Seahawk Scoop 

World Famous Surfer Speaks at Hilton Head Island High School By: Julia Duncan 

After two years of not having guest speakers, HHIHS has welcomed guests back into the building. On November 4th, HHIHS welcomed professional surfer and motivational speaker, Shaun Tomson, to speak to juniors and seniors. He came to talk about "the code to ride the wave of purpose."

Tomson discussed the power of change, and following one's own path to find success. Shaun Tomson was born in Durban, South Africa. Tomson has been surfing almost his whole life and retired in 1989 but has continued to surf recreationally since then. During his career and after he retired one of his many hobbies was teaching other people to surf including his two sons. One of the ways he teaches surfing is by using it as a metaphor for life. He does this to help people find motivation and success. He believes it is very important to try and influence young people in the most positive way possible. One thing he does is remind people to really think about the decisions they make before making them.

Tomson said “it is important to me to help, not just young people, but people in general to activate purpose in their life and to find their path.” He also said “surfing really helps teach you about perseverance and resilience” which is why, after one of his biggest wipeouts in the finals in one of the biggest surfing events in the world, he paddled back out to try and catch another wave. One of the things that has given him hope and motivated him in times when he was ready to give up is his passion to inspire people. 

Tomson also shared what the definition of success means to him which is “being better and helping others to be better." He also says his original inspiration to start surfing was his parents, especially his dad, who was the first person who ever taught him how to surf.

He also told students "the only way to be successful that I have found and seen is to bust down the door. Find the power to bust down the door." To harness this power he said, "Words have great power to create change."

Students left inspired after hearing Tomson talk about motivation, power, and success.

Guest Poet Invited to HHIHS To Speak to Students 

By: Kimberly Valladares 

A special guest poet came to Mrs. John's classroom to talk about how poetry affects us and that poetry is a wonderful yet simple thing of life. Mrs. John’s said “ I invited Marcus Amacker because somebody that I know, who also is a writer, was trying to organize for him to be able to come in to schools to work with some students. I thought it would be nice for him to come to my class to help the students see a person who is successful as an artist. One of the things that Amacker talked about is how he left his job in order to do something that he really loves.”

Elizabeth Monzon, a student who attended the guest speaker session, said “My experience was actually really great. I didn't know much about poetry. He taught me a lot and he was a very nice guy.”

Monzon also said “Well I learned that poetry doesn't always have to rhyme. Honestly a lot of songs that are made are a type of poetry because songs and poems both tell a life story about literally anything. Mr. Amacker taught me that, which I actually did not know.” Poetry comes in all ways, shapes, or forms.

Monzon also said “He first had us write like a poetry story and he said it didn’t have to rhyme. He did say he wanted some metaphors in it.” Students then wrote some poems and shared them out loud.

Students often wonder if teachers will invite anyone else to come speak to their classes. Mrs. Johns said “Yes and I also talked to Ms. Andis in the media center to see if we can have other authors, poets, and artists come in to talk to the students so that they can see other possibilities for things that they could do in their future.”

Students and teachers are looking forward to having more guest speakers come to HHIHS to help bring a deeper meaning to the content they learn in the classroom.

HHIHS Participates in the Michelin Design Challenge 

By: Norma Velez 

The Michelin Design Challenge is a competition where prestigious vehicles that are designed by students are displayed and judged. Students create vehicles for tomorrow and use STEM skills and critical thinking to complete the challenge. There are many locations where this competition is held. One example is Hilton Head Island. At Hilton Head Island High School, Mr. Best, a CATE Teacher, and three female students had the opportunity to participate in the Michelin Design Challenge this year.

“The Michelin Design Challenge is a partner with the Concours d'Elegance, which is a car show that is run annually on the island. They provide the Beaufort County School District with the opportunity to compete in the design challenge. There is a new topic every year. This year’s topic was ‘Create Your Own Adventure,' the participants were instructed to design a vehicle. In order to complete the task, the participants have to create all the design features. They can create the design in any way they choose, using any style, any creative design, etc." Mr. Best explained.

