![After placing second in their respective LDEs at the Capital District contest in early November, freshman Jesus Jaramillo-Gallegos and freshman Wyatt Pickett will compete at the Area XII LDE contest in Georgetown on Nov. 23. Jaramillo-Gallegos is competing in Greenhand Spanish Creed Speaking, while Pickett’s LDE is Greenhand Creed Speaking. “Honestly, [I’m excited for] just traveling around, maybe meeting more people,” Jaramillo-Gallegos said. “And [I’m] nervous about probably just not being able to define my weak areas. I feel like I did decent for my first time ever doing this. I just think it’s fun.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Navy-and-Yellow-Simple-Group-Project-Presentation-1200x675.png)
![Holding up T-wolves, the tour group poses for a picture in the Chinese classroom. Sophomore Lydia Ou, junior Phu Trung and senior Yushan Pan gave a tour to Taiwanese diplomat Andrea Yang on Nov. 8. “I was so excited when I heard I would get to give the tour because it’s a big deal,” Ou said. “She’s from the US embassy for Taiwan, so she’s really important. I’m so privileged [to get this opportunity] and I’m so excited.” Photo by Skyler King](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Main-Taiwan.jpg)
![Sitting at a desk past the rows of books laid out for the Book Fair, senior Kimberley Walters assists people in purchasing books and finding titles. The Book Fair is taking place Dec. 16 through Dec. 20, and is an annual event during which students and faculty have the opportunity to go and purchase books and other trinkets in the library. Kimberley said she encourages all to go to the Book Fair, even if they think they don’t like to read. “If you make reading something that is fun for you and you find the things that you like to read, it will never be a chore,” Walters said. “So [the Book Fair is] a good opportunity to find something that will respark your want to read [like] when you were a child and you went to the book fair and you loved the ‘I survived’ books. Maybe you'll find your ‘I survived’ books of your high school experience, and it'll re-spark that kind of love for reading that may have died out.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Addie-L-47-1200x800.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, sophomore Olivia Mahlmeister and seniors Samantha Jameson, Adhit Eswaramoorthi and Justin Khadavi celebrate completing first chamber in the Congress Meet. All four students advanced to the final chamber. “Out of the 20 kids in the final chamber, we had a seventh, ninth, 11th and 13th, and they took the top four to move on to state,” AP US History and Debate teacher Josh Marsh said. “[Even though] we didn't make state this year, all four of them moving on [and] placing is phenomenal.” Photo courtesy of Josh Marsh](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-Regional-Congress-Team.jpg)
![Standing in front of a small audience, senior Kimberley Walters shares a social criticism poem titled “Pity the Nation” by Lawrence Felinghetti. Every month, sponsored by the poetry club, the library hosts a poetry reading. “I never thought I would be interested in [poetry readings] because I’m not the biggest poetry fan,” Walters said. “I think poetry is a very succinct way to express feelings and get a story across. Whereas lots of books have a span of a whole story, but it’s put in a lot of words. The power of poetry is that you can be so succinct within, and there’s a lot of power within the words that are used.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KIM-1200x800.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)
![Holding the Grand Nationals trophies, drum majors Helashi Wijayawardhana, Abigail Pettey and Eddy Kim pose for a photo. The BOA Grand Nationals competition took place in Indianapolis on Nov. 14-17. “My favorite thing was just looking back at the field, and I was like, ‘Oh, crap. I know all of their names, I know who all of them are’,” Wijayawardahana said. “It's just insane to me that I was able to make so many connections. [Being a drum major] taught me how to build relationships with people who I’m not really that similar to, and how to juggle a ton of things all together.”
