The Bear Facts

December 13, 2025

Good morning! I’m Tate Foertsch!

I’m Alyssa Haugland!

And I’m Aubrey Meyer! You’re listening to the “Bear Facts”, the weekly radio show from Bishop Garrigan High School.

The holiday season is here, and that means a lot of special activities. This past week band students from fifth grade through high school held their Christmas concert, and the junior high and high school choir will have their concert next Monday. You can hear the choir singing Monday night at 7:00 in Friedmann Auditorium.

Garrigan freshman Hope Rooney is taking part in another Christmas performance. Hope and her younger sister Hattie will be among the dancers featured in a production of The Nutcracker ballet that is taking place in Ames this weekend. They’ll be joining professional dancers at Iowa State Center for three shows—this afternoon, tonight, and tomorrow afternoon.

Several members of Garrigan’s dance team will be heading down to Ames to see The Nutcracker. Last week those dancers brought home lots of awards from the state dance and drill team championships in Des Moines. Bishop Garrigan took first place statewide with their pom routine, while their kick entry won second place honors. Solo dancer Delaney Fessler—Arndorfer brought home third place honors. The Bears also won the distinguished academic award an award for outstanding community service.

Ashley Meyer and Ashley Frideres coach this year’s dance team. The dancers include Rosanne Curtis—Ricke, Jayden Deike, Harper Nelson, Addison Laubenthal, Kylie Capesius, Anaya Thomas, and Shiloh Trainer; as well as Abby Deardeufff, Avery Culbertson, Cora Deardeuff, Rylee Garman, Delaney Fessler—Arndorfer, Emma Kollasch, Rachel Kahle, Olivia Roethler, and Hope Rooney. Congratulations, dancers!

Tomorrow the Golden Bear football team will hold their awards banquet. After completing a perfect 13 – 0 season, this year’s Bears are the only undefeated team in school history. The awards keep coming in for this year’s Golden Bears. Last week the Iowa Football Media Alliance named Garrigan senior Tate Foertsch “Mr. Football” for 2025.

In honor of the Bears’ perfect year, special state championship shirts have been designed. The championship logo is available on various T-shirts and sweatshirts, costing between $14 and $52. The order window closes next Tuesday, December 16, and you can find links to the online shop on the student website at bggoldenbears.org or on the Bishop Garrigan Facebook page. They make a great gift for any Golden Bear fan, and they celebrate a special time for our school.

Last Monday four Garrigan quiz bowl students competed in the online 30—20—10 contest. This was one of the toughest competitions the team had done, with a much harder set of questions than similar events had in the past. Even so Tate Foertsch, Amaury Thomas, Eva Kohlhaas, and Marshall Bormann combined to score just over 1,000 points. We should know right before Christmas how that score compares with other teams from around the country.

Rehearsals have begun for large group speech. Miss Renetta Seiler is the head speech coach this year, and she’s working with seventeen students who are competing in a wide range of categories. At the core of the team are seniors Sacha Alesch, Aubrey Meyer, Ava Roethler, Alice Casey, Amaury Thomas, Gabe Swift, Tate Foertsch, and Kayden Graves.

Younger students in large-group speech include Aidan Deitering, Madelyn Tigges, Faith Galwe, Harper Nelson, Shiloh Trainer, Sheila Reding, Kylie Capesius, and Cora Deardeuff. The team will have entries in the categories of Group Improvisation, Ensemble Acting, Radio Broadcasting, Television Newscasting, and Readers Theatre. District contest will be January 24 in Manson. Best wishes, speech!

Our Senior Spotlight this week shines on Gibson Menke. Here to tell you about him is Emmi Bartolo.

Gibson Menke is an Algona native whose biggest activities are golf and trapshooting. His favorite classes at Garrigan are Advanced Biology and Capstone, and away from school he likes working and riding dirt bikes. After graduating, Gibson wants to study agronomy and go into ag aviation. We wish him all the best in the future.

Thanks, Emmi. On our Golden Bear calendar, there’s a quiz bowl tournament in Spirit Lake today that was postponed due to weather from last Saturday. Tonight the Garrigan staff will have their Christmas party.

Also today there’s wrestling in Ogden, a swim meet in Cedar Falls, and the basketball teams are playing Coon Rapids—Bayard at Iowa Central Community College.

Tomorrow is the third Sunday of Advent. The football awards banquet is at 1pm. Monday morning we’ll have an Advent prayer service at school. There’s wrestling in Clarion Monday night, and there’s also the Christmas choir concert.

Tuesday the Bears host Garner—Hayfield—Ventura in a basketball quad, and there’s wrestling at Ridge View in Holstein that night. We’ll have reconciliation Wednesday morning at St. Cecelia’s.

The school board meets Thursday afternoon. There’s a swim meet in Ft. Dodge that night, and the wrestlers will be in Iowa Falls.

We’ll have parish busing at Garrigan next Friday. That night the basketball teams play at North Union, and there’s girls wrestling in Ft. Dodge. Finally next Saturday afternoon there’s the big holiday basketball match-up, with the Bears hosting Algona High.

That’s the “Bear Facts” for this week. Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to catch our special Christmas episode next week from Bishop Garrigan High School.