Unlike other competitions where they do a best of three, or one winner and it’s finalized, the judges choose one group from each school to present at the actual competition in front of judges. Mr. Best states “In the end, they pick one winner from each school and are given the opportunity to go to the car show and present to six or seven high ranking judges. For instance, one of the judges may be someone from Lexus. The judges have real experience in this field.” In this case, the three young ladies that participated in the final round, managed second place overall. They received $500 which was split between the three of them.

“As an award, each group receives $500 and the overall winner will receive $1000. For our school, these three young ladies, Sara Hill, Celia Walter, and Brook Ammerman participated in this challenge and were chosen out of the 35 other groups at HHIHS,” Mr. Best stated. These three girls represented HHIHS in the final round of the competition.

Brook Ammerman comments “It was nice to win."

Mr. Best continues “Every school can submit as many entries as they want. For this school year, our school submitted 35 entries. Each participant in this challenge has the opportunity to have a team, and the requirement is to have four people or less within each group. Although the participants are also given the opportunity to do this challenge individually." 

Celia Walter states “Putting it all together was hard because we all had different ideas and we had to put it all together afterwards.”

Sarah Hill continues “Despite some difficulties, the challenge was very fun.”

Congratulations this all the students who participated in the Michelin Design Challenge this year. The Seahawks also extend a big congratulations to Sarah, Brook, and Celia.

Be United on Unity Day

By Juan Leyva Perez

Unity Day, “a time for us to all create an awareness that we're making a conscious decision to support one another and to come together in a way that feels supportive, that promotes unity of one another,” added Ms. Markle, the guidance counselor. Each year, Unity Day usually occurred in October. This year we celebrated Unity Day on October 19, 2022.

The reason why we celebrate and wear orange on this day is that, “it gives us a chance to come together as one and to say, ‘We're going to support one another and treat one another with respect, in spite of differences.’” said Ms. Markle.

Unity Day is to prevent cyberbullying or bullying throughout every school, Beaufort County School District “has a website where anonymous reports can be filed. So the main thing we encourage is that if anyone's aware of a bullying incident, is that they make someone aware of that, an adult aware of that. Even if it's just they see it happening and they're not directly involved,” replied Ms. Markle.

The site is called “See Something, Say Something”, students can access it through ClassLink or through the school website. Remember, even if you saw someone getting hurt, threatened, or anything related to bullying, it is your responsibility to tell someone. You are the bystander.

Now, the reason why we wear the color orange in October, Pacer’s NBPC states, “[the] color [is] commonly identified with that month and season. It is also a color associated with safety and visibility. Orange is described as warm and inviting, and its vibrancy makes a strong statement.”

College Application Day

By Juan Leyva Perez

It is College Application Day! Well, it has already occurred on October 21st of this year.

What is College Application Day and what allow the students to do? Ms. Markle replied, “It allows students the opportunity to gain some assistance with filing college applications. On that particular day, there are a number of colleges that also offer free application fees. So we always want to make sure that someone has that opportunity to apply to schools without having to pay a registration fee, if possible.”

Also, at this year’s event, some admission representatives visited our school which is from TCL and Clemson University. The admission representatives, “[are] here to answer questions, to interact with students, to answer questions about college life, about the admissions process,” said Ms. Markle.

After this event, “We had over 70 students that came in. Now, each of them may have applied to more than one school, but over 70 seniors took advantage of the day,” according to Ms. Markle. Now juniors, next school year if you become a senior, make sure to listen to the SNN announcements to get your applications in if you’re planning to go to college. If you have any questions about your future, please visit your lovely guidance counselors.

CATE Guest Speakers

By: Elizabeth Monzon Santos 

HHIHS had three guest speakers for people that were taking CATE classes. They were from USCB and they taught us the history of our beautiful island. Students are able to understand and know more information about HHI.

Kourtny Kostco said “ I loved learning about HHI, especially about animals.” She learned that there are more things out in the ocean other than a sand dollar or a starfish. 

