![Senior Jett Mckinney stores all the clothes in his own room, with half of it stored in his closet along with his personal clothes, and the rest taking up space in his room.
“There’s been times [when] there’s so much clothing stored here and it gets overwhelming, so I end up having to sleep somewhere else in the house,” Mckinney said.](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DSC_0951-1200x800.jpg)
![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)
Stepping onto the Gupton Stadium field, the Celebrities get ready to perform their practiced dance to “Lips Are Movin’” in front of other school drill teams. Nov. 13 was their first time attending the Texas Dance Education Association’s Dance/Drill Team Fall Assessment. The Celebrities were able to dance their way to winning the ranking of Division One.
While there are currently no dance UIL competitions, the assessment is the beginning of the committee proposing the competition model to UIL in 2025. The association’s main goal is to bring together different backgrounds of Texas’s drill teams and dance teams.
“We really rallied around each other,” senior captain Mia Caldwell said. “[We] really encouraged each other to do our best and have fun rather than focusing on perfection, and I think that made the difference of today being less stressful and more just making memories together.”
The Celebs have been practicing, learning and improving their performance every practice and every morning since they learned the dance over the summer. The dancers used their shows during halftime to work on making it the best they can.
“We did so much hard work,” sophomore Liv Ruth said. “Yesterday morning and this morning, it was challenging and very crucial but it was all worth it to perform so well for the first time at this competition.”
UIL’s website states their competitions are all about teamwork and representing every school’s motivation and intellect. While the Celebrities don’t have UIL, this assessment shows the other schools what their team is made of. The committee plans on proposing the idea of dance in UIL in June 2025 based on the layout of the assessment.
“Every other sport has a UIL,” junior Paulina Bodek said. “Us finally being able to introduce a UIL activity is important for showcasing that we are also capable of competing like other sports do.”
The dance team doesn’t have many opportunities to perform in front of other schools. Though this is one of their regular routines, it is one of their only times to show the other teams how the Celebrities are regularly performing.
“It was kind of scary performing in front of other schools,” sophomore Dana Jung said. “Watching people in front of us kind of was psyching us out but also, the dance community is a very supportive group of people, so it was nice.”
This is the second of new activities the team has done this year. On Nov. 1, they brought back the “Sister Kick” routine with Leander High School’s Blue Belles. This was a tradition in the early 2000s, but died out when Leander High School was realigned to the 6A division. The Blue Belles were also a part of the dance assessment at Gupton.
“I hope to honestly just have a good group of people around me,” senior Sofia De Leon said. “From going on here as a senior to having a loving community and seeing these girls and just being happy overall.”
