The Bear Facts
March 15, 2014
Good morning! I’m Brittany Kirsch!
I’m Kara Eischen!
I’m Jake Hamilton!
And I’m Erin Quinln! Welcome once again to the “Bear Facts”, where it’s a busy week here at Bishop Garrigan High School!
A bus load of BGHS students left early this morning for Sioux City. They’re competing at the state individual speech contest at East High School. Fourteen Golden Bear entries earned I’s at district and qualified for state contest. In Prose Hannah Bernhard is reading about “Science Fiction Aliens”, Taylor Illg is presenting “The Coach”, and Dorothy Kirsch is reading “Oh, Those Modern Inventions”. Meanwhile Christian Mathews is presenting a poetic version of “The Three Little Pigs”.
Levi Bernhard and Mark Fakler are performing at state in Improvisation. Levi is also telling Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Also in Storytelling Morgan Frideres will present “Fancy Nancy and the Mean Girl”, and Emily Riesenberg will tell the story “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”. In Expository Address Mariana Pacheco will talk about Costa Rica, while Hannah Bernhard’s speech is called “I Spy: Gadgets in Espionage”.
The final category in which the Bears are entered is Musical Theatre. Dorothy Kirsch is singing “Macavity” from Cats, Christian Matthews will present “Close Every Door” from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Levi Capesius’ presentation is “Where Is Love” from Oliver. Best wishes to all the speech performers and to coaches Mary McCall and David Burrow.
Last Thursday ten Garrigan science students travelled to Cherokee for the regional Envirothon, together with biology teacher Beany Bode. The Envirothon is a competition of knowledge and skills with an ecological theme. Competing for BGHS this year were juniors Kristian McGuire, Morgan Frideres, Emily Riesenberg, and Taylor Frideres; and sophomores Zac Kibby, Kylie Fox, Joseph Espinosa, Michael Condoleon, Alex McGuire, and Andrew Lallier. Congratulations to all the Envirothon competitors!
Next Thursday a large group of Garrigan music students will be headed south for a long weekend in Music City—Nashville, Tennessee. They’ll be boarding a charter bus at 7:00 Thursday night and travel the night to reach Nashville the following morning. While in Tennessee they’ll see Andrew Jackson’s home at the Hermitage as well as the replica of the classical Greek Parthenon.
The students will tour the Grand Ole Opry, as well as Opry Mills and the lavish Opryland Hotel. They’ll take a cruise on a showboat and enjoy line dancing at the Wildhorse Saloon. A highlight will be the Country Music Hall of Fame and a professional recording session at the same studio where Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton made their recordings. The group will be gone all next weekend, returning home late Sunday night.
Next Monday and Tuesday we’ll have parent/teacher conferences, as well as registration for the coming school year. Many students—especially sophomores and juniors—have spent a long time working out their schedules for next year. We hope they’ve got everything finalized now and that all their choices work out for them. Conferences and registration will be at the Rochleau Center at Seton Monday and Tuesday from 3:30 to 6:30pm.
Because Garrigan is a Catholic school, there are many opportunities for us to show and develop our Christian faith, and we’ve had even more of those during the season of Lent. In many of our classes we’ve said a special Lenten prayer each day, and we’ve also been studying the prayer process and different types of prayer.
In addition to our regular weekly masses, we’re also holding Stations of the Cross at school three times during Lent. Garrigan students have helped out with many service projects during Lent, and coming up in April we’ll have a special all-school retreat during Holy Week.
Each fall many people donate to the Garrigan calendar drive, but they rarely see the direct results of the money they give. There’s a new example around school of where those calendar donations go. The calendar money goes to our transportation budget, and much of it was used to buy a Chevy Traverse that gets much better gas mileage than our other school vehicles and will provide a more efficient way of transporting small groups of students. Thanks to everyone who supported the calendar drive and helped us update our transportation.
Tomorrow we’ll have our championship game in intramural basketball. Again this year the top team in the regular season was made up of coaches and other staff members. The top two student teams will face off in the championship. Jake Hamilton, Mark Fakler, Tony Kollasch, Taylor Illg, Zach Kollasch, Nick Kayser, and Corey Weydert have a 4 – 1 record overall; while Landen Studer, Andrew Lallier, Jedd Magill, Stephen McCall, Alex McGuire, Jacob Berte, and Cameron Langermann bring a 3 – 2 record to the championship game. We’ll update you on the results on next week’s show.
Our Senior Spotlight this week shines on Karla Tenorio—Medina. Here to tell you about her is
Taylor Hovey.
Karla comes to Garrigan all the way from Mexico. While we consider her a member of the Class of 2014, technically she’s already graduated from high school, and she’s at Garrigan primarily as a way to improve her English skills. She’s living with the Byrkeland family, and her activities this year include being a track manager. We wish Karla all the best in the future.
Thanks, Taylor! On our Golden Bear calendar this week, there’s state speech today at Sioux City East. Tomorrow is the intramural championship, and the danz squad has their awards banquet tomorrow night.
Boys golf practice begins on Monday. Monday and Tuesday nights we’ll have conferences and registration at the Rochleau Center. Then Wednesday we’ll begin the day with a school mass.
Wednesday afternoon the sophomores will tour area businesses on their career day. Then on Thursday afternoon we’ll have our annual all-school pickleball tournament. Thursday night the music students leave for Nashville.
There’s no school next Friday. Finally next Saturday the quiz bowl team is back in action, as they compete at Alta—Aurelia.
That’s the “Bear Facts” for this week. Thanks for joining us, and be sure to tune in again next week for more news from Bishop Garrigan High School.
