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Super Strides Freshman Kate Bucknam pushes toward the finish at the cross country MVC Supermeet that took place on Oct. 11. The men’s cross country team to second at the meet, while the women placed third.
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Three students achieve Semifinalist status, six Senior wins writing contest ber, and the names are not revealed unApril Newton commended status by National Merit Program til after the best work is selected. Next, Staff Writer
Maggie Devine Staff Writer
Three CFHS seniors recently received National Merit Scholar Semifinalists status by scoring well on the PSAT/National Merit Qualifying Test. The CFHS semifinalists include BriKavin Sundaram Briana McGeough ana McGeough, Kavin Sundaram, and Molly Troendle Molly Troendle. Andrew Boody, Elizabeth Cozart, Jo“It’s a really big honor,” guidance fer full-rides. “Ninety percent of semifinalists beseph Kruempel, Leah Merner, Olivia counselor, Susan Langan said. come finalists,” Langan said. “It’s very Schares, Kristian Sims and Nickpreet The National Merit Scholar prorare if they don’t.” Singh have all attained that honor. gram is sponsored by the College Becoming a semifinalist is a lot of “They will get some recognition for Board to recognize juniors who score hard work, with much preparation and being Commended students,” Langan well on their PSAT’s, or Preliminary said. SAT’s. There is As expected, the semifinalists are no set qualifica“It’s pretty exciting. I should get incredibly happy about their achievetion for Semifiment. some good scholarships.” nalist status, as it “I feel honored to be recognized is an index score —Senior Molly Troendle among such a distinguished group of varies from state National Merit Semifinalist scholars,” McGeough said. to state, but it is a Another Semifinalist, Molly Trovery daunting task endle, is equally ebullient. practice for the test. nonetheless. “It’s pretty exciting. I should get “I do feel I worked hard,” Mc“The Semifinalists must fill out an some good scholarships.” Troendle application and write an essay to be- Geough said. “ I hope that I do attain said. National Merit status.” come finalists, “ Langan said. Juniors can sign up in the guidance The semifinalists will find out if In addition to the application and office to take this year’s test. essay, they must also send in school they have achieved finalist recognition It costs $13 and will be held Oct. 17 recommendations. If semifinalists be- next spring. during periods one through four at the Students who came close to semificome finalists, most colleges offer high school. large scholarships, and some even of- nalist status are Commended students;
Senior Elizabeth Cozart has achieved high honors in this year’s 2007 writing contest, sponsored by the National Counsel of the Teachers of English (NCTE). “There is no money involved. It is a national contest. There are a limited number of winners in each state. NCTE sends Elizabeth Cozart this information out to colleges, identifying them as one for the top high school writers in the country,” English teacher Michelle Rathe said. Cedar Falls High School has a history of success on this prestigious writing contest. “We have had one or two winners for the last eight years. Last year Rhiannon Talbot and Alex Ulfers were two out of the five Iowa winners,” Rathe said. The process for the contest is very simple. Teachers nominate a student or students who are then asked to submit their best work to be judged by a panel of English teachers. The teachers give each paper a num-
the NCTE panel gives the winning students a topic for an essay. The students don’t come in to the competition knowing what the topic will be. They were given roughly an hour and a half to complete the essay. That essay was then turned into the judges at the state levvel, which then judged the entries blindly once again. Finally, the students chosen there are on their way to nationals. “Last year there were about 40 students who submitted work. The English teachers then picked their favorite essays and there were only three selected, including mine. Those were then sent into the NCTE and there were a total of 1,937 essays sent in nationally. They then narrowed it down to 595, and I was one of the 595,” Cozart said. The essay topics tend to be about issues concerning high school students, such as the topic Cozart wrote about. “The topic that we had to write about was the problem of bullying in schools and how to stop it,” Cozart said. The writers were under serious time constraints for this process. “We had about an hour and a half to write the essay. Then we submitted whatever we had written,” Cozart said. Cozart’s lifelong love of writing helped her considerably in the competition.
Food Drive encourages teamwork between schools Arlene Freudenberg Staff Writer
The Northeast Iowa Food Bank has organized its largest food drive ever run by students. Starting on Oct. 2 until Nov. 15, high school students from all over the Cedar Valley area are competing to obtain as much canned food as possible. Several high schools from the Cedar Valley area have been split up into divisions to participate in the food drive competition. Cedar Falls High School has been put into division red along with Waverly-Shell Rock, Waterloo East and Waterloo West. The top three schools in each division will be awarded for their efforts. The prizes will be figured out according to which schools bring in the most pounds of food per number of
students. “There is a competition amongst third hour classes to see who can bring in the most cans per student throughout the entire food drive. Pizza parties will be awarded to the winners on each floor,” Student Senate faculty adviser and guidance counselor Ryan Flaherty said. However, Flaherty said that in order to enter the competition a class must bring in at least one can of food per student. Flaherty expressed enthusiasm for the amount of food that Cedar Falls high school students could collect. “Our first storage area we would like to fill up is the wall in the attendance office. We will be building pyramids of cans in the attendance office until we run out of space, and then we will move to different areas,” Flaherty said.
On Oct. 9, the Northeast Iowa Food Bank hosted a kick-off party where students performed a skit of their choice. Cedar Falls performed “We are Marching,” and left with a third place victory; earning $500 for their school. Unfortunently, Waterloo West’s performance of “Food Train” took the first place win. On Oct. 16, students from Cedar Falls, participating in SSR, Student Forum and Senior Leadership, will discuss what Cedar Falls high school should do for the food drive at 10:30 a.m. The radio stations Q92.3, K98.5 and 97.7 as well as news channel KWWL will be announcing what events Cedar Falls High School students will be participating in, and when they will take place, in hopes of maximizing support.
Submitted Photo
Participating in a foodbank-themed skit are Senior Leadership members. The students took third place for this skit and $500 toward the effort. Waterloo West took first.