be biggest dif-ference between playing on a high school level and playing on the college level.

“I really like the program, the feeling, it is very family-like,” Nick said. “We have a really supportive fan section.”

ROWING

GOLF

VOLLEYBALL

GOLF

SOFTBALL

SOFTBALL

SWIMMING

TENNIS

FOOTBALL

TRACK

SOCCER

VOLLEYBALL

TENNIS

BASKETBALL

TENNIS

SOCCER

EMPORIA ST.

COLORADO ST

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEETENNIS Six days a week, four

hours a day, senior Mimi Fotopoulos can be found training for the one sport she loves—tennis.

“I knew that I wanted to play college tennis since I was born,” Fotopoulos said. “My goal has always been to play D1 tennis.”

Fotopoulos visited col-leges during her junior year in the second semester.

“I literally visited over 20 schools,”Fotopoulos said. “I was fortunate to be a five star recruit, ranked 32 in the country.”

Fotopoulos earned her five-star recruit status by beating top recruits in the country.

She is a two-time Nation-

al High School All-American, a two-time National (United States Tennis Association) USTA Sportsmanship award Recipient and a two-time undefeated 6A Kansas High School State Singles Cham-pion.

Fotopoulos wanted to be in the SEC or ACC confer-ence.

After visiting schools, she committed to the University of Tennessee in April of 2011.

She is going to continue to do her training to get ready for college tennis.

“I am going to try to play in some lower level pro tour-naments this summer,” Foto-poulos said. “I am also going to play in some national col-lege circuit tournaments.”

COFFEYVILLE CC

WILLIAM JEWELL

BENEDICTINE

MO. WESTERN ST.

MISSOURI S&T

1. 2. 3.

NOAH BERTHOLF BASEBALL WILLIAM JEWELL

BEN RANDOLPH WRESTLING BENEDICTINE

CONNER SCHROCK

HENRY SIMPSON

MEGHAN DICKINSON

MOLLY YOUNG

KYRA SLEMP

SHANNON McGINLEY

MARSTON FRIES

MIMI FOTOPOULOS

TONI AGUIAR

DAKOTA COLLINS

KARA HINES

HALEY HANSFORD

CAROLINE NICK

MOLLY COOPER

MEARA SMITH

ALEX DRESSMAN

NOAH BERTHOLF

BEN RANDOLPH

SCORED DOUBLE FIGURES IN 11 GAMES IVY PLAYER OF THE WEEKROOKIE OF THE WEEK

HAS PLAYED 2, 366 MINUTES

CHARLIE HOTCHKISSHENDRIX COLLEGEFRESHMAN AT

LACROSSE

PLAYED IN EVERY GAMESCORED D16 GOALS THIS SEASON

photos provided by the McGinley, Nick and Fotopoulos families

ON TO THE

28 | SPORTS

It was only a set of 50s — a set that she had done count-less times before, and yet it wasn’t the same. Her body didn’t feel right. And although she should be in the best shape of her life, being winded during the middle of a routine warm-up set wasn’t a sign of that.

Mid-season, senior Marston Fries’ body was coming down with mono and a severe iron deficiency. Her season was over.

With Fries, the Lancers’ quest for a three-peat was almost guaranteed. With her presence, the Lancers possess one of the state’s top swimmers and an anchor fast enough to push a pair of their relays over the hump to be in serious conten-tion to win at the state meet. But the Lancers don’t have Fries any longer, because after coming down sick mid-season, her senior year and hopes of leading the team to a three-peat came to an abrupt halt.

“It was strong, it was devastating to them,” Coach Rob Cole said. “They’ve always had her with the mind that she’s kind of been the backbone of our program for the last few years and now she’s gone. They feel real bad for her but they knew that was a possibility at the start of the year and now they are pre-pared to go and defend their state title. Now it’s just going to be a little bit tougher. I think they were hurt at first but they are us-ing it as motivation to show that no one person makes a team.”

While the Lancers lost Fries and the large number of points she accounted for, the team found a new image. Still with the talent and depth to contend for a championship, the Lancer team had no option but to shock themselves into a new focus.

“With the loss of Marston they were struggling for an identi-ty at first and I feel like they started gaining confidence as they got in shape and they saw their performances consistently im-prove,” Cole said. “They realized that they had greater poten-tial than they originally thought.”

Because Cole doesn’t elect team captains, those duties are handled collectively by the seniors. Headed up by Hallie Beck, Claire Newman, Lanie Leek and Lilli Stalder, this group of se-niors is largely responsible for helping the team rebuild their focus and get them into the work ethic that they find them-selves in today. Even if these girls may not be the team’s top point scorers, their role is invaluable in keeping everyone to-gether.