Photo courtesy of CPHS Band SmugMug](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AJC.GrandNatsFinals-169-1200x801.jpg)
![Delicately placing the string to form the shape of a cornucopia, seniors Haley Burton and Avery Nelson create the November arrangement for the Flower of the Month Club. This club is led by Advanced Floral Design Students and provides a monthly arrangement to community members who subscribe to receive them. “I think flower of the month club is a really impactful way to show your loved ones ‘hey I really care about you,’ or even if they’re just for yourself, they’re a little pick-me-up throughout the month that [say] ‘I’m doing ok, and these flowers make my day a little bit brighter,” Nelson said. “I like giving people flowers because people value the flowers more and they value themselves more.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ava-Holmes-3-edit.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)
![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)
![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)
Home Sweet Homecoming
T-Wolves Celebrate with Dress Up Days, Football Wins
Senior Gavin Reid lays down in his substitute backpack, an inflatable pool filled with his school supplies. Reid had to bring the entire pool into the classroom for “Anything but a Backpack Day.” “All of my teachers were kind of like, ‘why?’ Every teacher I brought it into, they were like ‘how are you going to get this in there?’” Reid said. “They were like ‘I can’t have you leaving it out there cause I don’t want your stuff getting stolen,’ and so they would just say ‘okay, bring it in.’” (Photo Courtesy of Grace Courtright)
October 7, 2022
Homecoming officially ended on Sept. 23, and it passed with a variety of notable events – mixed with some confusion.
One of the first events that occurred was the Homecoming dance. Here, students got to hang out with friends, play arcade games, take pictures and dance together with a live DJ. According to sophomore Sofia Deleon, this year’s Homecoming had some differences from prior years.
“Last year it was a lot of dispersed people, and it was in groups instead of all together on the dance floor, and then a lot of people were rude last year,” Deleon said. “This year people were nicer, but then again, this year a lot of people didn’t go. This Homecoming was a lot of fun, because I kind of made it that way; A lot of people were like ‘oh, this is gonna be boring’ and I was like no why make it that way, you know? Instead of just being ‘bleh,’ you can always be ‘yay’, you know what I mean?”
Each day of the week following the Homecoming dance had a separate theme, whether that be dressing up as popular celebrity Adam Sandler, pitting the upper and lowerclassmen against each other with the bikers vs. surfers dress theme from the popular Disney movie “Teen Beach Movie” or Wednesday’s “Anything but a Backpack” day. This Wednesday theme involved bringing anything as a substitute for a backpack, which ranged from grocery bags and luggage to even shopping carts for some. Senior Gavin Reid decided to take it a step further, and brought a rectangular inflatable pool he could fit in. Throughout the day, Reid said he had many struggles and reactions to his substitute of a backpack, but had little regret about the decision.
“It was really a pain; there’s the green direction signs, and if you’re holding it above your head it would always hit those [signs], and then getting it through doors, you have to turn it on its side, and that would risk stuff falling out of the side,” Reid said. “[I got] a lot of staring, a lot of videos, a lot of pictures, a lot of ‘oh, I like your backpack.’ I just thought it would be funny, honestly. I saw it and was like ‘okay, what if I just bought this to school for the backpack?’”
The theme on the day of the Homecoming game was “Green Out,” in which one would wear either a green-colored outfit or, for students like senior Kylie Curnutt, the traditional Homecoming overalls. The Homecoming overalls are a tradition saved for senior year, in which they will buy and customize their own pair of overalls to celebrate becoming a senior.
“I’ve always, since freshman year, loved looking at all the overalls that all the seniors decorated and thought it would be really fun,” Curnutt said. “I just sat down and it took me a couple hours to decide what I wanted to do, and I looked on Pinterest and I saw some stuff on TikTok, and that’s kind of where I pulled inspiration from. It probably took me around 10 hours or so in total, just cutting out all the fabric letters individually, and then I completely glittered the top half of them, and that took a really long time to actually figure out and then execute.”
The themed week led to the main event, the Homecoming football game which would reveal the winner of the Homecoming court. A decision was made, however, that there would be only one winner, instead of both a king and queen as is traditionally done. This was something that senior and runner up Ryan Taylor, who ran with senior Audrey Johnson, said he didn’t expect.
“I was honestly more sad that Audrey didn’t win than she was sad that she didn’t win,” Taylor said. “The whole point of Homecoming is to win a king and queen, and they didn’t have us do that this year, which was kind of a bummer.”
Regardless, the results showed that senior Carver McDonald was crowned the Homecoming king, with Taylor the first runner-up and senior Kate Newman the second runner-up. Prior to the single-crown decision, Newman was McDonald’s running mate. McDonald said he experienced a great deal of excitement and happiness from winning Homecoming, especially after a long week of waiting and nervousness.
“I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what was going to happen, and it happened to be me,” McDonald said. “Shoutout to the people who inspire me, y’all are the best to me. Anytime I get that crown, I get that inspiration and I feel official to be a king.”
