Olympic thrills, spills, and surprises

Photo from www.vancouver2010.com

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games have not only brought together 82 nations to compete, but they also have brought a vast array of Olympic Moments. From the tears of near-misses and podium pride to the smiles and cheers of at-last victory and unexpected success, these Games have provided an outpouring of emotion from athletes and fans alike.

Check out a few of these moments the Mill Stream has picked to showcase the latest Winter Games.

The Thrills:

-American snowboarder phenom Shaun White’s second gold medal in Men’s Halfpipe. The Flying Tomato lives up to the hype, laying down the “Double McTwist” at the end to awe audiences with another golden performance.

-American skier Lindsay Vonn fights a bruised shin and a rough, icy course to add Olympic gold medal to her list of skiing achievements in Ladies’ Downhill, then goes on to win bronze in Ladies’ Super-G.

-Johnny Spillane’s silver makes him the first American to medal in Nordic Combined, an event dominated by the Europeans since its arrival to the Olympic Games.

Empty Bowls tops goal

While the mention of charity events may conjure up visions of slapping gray food on plates in a hairnetted huff, Empty Bowls offered students a night of food with family and friends.

In the spirit of the approaching holiday season, National Art Honor Society sponsored the Empty Bowls program on Monday, Nov. 9. The event took place in the main campus sophomore cafeteria for an hour and a half beginning at 6 p.m.

National Art Honor Society members spent weeks preparing.

“It’s a big thing for us,” sophomore Ainee Jeong said.

Attendees paid $10 for a ticket, which entitled them to a hot meal and a ceramic bowl. National Art Honor Society students had as much food donated as possible to ensure a large profit to donate to charity. Much of the soup served was made by families of National Art Honor society members and ranged from chicken noodle to chili.

The proceeds benefit the Good Samaritan Network of Hamilton County. The money will be used to purchase meat products, which will feed needy families in Hamilton County on Thanksgiving.

“It’s really just giving back to the community,” senior and National Art Honor Society president Elli Miller said.

The bowls were chosen by ticket holders. They were all handcrafted, mostly by freshmen, and then glazed by National Art Honor Society members at the main campus.

Students, parents, and teachers showed up to support the cause. Student artwork was displayed around the cafeteria to be viewed by visitors. A live band headed by faculty members entertained the crowd with music.

Upon arriving, guests were able to pick a handmade bowl to take home. They then could go through the serving line to receive their soup, bread, drink, and dessert.

The tables in the cafeteria were covered with construction paper and adorned with paper hand prints made by National Art Honor Society students. Crayons were placed in the middle of each table so that guests could express their creativity through doodles.

Aside from the charitable aspect of the program, students also used the night to spend time with friends.

“I thought Empty Bowls was a fantastic way to raise money and provide a fun night out, so I got some friends together and we decided to go. I also announced it at my church,” sophomore Sarah Line said. She attended the event with sophomores Breanna Frailey and Julie Goodwin and junior Russ Goodwin.

Nancy Chance, executive director of the Good Samaritan Network of Hamilton county, attended the event and made a small speech to those in attendance.

Two years ago when the program debuted, the community came together to raise $900 for hungry families.

This year, the goal was to raise at least $1000. Mrs. Kate Vasey, faculty sponsor of National Art Honor Society, confirmed that the goal was topped this year, and 125 tickets were sold altogether.

“It was great. We had a great turnout and a ton of help from people within the school and National Art Honor Society parents,” Vasey said.

Polo team sparks intrigue

Rumors of an underground Polo Team have circulated recently through the halls of the school.  Everyone seems to ask, over and over again – water polo? Horseback-riding polo?  Marco Polo?  The answer to all is:  none of the above.

So many questions are posed, and yet the answer is the simplest one available, the most obvious one.  Members don’t play water sports or have an odd fascination with deceased explorers. They just wear polo shirts.

“We don’t play it, we wear it,” senior Patrick Stroud said.  “It’s mainly a joke, really.”

Another conflict is whether they are a club or a team. Most people assume it is a club, but the members strongly insist they are a team.

According to Stroud, members Sam Mjalli, Richard Storey, Logan Owens and Darrian Petruzzi first came up with the concept for the nine-member shirt-based team when they happened upon the unlikely coincidence of all four wearing similar polo shirts on the same day.