“The leaders have emphasized that everyone needs to step up -- and that everyone has the opportunity to score points at state if they want,” Junior Meg Stanley said. “The leaders have become stricter at practice but it is needed because every team member that can score any points will be beneficial to the team. The team chemistry is awesome, everyone is more deter-mined than I have ever seen.”

With holes to fill, swimmers on last year’s team that were generally junior varsity swimmers had the opportunity to step up. Junior Tiernan Shank is one of these swimmers.

“I think she’s gone from being a modest worker to a good hard daily worker that pays good attention to the skills,” Cole said of Shank. “I think that her fixing her turns and listening to

race strategy and those things combined with working harder has really just groomed a lot of confidence for her.”

Shank already with her state cut, has become the Lancer’s strongest sprint freestyler this season. With a time of 25.8 seconds in the 50 free, this early in the season Shank is fast enough to place 11th in last year’s state meet. Cole is hope-ful that Shank can find herself in the top eight in the 50 yard freestyle come state on May 18th. She is key for the Lancers to overcome the loss of Marston and is only one of several swim-mers that has the opportunity to place in the finals heat. Year-round swimmers like Juniors Sarah Freshnock and Meg Stan-ley headline that group.

Having several swimmers able to place well in numerous races, Cole is trying to keep competing coaches guessing on what they will swim. Year-round swimmers, Freshnock, Stan-ley and sophomore Emily Minick’s events are a secret but re-gardless of what they swim, they should have very little prob-lem placing at the top of their events.

In a year where four to six teams each have a handful of elite swimmers to place them in contention for a state champi-onship, team depth can be the critical difference between first place and fourth place. The elite swimmers’ placing, give or take a spot or two, have already been decided but the second line of swimmers’ performances is a toss-up. Historically, this has been the Lancer’s strong suit.

“What it will come down to is what our depth is able to do for us,” Cole said. “And in years past it has been a proven com-modity and this year we are going to have to do it once again but I think that the road to winning the meet is what we do at the consolation level with our depth.”

But before the team can worry about their chances at state, they must put together a strong showing at league. With only five swimmers with their qualifying times, the Lancers are far from able to contribute at state. Notable swimmers like Lilli Stalder, Hallie Beck and Riley Hunter have yet to guarantee their state spots. Like much of the team, the three relays are wide open and will be decided after this weekend at League.

“Everyone is looking at us to beat. They know that we lost Marston so now they think they can do it. It’s given us a little fire to do better and prove that we can do it. We want to be able to do it, to prove to everyone else and all the other schools.” Stalder said.

With the pressure of defending their state championship from last year weighing heavily on the swimmer’s minds, Cole has made a focus of keeping the mood at practices light. Hav-ing only taken a couple opportunities to talk to the team about state and the challenges they’ll face, Cole’s goal has been to keep them upbeat and aware of the chance they have to win a championship despite what they’ve been through.

“We’re in the hunt,” Cole said. “I told the girls that we’re in the hunt to take home some hardware and they have to deter-mine which piece of hardware it’s going to be”

written by Corbin Barnds| photos by Jake Crandall and Abby Jones

SOPHOMORE EMILY MINICK

JUNIOR ELIZABETH BITTIKER

SENIOR LILLI STALDER

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SPORTS | 29

HIGH HOPES AT STATE Girls’ swim team prepares for the upcoming state meet

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BOUNTYGATE

Mickey LoomisGeneral Man-Suspended Half the Season

Gregg Williams has never forgot-ten Excelsior Springs, Mo. His long career in the NFL, starting

in 1994 as the defensive coordinator for the Houston Oilers under head coach Jeff Fisher, eventually brought him a Super Bowl championship with the New Orleans Saints in 2009. Even after all those years with the NFL, Williams hasn’t forgotten Excelsior Springs, and Excelsior Springs hasn’t forgotten him.

That’s why Williams still keeps in touch with his high school head coach, currently East Athletic Director Sam Brown, and Brown’s old assistant, Ed Bush. That’s why Williams comes back every year to host his annual Tiger Classic Golf Tournament, which raises money for the Gregg Williams Founda-tion. That’s why almost $600,000 raised by his foundation has been given back to the school and community.

“His motto has always been ‘Once a Tiger, always a Tiger’,” Bush said.

Today, Williams is a coach under a lot of heat. After the NFL found that Wil-liams had placed a bounty system in his defense which dates back to 2009 when the Saints won the Super Bowl, his reputation has drastically changed. The bounties involved players being paid bonuses for intentionally hurting or in-juring opposing players. Williams, now with the St. Louis Rams as defensive coordinator again under head coach Jeff Fisher, has been suspended indefi-nitely and his status in the NFL will be reevaluated in a year.

