![The cross country team poses for the camera after finishing the district meet. The varsity boys, JV boys and JV girls all placed third and the varsity girls placed fourth. “Coach put in the right training for us for this season, so I think we will be peaking this week and the next couple of weeks,” varsity runner and junior Nathan Kukla said. “The chances of making it to state are very high, but we don’t settle for the lowest and there is always going to be that chance, so [we] race for the best.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Heidi-831-1200x900.jpg)
![Sucking in a breath of air, freshman Lily Pope competes in the 200 yard individual medley. On Oct. 25, the swim team competed in the AISD Swim Invitational. Overall, the girls team took second place and the boys team came in eleventh. “My favorite stroke is butterfly because I do the best in that stroke,” Pope said. “I feel like [butterfly] can test how [your ability] to convince yourself to keep going. The hardest part of swimming is convincing yourself to stay strong and keep pushing during a hard race [when] everything is tired.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/POPE-1200x804.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, Author Ehigbor Okosun, members of Page Turners, and other students reflect on the author's visit. “I thought the visit was great,” Senior Amia De Leon said. “It was interesting talking to her and [getting to know] her process and her thoughts and books in general. But I think the reason it went well [was that] people got to ask questions. I'm glad that she said so much in response to the questions and it wasn't just one and done. [The author’s responses] felt very articulate.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Sebastian-5-1200x800.jpg)
![Standing in front of the field at a freshman football game, cheerleader freshman Jacob Gaudreau along with teammate freshman Bella Gibson pose for a photo during halftime of game. “[Cheer has] definitely given me a much more outgoing personality,” Gaudreau said. “I used to be very introverted, so it's definitely made me more extroverted towards people.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ingrid-204-1200x800.jpg)
![Holding a wooden pizza toy, senior Taylor Peterson plays with small children in Bucaramanga, Colombia. During the summer, Peterson traveled to Colombia to help build an elementary school that only had two classrooms but five or six grades with one teacher. “We add[ed] two more classrooms,” Peterson said. “It’s kind of hard when you have two or three grades in one classroom and you only have one teacher. It’s very hard to actually get some beneficial learning. [The extra classrooms will give the students] a better quality of education because they’ll actually have a place specific for their learning.” Photo by Taylor Peterson](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Taylor-P.png)
![Swinging with his arm extended, senior Nolan Park hits the ball smoothly over the net and to the opponent’s side. Park is one of four varsity tennis captains and helped the team win district championships. “Winning district champs was a pretty awesome feeling,” Park said. “We had lost to Liberty Hill a couple of weeks before, but when we played them [again], we came out and really took care of business. We took them out and it was just a really awesome night.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Kassidy-419.jpg)
![Standing proud, varsity senior athletes Rafael Escobar, Griffin Jacobs, Jakob Martin, and juniors Jackson Springer and Jack Morris pose with their newly earned medals. The varsity team finished third out of 14 teams on Sept. 25. “The team's primary goal is to win the district championship,” head coach Cody Price said. "We're confident that with our action plan in place, we can accomplish this mission. [For the next tournament], our preparation involves assessing our strengths and weaknesses, celebrating milestones and creating individual development plans." Photo courtesy of Cody Price](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/golf.jpg)
Frequent visitors of YouTube may have acknowledged the increasingly noticeable presence of advertising banners adorning favorite music videos. These omnipresent logos and ads are the product of the video advertising company VEVO which launched in December 2009. The VEVO website had an astonishing number of views upon its opening, overshooting even estimates for its yearly goal. The site now gets over 60 million visitors each month and about 1.7 billion worldwide streams in the U.S. and Canada. Despite being riddled with glitches and other problems, its popularity has risen quickly over the past year to become one of the most comprehensive music video streaming sites, partnering with internet giants like YouTube to increase their audience.
The company’s president and CEO, Rio D. Caraeff, has confirmed that VEVO’s goal is ultimately profit, both for the artists and for VEVO itself. About 50 percent of ad sales go directly back to the artist, and the VEVO site has a shop where fans can buy artist’s merchandise. It also provides links directly to iTunes and Amazon to make purchasing an artist’s songs easier. VEVO intends to collectively organize music videos in a single comprehensive and professional way. Already boasting an extensive library of music from major record groups such as Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and the Abu Dhabi Media Company, the company will continue to grow over the coming years. No more clicking through pages of YouTube videos to find a high quality version of a favorite song; it’s most likely on VEVO.
“It can definitely help get more music out there and to a wider audience. I mean, once a band starts getting pretty well known, you need some form of money to help constitute it.” Austin Miles, senior said. “But this could create more of an easy market than art.”
Quite a few people are unhappy about VEVO, arguing that the company has purely profit-driven motives.
“Sure, it’s nice for bands that are signed with a record label,” Liano Perez, senior, said. “But VEVO writes off smaller bands because they will focus on promoting the bigger, more profitable ones.”
As VEVO continues to grow, their viewers can only hope that ad space stays to a minimum and that a wide variety of music is presented. Plans are in the works for VEVO to expand their already far-reaching corporate image beyond music videos and merchandise as the company hopes to expand on its original content with band interviews and live concerts. Love it or hate it, the advertising conglomerate is poised to stick around for a while.