The other five members of the group, while not the originators, are seniors Allen Graham, Steven Verhagen, Michael Rosetta, and Max Drizin.

It was the consensus of the group to run with the joke and transform it into something far more literal.  The team, which has sanctioned “Polo Monday Mondays,” had shirts printed out and given to its members so they could wear matching team shirts on these days.

But some members stray off the beaten path every once in a while.

“I don’t always wear my Polo team shirt on Polo Monday Mondays.  Sometimes I wear a different one just to switch things up,” Drizin said.

Though they are frequently asked if they are associated with sports, members of the Polo Team say it was never their intention to poke fun at organized athletics clubs.

In truth, they are not an official school club at all, just a group of friends sharing an inside laugh.  They are not out to make statement or anything of the sort.

A couple of them have tried their hand at water polo, though.

“I’ve played water polo,” Graham said.

“Yeah, water polo in freshman gym,” Drizin said.

As of now, the team has yet to secure teacher sponsorship in order to become an officially recognized club.

Sister Cities seeks summer participants

Interested in participating in a student exchange program? Don’t want to devote an entire semester to the experience? Sister Cities International is coordinating volunteers for next year’s program. Established to help foster world relations, Sister Cities works to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation between international communities.

Through the program, Noblesville created a unique alignment with Nova Prata, Brazil, in 1996 and with Cittadella, Italy, when a tri-lateral agreement was formed in 2007.

“This is only the third of such agreements in the past 50 years of Sister Cities’ existence,” state chapter president Henry Cole explained in an interview shortly after the deal was signed.

Last summer, seniors Emily Goggin and Elli Miller (and a handful of other Noblesville students) participated in a youth exchange in which high school-aged children from each city traveled to each other’s homes. Goggin hosted a Brazilian student, and Miller, who recently returned from her trip abroad, hosted an Italian.

Chaperone and organizer Jenny Elliott explained that the duty of each youth ambassador is to represent Noblesville, the state of Indiana, and the United States in a positive light.

“We ask that the ambassadors have a thirst to learn more about other cultures and foreign lands,” she said. Those who host are expected to be available 24/7 to aide their guests, including accompanying them to local attractions. During this summer’s ten-day visit, the group attended trips to surrounding areas to highlight American culture and lifestyle. This included a venture to Holiday World, tours at Lucas Oil Stadium, Victory Field, Butler University, local businesses, and artists’ studios at Bundy Ducks and Strawtown Pottery.

Goggin insists that although the guests were from entirely different parts of the world, an outsider never would have known the difference.

“We knew the same songs, we dressed basically the same, and we liked the same things,” she said.

A couple of the visiting students were even taken to the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince midnight premiere.

“Even though we slept through a lot of it, it was a great experience,” Goggin said.

In the past, the organization has targeted foreign language students for participation because, as Elliott explained, they would have a more intimate understanding of the difficulties one might experience when delving into a new culture. Both Goggin and Miller are former French students. Any Noblesville resident, though, is eligible; he or she need not attend Noblesville High School. This summer, a student from Heritage Christian traveled to Cittadella, and another from Guerin Catholic hosted.

Sister Cities’ main goal is to have the youth of Noblesville form a lasting bond with the students and host families from Cittadella and Nova Prata.

“We’d like the students, and all students, to become active in Noblesville Sister Cities during high school and after college if they return to Noblesville to settle down. If not, we would hope they would become active in [the organization] wherever they settle,” Elliott said. The organization is coordinating an exchange to Nova Prata for next summer, from July 24 to August 3.

Students interested in volunteering may contact Elliott by emailing her at siscity@yahoo.com.

Teaching takes a step out of the classroom

Whether practicing word wall words and making crafts with first graders, or teaching how to analyze a story for eighth graders, the Cadet Teaching class allows students to get actual experience in a career that may decide your future.

For senior Jami Simcox, the class gives her a chance to see how it really feels to help out a fourth grade class. This class is giving her the opportunity to decide if that is the right path for her future. While Simcox helps in her fourth grade class, the teacher helps her  by showing her different teaching techniques and ways of handling that specific age group.