To those watching breaking stories on ESPN or reading the daily papers like the Kansas City Star, Brown isn’t the same guy that his friends know. The people know that he used violent and shocking ways to motivate his de-fensive players — an act and a system that would not be excused by the NFL.

It was something unexpected, uncalled for and could change the face of football in the future. But to his friends from his hometown, his family and his high school football coaches, he’s not a bad guy.

“He’s a tremendous person who made a mistake,” Brown said.

The first thing Brown will tell you is that he does not agree with the deci-sion and tactic that Williams used in the NFL.

“The mistake was made that he sup-ported a pot, and the pot shouldn’t have been supported,” Brown said. “The players in the NFL, since they make so much money, they are going to do things like that. But for coaches there is no place for that. And so he’s going to suffer from it for a year, and hopefully learn from it and go on.”

Williams has apologized to the me-dia, and will try everything he can to get back to the NFL. Instead of appealing his suspension like others on the Saints staff such as head coach Sean Payton and General Manager Mickey Loomis, Williams has accepted his punishment and is working to get back to the NFL.

“Coach Fisher and coach Williams will do everything they can do to get [Williams] back into the NFL,” Brown said. “Obviously there were some mis-takes made, and he is going to pay what he’s been delivered and hopefully he will get back into the NFL.”

Like everyone else, the commu-nity of Excelsior Springs and Williams’ friends were shocked when they first heard the news. As a personal friend of Williams, Brown felt like he needed to let people know that Williams really was a good person. But because of the personal degree of the situation, Brown turned down ESPN and Kansas City Star before doing a piece with Channel

9.“It’s personal but, sometimes you

want to make sure that people know that he’s a good person, and he really is a good person,” Brown said.

To Bush, Williams will always be a close friend. The two taught middle school P.E. for four years in Excelsior Springs, and stayed friends through his career in the NFL. If Bush ever asked for a favor, Williams was more than happy to help out.

“I’ll give you an example. My grand-son’s birthday is in November,” Brown said. “Well when Gregg was at Ten-nessee, my grandson’s favorite football player was Eddie George, the Tennes-see running back, and I called him up one morning and asked him if he could get me a personalized autographed pic-ture for my grandson and he said sure. And in two days that was on my door-step by special mail.”

Even with an unclear future and under the spotlight of a national sports scandal, the community of Excelsior Springs is hopeful for the future of Wil-liams. The NFL has given second chanc-es to players and coaches before.

Through thick and thin, Williams hasn’t forgotten where he came from. The four-sided scoreboard donated by the Gregg Williams Foundation will still stand in the Excelsior High Gym. Just like every year he’ll be back for the Tiger Classic Golf Tournament, which he will kick off by emceeing the Hall of Fame Banquet on July 11.

“He made a mistake and may have cooked his career, and that’s my main concern, because I’m from the same home town, and I just hate for that to be his legacy,” Brown said. “And you know what, that may be what some people will always remember.”

written by Mitch Kaskie | photos from mctcampus.com

DROPPINGthe

SPORTS | 31

of

East Athletic Director looks back upon his re-

lationship with Saint’s former coach Gregg

Williams

The Other Side

Head Coach Sean Payton

Suspended All Season

The NFL Punishes the Saints

G.M. Micky Loomis

Suspended 8 Games

Players Involved

Punishments yet to be handed. Fines likely

HAMMER

32 | PHOTO ESSAY

CAN’T RELAX YET

Below, the team stormed the field as the defeated Raiders walked off. “It was a big deal to beat them.” said Junior Connor McGannon “they are our best competition so this win will really carry us through the season.”

photos by Jake Crandall

Freshman Nick Bailey, left wards off a Pembroke defender. Bailey scored the final goal of game after a scramble in front of the Pembroke goal. “It was an unbelievable felling to score the game winning goal” said Bailey. “I did for the seniors because it was senior night.”

photos by Jake Crandall

Senior Droste Milledge, far left, scores a goal after getting knocked to the ground. Milledge Scored 4 goals against the Raiders.”I am not the usually the main scorer,” said MILLEDGE. “But [my shots] kept going in for me so I kept shooting.”

photos by Jake Crandall

A close 9-8 game against Pembroke proves that this year’s lacrosse team can win against the best

Senior Spencer Green, left, tries to main-tain control of the ball. The Lancers were leading for more than half of the game. Then the Raiders took a quick one goal lead. The Lancers Rallied back to score a goal in the final minute of the game.

photos by Jake Crandall

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