The Bear Facts

March 12, 2016




Good morning! I’m James Quinlin!

I’m Andrew Lallier!

And I’m Devin Degen! Welcome once again to the “Bear Facts”, the weekly radio update from Bishop Garrigan High School.

Last night the Golden Bear quiz bowl team held their sixth annual community quiz bowl tournament. Each year the quiz bowl students themselves organize this tournament and write the questions to provide a fun trivia constitution for people from around the area. The income from the tournament helps pay some of the expenses for the team’s trip to the National Academic Champonships in summer.

This summer seven quiz bowl students will be competing at nationals in Chicago. Senior Joseph Espinosa and sophomores Noah Buscher and Ben Degen are all making return trips to nationals. Joining them will be junior Levi Capesius, sophomore Sam Trainer, and freshmen Logan Heying and Gabe Trainer. The tournament will be June 10 – 14.

Garrigan qualified to make its seventeenth trip to nationals by winning three quiz bowl tournaments last fall. The Bears were the champions at the Ankeny Scholastic Bowl, the Top of Iowa Conference Tournament, and the Spirit Lake Invitational Quiz Bowl. Congratulations to the quiz bowl team and to coach David Burrow.

Today seven Garrigan students are over in Moville for the Iowa High School Speech Association state individual contest at Woodbury Central High School. Levi Capesus will be the Bears’ first performer of the day. He’ll present the Musical Theatre selection “Put on a Happy Face” around 10:15am. Then late in the morning Gabe Trainer will compete in Literary Program with “Ah, Bacon”.

Around 1:00 Sam Trainer will tell the story “Clever Gretl” and Tommy Kollasch will read the Prose selection “Detention”. At 1:30 Noah Buscher will present the Literary Program “The Awe and Wonder of the Universe”, and around 1:45 Levi Capesius will act out a scene called “How to Be the Popular Guy in High School”. 

The final entries are around 2:15, with Chloe Garman acting the scene “Born a Girl”, and then in Prose Sam Trainer presenting “Baseball vs. Football” and Caitlin Thilges reading “The Waltz”. Best wishes to the speech team, and to coaches Mary McCall, David Burrow, and Jake Rosenmeyer. Break a leg, everyone!

Last Tuesday we held our annual Academic Banquet, where we honored the top students at Garrigan. In addition to noting all those with a 3.5 grade point average or higher, some special awards were also presented. One of the most prestigious was the Bausch and Lomb science award, which went to senior Devin Degen.

Also at Academic Banquet they announced the results of the American Mathematics Competition exam, which the top math students took last month. Freshman Preston Kohlhaas was the top score at Garrigan, and he also had one of the top freshman scores in the whole country, with 114 points. The other top scores on the AMC were from juniors Ryan Kenyon and Levi Capesius. Congratulations to these students.

The warmer weather reminds us that golf season will be starting soon. This year’s Golden Bear girls team includes junior Chloe Garman; sophomores Lexi Berte and Grace Menke, and freshman Isabella Capesius. The state champion boys have a much larger team. They include returning seniors Andrew Lallier, Landen Studer, Michael Condoleon, and Zach Boelter.

Other golfers are juniors Logan Capesius, Andrew Thilges, Donovan Berte, Charlie Stevens, and James Burns; sophomores Parker Schiltz, Tommy Kollasch, Myles Koob, and Zach Muller; and freshman Luke Bormann. Good luck throughout the spring, golfers!

Our Senior Spotlight this week shines on Jacob Berte. Jacob is a native of the Whittemore area whose biggest interests are in farming and mechanical work. In his time at Garrigan his favorite courses have been science classes like Ecology. He’s already been successful with farm work, and he plans a future in agriculture. We wish Jacob all the best in the future.

On our Golden Bear calendar this week, there’s state individual speech contest today in Moville. Tomorrow the girls basketball team has their awards banquet, and we’ll wrap up intramural basketball tomorrow night.

Monday Garrigan will host a long-range regional planning meeting. Then on Thursday the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines will present a special program at Garrigan. Finally next Friday and Saturday will be the spring play, Anne Frank and Me.

That’s the “Bear Facts” for this week. Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to join us again next week for more news from Bishop Garrigan High School.