![Broadcast, yearbook and newspaper combined for 66 Interscholastic League Press Conference awards this year. Yearbook won 43, newspaper won 14 and broadcast took home nine. “I think [the ILPC awards] are a great way to give the kids some acknowledgement for all of their hard work,” newspaper and yearbook adviser Paige Hert said. “They typically spend the year covering everyone else’s big moments, so it’s really cool for them to be celebrated so many times and in so many different ways.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/edited-ILPC.jpg)
![Looking down at his racket, junior Hasun Nguyen hits the green tennis ball. Hasun has played tennis since he was 9 years old, and he is on the varsity team. "I feel like it’s not really appreciated in America as much, but [tennis] is a really competitive and mentally challenging sport,” Nguyen said. “I’m really level-headed and can keep my cool during a match, and that helps me play a bit better under pressure.” Photo by Kyra Cox](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/hasun.jpg)
![Bringing her arm over her head and taking a quick breath, junior Lauren Lucas swims the final laps of the 500 freestyle at the regionals swimming competition on date. Lucas broke the school’s 18-year-old record for the 500 freestyle at regionals and again at state with a time of 4:58.63. “I’d had my eye on that 500 record since my freshman year, so I was really excited to see if I could get it at regionals or districts,” Lucas said. “ State is always a really fun experience and medaling for the first time was really great. It was a very very tight race, [so] I was a bit surprised [that I medaled]. [There were] a lot of fast girls at the meet in general, [and] it was like a dogfight back and forth, back and forth.” Photo by Kaydence Wilkinson](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Kaydence-2.7-23-edit-2.jpg)
![As her hair blows in the wind, senior Brianna Grandow runs the varsity girls 5K at the cross country district meet last Thursday. Grandow finished fourth in the event and led the varsity girls to regionals with a third place placement as a team. “I’m very excited [to go to regionals],” Grandow said. “I’m excited to race in Corpus Christi, and we get to go to the beach, so that’s really awesome.” Photo by Addison Bruce](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/brianna.jpg)
Driving into the school, a student driver is looking for a spot to park in, moving their head from left to right, they try to find an empty spot when they notice…Homer Simpson?
Before the beginning of the school year, dozens of senior students camped out in the school parking lot and poured hours of work into painting their senior parking spots. They vary in design and range from movie poster parodies and video game characters to even Michael Jordan. Students bought a $40 pass to park on campus through the AP website and seniors were offered the option to paint a parking spot for an additional $75. The painting costs varied with how many supplies students needed for their design.
Seniors Hadrian Hurn and Mercy Forrister are two of the many of the seniors who decided to paint the parking spots purchased from the school’s Project Grad fundraiser. Hurn and Forrister had the idea to paint Lightning McQueen and Sally, from the movie “Cars,” wearing graduation hats.
“I think we wanted to start out with something that was Disney related,” Forrister said. “We kind of went through our ideas of just couples in Disney, like Wally and Eve. Those were our other ideas. But then we got around to it and we were like, that’s a very good idea.”
But they weren’t the only ones who painted a movie. Starting her new adventure, senior Alivia Robinson also themed her parking spot off a Pixar movie; she painted the flying house from the movie “Up.”
“I got help from my family painting my parking spot,” Robinson said. “I really wanted my spot to be more colorful and stand out more. My sister actually helped me with my spot. Whenever she was a senior, she didn’t get to paint her spot.”
Some parking spots take longer to paint than others. For example, it took Hurn and Forrister over 13 hours to paint their spot across multiple days.
“We were there on Saturday night,” Forrister said. “We stayed overnight waiting in line until 10 in the morning and then we painted for six or seven hours that day. And then on Aug. 29, we did another four hours. It wasn’t that long, but we went, and we finished all the details of the smaller bits. Some were less complicated, ours was more detailed.”
Hurn and Forrister experienced many challenges and inconveniences while painting their spots, but managed to pull through.
“The worst part about painting our parking spots was getting sunburned from standing out there,” Hurn said. “We came back yesterday and there was a bunch of paint that was missing from the cars and stuff, but whatever!”
Robinson spent about 10 hours painting her spot, but also had to juggle softball practice and being able to find time to paint.
“I camped out overnight to paint my parking spot,” Robinson said. “As soon as I got my spot, I had to hurry to softball practice. We selected the spot at 10 a.m. and I had practice at 11 a.m., so I had to go home, get ready and then rush back. I got to paint my spot starting at like 3 or 4 p.m. and I stayed until about 9pm, so I had to come back another day.”
Many people decided to camp out overnight to ensure they were able to paint their spots.
“The people who spent the night were mainly athletes or dancers,” Robinson said. “Since there are limited spots in the back and in the athletic area, we all wanted to make sure we got the spot we wanted. For me, I wanted a spot in the back and on the curb.”
Since Robinson painted the house from “Up,” she included the balloons attached to the house, which, according to her, were one of the hardest parts to paint.
“It was mainly hard because, painting all those balloons, you mess one up and then you’d have to redo multiple of them,” Robinson said. “I did the balloons last, it was late and I just wanted to go home.”
Painting a spot has its many challenges. If students are thinking of painting one, Hurn and Forrister shared some advice to keep in mind.
“Buy a little bit more paint than you think you’ll need,” Forrister said. “Bring some sort of fan because it definitely gets hot. Be creative and do something that you think represents yourself, but don’t take it too seriously, it’s all fun and games. I’m glad we did what we did. Do what you like to do, it doesn’t matter what other people think.”