“If other students think they want to be a teacher, then this class can show you if you actually want it or not,” Simcox said, “You may think it is fun in teaching elementary school kids, but you would be surprised at how much work there really is.”

Senior Kaci Hardwick is on her way to becoming an elementary school teacher as she applies for Ball State in hopes of getting into the teacher college. The experience is helping Hardwick get hands-on practice.

“This class lets me interact with the students and experience things in real life, instead of studying and reading from a book in normal classes,” Hardwick said.

First grade teacher and former participant in the Cadet Teaching class Natalie Huber feels the class is a great opportunity for students to see if teaching is the right choice for them.

“First of all, I loved the class, and it is a great way to get hands on experience in a specific career, and it is better to have an idea of what you want to do before you jump into college with no idea,” Huber said.

Instead of reading from a book or getting lectures from teachers, the Cadet Teaching course allows students to shadow teachers and understand what it really takes to be a teacher. The class is every day during blocks three and four, which let students create relationships with the teacher and students. Because of this and the unique class setting, it just may be the right class that could spark a new future life decision.

Senior volunteers with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

“Put together one house, a deserving family, several opinionated designers, seven

days and what do you get? The answer is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” ABC Television Network pitches for its hit Sunday night show. Add 4,200 Indianapolis area volunteers and you’ve got the season finale of the television show, shot in the downtown Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood March 28 through April 4.

Senior Jennifer Robertson watches the show whenever she can win her family TV battle, so when she saw volunteer opportunities available for the Indianapolis finale while watching the news, she jumped at the chance. The news broadcast led her to a website where she filled out a volunteer form with a friend. Even if volunteers had no experience in construction, they could still give needed help.

“There was a place where you could put whether you had specialized skills, like if you were a professional dry-waller, but they tried to get everyone who wanted to volunteer onto the site to help,” Robertson said.

While Robertson was only assigned one shift, she ended up volunteering three times. Shifts ran eight hours or until a volunteer was too tired to work.

“You could always tell when a new flock of volunteers would come in,” Robertson said. “There’d be a whole bunch of energetic people flying around.”

Located on the near northeast side of Indianapolis, the house belongs to the McFarland family, chosen for father Bernard McFarland’s heroic work with Indianapolis kids. According to www.estridgeextremedream.com, Bernard created a program called  “Pack House 2000” that was dedicated to “helping exercise the minds and expanding the dreams” of these kids through the formation of reading groups and field trips around the city to places like libraries, museums, and cultural events.

“The theme of this season is ‘Heroes,’ and he was like a neighborhood hero to the kids,” Robertson said.

The week started with the infamous 9 a.m. wake-up call from show host Ty Pennington to the McFarland family, who was sent to Paris for a week’s vacation just hours after learning they had been selected. Volunteers then flooded the worksite, where they assisted a team of designers and Carmel-based Estridge homebuilders to tear down the unsafe house and begin work on a new house and separate library for Bernard.

According to Robertson, most of the unspecialized volunteer help worked with clean-up. Construction workers would throw trash into large piles that volunteers would then transport to the garbage. Others helped work on the neighborhood, too, with the planting of trees and paving of alleys.

Robertson herself helped to set up barricades, clean up trash, and move bricks, but she also had an unusual task.

“I got to make picture frames inside the house, so any frames on the show with pictures of the family, that was me,” Robertson said.

The team only had seven days to complete the project, a tough task, but one that’s been done many times on the show. People are constantly working, so as soon as the foundation was laid, walls were going up, then drywall, and so on.

“One of the guys told us that it normally takes about four months to build a house, so every day to build that house is condensed into one hour,” Robertson said.

Robertson cited meeting designer Paul DiMeo as one of the highlights of the experience as well as a conversation with a local woman about the impact Bernard had on their neighborhood, but her favorite part was the reveal.

During the reveal, the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition bus parks in front of the newly-built house and with a crowd chant of “Move that bus!” drives forward to reveal the house to the family.

“When they moved the bus, Bernard saw the house and fell to his knees, then hugged his kids and then ran down the street and hugged everyone,” Robertson said. “It was really sweet and touching and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

To maybe catch a glimpse of Robertson or see the reveal yourself, tune into ABC on Sunday May 17 at 8 p.m.