Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas everyone! I'm Mike McAlpine!
And I'm Michael Loebach! Season's greetings from all of us at the "Bear
Facts", and Happy Holidays from everyone here at Bishop Garrigan High
School.
While it's been a warm, brown winter, we've been trying hard to get into the Christmas spirit here at Garrigan. Every year there's lots of different projects that help spread holiday cheer to everyone. The
student council, for instance, participates in the county's Adopt-a-Family program. They take some of the proceeds from the annual magazine drive to buy presents that we hope will make Christmas a little merrier for a few area families.
The Garrigan and Seton faculty help out, too. Like the student council, they chipped in to help buy presents for needy people in the area. In addition to that, when they held their staff Christmas party earlier this month, the faculty donated over $500. Part of that money helped to buy gifts for area care center residents, while the rest was donated to the Kossuth County Food Pantry. Other holiday projects include delivering holiday baskets to shut-ins and caroling for community organizations. We hope all these projects will help make this a truly merry Christmas for everyone.
Last weekend Garrigan hosted the first-ever BGHS Math Competition. The event was a qualifying contest for the Great Plains Math League. The Bears took second place in their home contest, and five Garrigan students qualified for state. The state qualifiers include Steven Kellner, Chris Kohlhaas, Rebecca McGuire, John Kohlhaas, and Rosalind Kirsch. All these students will advance to the state math contest, which will be held next spring in Waverly. Congratulations to Coach Daryl Kohlhaas and the math team!
One of the busiest groups at Garrigan is publications. They produce the Paw Prints, which you can read each month in the Algona Upper Des Moines, as well as the annual Garrigold yearbook. Mindy Buscher and Heather Fickbohm are the editors of this year's publications. Working under them are seniors Ashley Arndorfer, Jamie Roethler, Mark Baumert, Jenna Becker, and Adam Raney, as well as Mandy Rahm, Emily O'Kane, Bob Brandenburg, Bridget Buscherfeld, and Brianna Miller. The rest of the seniors in publications are Jill Goodman, Stephanie Hilbert, Rebecca McGuire, and Teresa McGuire.
Publications advisor Mary McCall has just two juniors on her staff: Justin Fickbohm and Steven Kellner. There's a big crop of sophomores, though, including Melissa Vaske, Lisa Thilges, Jason Lallier, Nicole Krieps, and Jenna Kollasch, together with Ashley Berte, Amber Golwitzer, Amanda Elbert, and John Kohlhaas. Rounding out the publications staff for 2001-2002 are freshmen Holly Lancaster and Nicole Reding. Thanks to all of them for the hard work they do!
Our Senior Spotlight for the holidays shines on Ashley Arndorfer and Chris Girres. Here to tell you about them is
Cathy Hellman.
Ashley Arndorfer recently broke the school record for points scored in girls basketball. She's also a top-notch athlete in volleyball and track, and away from sports you might have seen her in the choir. Ashley gets top-notch grades in tough courses, and she's well respected by both teachers and students. She's planning on a pre-law major at college. Good luck, Ashley!
Chris Girres comes to Garrigan from the Bode area. He enjoys classes like Advanced Algebra, Government, and Composition, but he's not a big fan of Chemistry. When he's not at school, Chris works on the family farm, and he enjoys playing video games in his spare time. Chris will also be off to college next year, and we wish him the very best of luck.
Thanks, Cathy! Because of the holidays, we'll be taking you through three weeks of activities on our Golden Bear
calendar. The first week is pretty bare, though, because there's no activities at all over Christmas vacation.
Classes resume on Thursday, January 3, 2002. Friday the 4th is the Feast of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the namesake of Seton Grade School. We'll be having our school Christmas mass at 10:50 that morning.
Friday night the basketball Bears will travel to Hampton. Then on Saturday, January 5, there's the North Central Iowa Bandmasters Association Honor Band.
Sunday the 6th is the Feast of the Epiphany. Monday the 7th there's freshman basketball at Algona High, and Tuesday the 8th the JV and varsity teams will play at Humboldt.
Semester tests start Wednesday, January 9th. At noon that day the senior class will dine at the Godfather's buffet as their reward for taking first place in the magazine drive last fall. Thursday the sophomores will enjoy Subway party subs as their second place prize.
The freshman basketball teams play Emmetsburg on Wednesday the 9th, with the boys at home and the girls away. Then on Friday, January 11th, there's a basketball quad with the Bears hosting Ft. Dodge St. Edmond. That night the baseball and softball teams will be serving a pasta dinner.
That wraps up the "Bear Facts" for 2001. We'll be off for the next two weeks due to the holiday break, but we'll be back on the air again on Saturday, January 12th, 2002. Until then we wish you a very happy holiday, and we'll see you again in the new year with more news from Bishop Garrigan High School.