Ladra’e Foster joined the presentation on the second day and he said “When I first moved here I had no idea where or what anything was, but from this presentation I learned that there was a war on HHI and I never knew about the creatures in the ocean.”

Everyone enjoyed learning about the history and wildlife about Hilton Head Island and we are very appreciative of our CATE teachers for bringing in the guest speakers.

Welcome to Our Youtube Channel

By Juan Leyva Perez

Last year, The Seahawk Press have been creating many reports for our news show called Seahawk News Network, or SNN for short. Before we might have had technical difficulties, but, Ms. Spisz, the head of The Seahawk Press, created a YouTube channel for SNN in early spring.

Since we are a public school, there are actually some restrictions for the YouTube channel. For the daily news report for SNN, they are, “Unlisted. We have the announcements for the staff to show the students, and we keep them unlisted because staff room numbers are listed in the announcements, and Google Classroom codes, we need to keep those private,” responded Ms. Spisz.

If you want to check any, “... Sports highlights, arts highlights, ROTC highlights, school spirit videos, [and] pep rally videos,” Ms. Spisz added, those are available to the public on our YouTube channel.

The YouTube channel also has a documentary, Ms. Spisz said, “This year we did a homecoming full-length documentary. Last year, when the IB students did the Ukraine project, we have a 20-minute video about that up there.”

Since people may see Journalism class making news reports every school day quite easily and hard, that is kind of true. Mostly our filming comes from Ms. Spisz and Journalism class, she added, “I try, [the] keyword is “try” to do a 24-hour video turnaround. If we film Friday night for a football game, I try to have it posted sometime Saturday or Sunday. For longer projects, so at the homecoming video, we filmed for an entire week, and then we posted it on, or, it went live the Sunday after homecoming. It kind of just depends on the video. Before morning announcements, we film [in] third block and I have it pretty much uploaded by the end of fourth block.” Now that seems hard to film daily, but people may think Journalism is struggling when it comes to editing.

The news show is actually edited in iMovie, not the fancy editing software, but, “[Ms. Spisz] occasionally use Adobe Premier Pro for some videos. … iMovie is just really simple because for some of the videos, for homecoming for example, students who are wanting to learn how to video edit got to sit at the computer and edit, and iMovie is just a lot easier.”

Journalism sounds fun and easy, but it is also hard, and fun. Mostly anchoring is hard due to stuttering but sometimes people can overcome their fear.

  HHIHS students donate Blood to those in need 

By: Karina Santiago

  Hilton Head Island High school did a blood drive for students to participate in during school hours. Those who are above the age of 16 could participate but there are other requirements as well. Ms. Emerick, a social studies teacher, hosts the blood drive every year. The team that runs it is The Big Red Bus, they are a red bus that drives to the area where the blood drive is going to take place. This benefits those who are in need of blood and it has a positive impact. So if students want to find a way to impact someone’s life in a good way, they could participate in events like this. This is an annual event at HHIHS.

 Ms, Emerick says, “the blood drive is an opportunity for children to come and give blood to save somebody's life and it is open to all kids”.  

She mentioned that the drive has been taking place for as long as she can remember for at least 10-15 years. 

  If students want to participate they must be at least 16 with parental consent. “If you are 17 you can do it, 18 you can do it, you have to be a certain weight too,  at least over 100 lbs, It doesn't matter who you are, you can come and give blood,” she said. 

Ms. Emerick was questioned if there has ever been any nervous experiences with students donating blood, “who hasn't encountered a scary experience when giving blood, you know?” 

Before donating blood some students tend to get nervous so advice that she gave was, “Do it. You’re saving somebody’s life, and make sure you eat lots of food so you don’t pass out”. Not eating enough before donating could cause one to feel lightheaded and dizzy. Eating enough and drinking water helps keep blood sugars stable. Students, staff and the community should consider donating blood at local blood drives to help save lives. HHIHS hopes to have another blood drive sometime in the Spring.