Features

Mamma Mia Has Audience Happily Singing Along

By Lily Murphy, Reporter

Hempfield Area High School’s theater group performed four amazing productions of the beloved musical Mamma Mia. The musical was a major success, and the actors and actresses charmed the audience, as they sang and clapped along. (Photos from @HempfieldAreaTheatre on Instagram)

Varsity Football Players Volunteer to Help Veterans

by Kylie Nease, Events Director

Last month, some of our very own varsity football players had the pleasure of passing out food shares including: dried goods, frozen goods, and produce to Veterans in need. They participated in a program called Veterans Leadership Program where one of the members reached out to the players. The program's mission is to “serve all who served” across 30 counties by providing a variety of help including: housing, support, career development, and wellness. The football team traveled to Pittsburgh and Johnstown to take part in this mission and shared smiles all throughout the day. Junior Ethan Shaw, a defensive end for Hempfield, says, “I enjoyed volunteering because it was something fun to do to help the Veterans.” Every donation counts when it comes to people in need and our football players supported the Veterans every step of the way. To learn more go to

https://www.veteransleadershipprogram.org/services/wellness/

Hempfield football players smiling through the cold while helping the veterans. (Photo from Twitter).

Geography Bowl Varsity team from left: Donovan Boller, Santiago Giordinelli, Noah Lohr, Mary Planic, and Nolan Stamford (Photo by Carol Staines)

Noah Lohr (left) is all smiles with the other top scorers after an impressive first place victory at Science Bowl. (Photo submitted by Susan LeDonne)

From top left: Cole Williams, Noah Lohr, Sam Radziwan, Donovan Boller, Nathaniel Harden, Jack Krueger, Rachel Husenits, Shaylee Cohen, Madelyn Twichell, and Ben Kudrick bask in the glory of being named Quiz Bowl champions. (Photo submitted by Carol Staines)

HEP Competition Roundup

by Alyssa Manderach, Reporter

Unlike sports, where spectators head to the stands to watch high school athletes compete, HEP competitions are often held during school without an audience. That doesn’t make it any less exciting though, with tough competitors seeking top honors in a variety of events across Westmoreland county. Students in HEP, Hempfield Enrichment Program, are part of a gifted program at the high school and prepare for competitions in subjects of their choosing with the help from HEP department teachers.

WordMaster

Senior Noah Lohr, first time competitor, was the highest scorer in the November event at Franklin Regional with 90 points. Hempfield’s placing team, with members: Noah Lohr, Aislin Kulcsar, Shaylee Cohen, Emmy Wast, and Lucia Daniele, won a grand total of 112.8 points. This competition included five rounds of advanced SAT vocabulary games, both individually and with teammates.

Geography Bowl

Hosted in Hempfield’s library in February, students gathered to compete in the GeoBowl competition in order to show off their hard work to understand and apply international geography knowledge. Sophomore Nathan Harshman (56 points) and juniors Mary Planic (58 points) and Donovan Boller (69 points) made up the top three individual scorers in the rigorous challenge. The varsity team took first place with members: Planic, Boller, Noah Lohr, Santiago Giordinelli, and Nolan Stamford. With written tests, buzzer rounds, and more, the first in-person event in years was definitely one for the books.

Science Bowl

Taking place in early April, students traveled to McKeesport High School to participate in the ESSPA Science Bowl. Sponsored by Mr. Tom Harden, many districts sent representatives with extensive scientific knowledge to work both together and alone to express their year’s long work and ultimately have a good time. Varsity competitor Noah Lohr won first place with an impressive top individual score of 112 out of 134. Along with his other teammates: Sam Radziwan, Cole Williams, and Nathaniel Harden, they collectively took second out of 16 teams with a team score of 145.75. Four rotating modules requiring full attention and effort, as well as final individual buzzer rounds, made up the event.

Quiz Bowl

With an undefeated season, the varsity Quiz Bowl team took home the gold at Mount Pleasant over three separate dates from September to November. The junior varsity competitors also left the event as tournament champions. Trivia questions from various categories asked in a buzzer format made up the weight of this event. All team rosters were chosen after tryouts through written tests and a second round of a buzzer competition. Six different districts also took part in the tournament; however, they were not able to match up to the expertise of Hempfield’s greatest minds.

Chain Reaction Contraption

Vigor and the ability to solve a problem are necessary components to succeed in the Chain Reaction Contraption challenge. Presented at Carnegie Science Center in December, Hempfield students: Garrison Brown, Sam Radziwan, Bella Bargerstock, and Mercedes Thomas, showcased their hard work to complete a device that exercises a task within a set number of steps. It took more than 100 hours outside of school for Liz Baer, Nathaniel Harden, Cam Repko, Brodie Cook, Noah Lohr, Owen DeMatt, and the presenters to design and build the contraption. Mr. Harden’s sponsorship over the course of the project helped to guide these students to the title of second place with the best presentation.

Creative Writing

Each year, talented writers are given a prompt in order to form a creative writing piece, either prose or poetry, and mail in these submissions to be judged. This year’s prompt was to create a poem with at least one animal or sound in every line, or to write a short story with as many animal noises as possible. Senior Emma Pruett won first place for poetry, and sophomore Carly Fox won first place for prose.

Calcusolve

Right before Christmas break at Woodland Hills, Hempfield sent its greatest math stars to perform difficult, extensive math problems against 11 other teams at CalcuSolve. The A team made it to third place in the event with members Noah Lohr, Peyton Legg, Shaylee Cohen, Zhiyi Tang, and Daniel Sierk. Supervisor Mr. Pat Valenti helped to prepare his students for this challenging event.

Mr. Shuster practicing his routine in anticipation of “Dancing with the Celebrities” at the Palace Theater in Greensburg . (Photo by Mr. Shuster)

Dancing Like Never Before

by David Verna, Reporter

Mr. Zachary Shuster, the beloved science teacher, is a pretty interesting guy. A man of many talents, you can find him pulling pranks, juggling, hunting, or fishing. But this newest call of duty is something unusual, even for Mr. Shuster. He received a phone call from a long-time friend who shared with Mr. Shuster that her mother was in need of a dance partner for “Dancing with the Celebrities” at the Palace Theater in Greensburg. With little to no hesitation, Mr. Shuster accepted the offer and began preparing for his dance. With formal dance lessons for the first time in his life, learning a formal routine has been quite the challenge, requiring training four times a week. He will be dancing to “Come Fly with Me” by Frank Sinatra, appropriately dressed as a pilot. When asked what his motivation for dancing was, Mr. Shuster exclaimed, “I just think this is a very cool opportunity. My grandmother, who lived to 100, danced four days a week and was very healthy. I'm dancing for fun but also for the memory of my grandmother.” If you would like to support Mr. Shuster and the Animal Friends Organization, stop by the Palace Theater on May 6 from 8:00 -11:00 p.m.!

WIRC in Action at Competitions

by Ria Andrae, Editor-in-Chief

The Westmoreland Interscholastic Reading Competition (WIRC) took place at the beginning of April. One team won 11th place, and the other won 15th out of 20 teams with most of their books surrounding the topic of World War II.

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