![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)
Hoppe wins $10,000 Scholarship at Skillathon
At the County stock show in January, junior Charlie Hoppe directs his pig. The competition requires the competitors to look at the judges while keeping control of the pigs. “It can sometimes be really difficult to control the pigs,” Hoppe said. “Knowing where exactly to go, all at the same time keeping an eye on the judges and your surroundings, really makes you be on top of your toes.”
March 25, 2015
The Swine Skillathon is a pig competition where junior Charlie Hoppe won a $10,000 scholarship on Feb. 11-13. This competition helps expand the swine industry to students that are in FFA or interested in this specific industry. Students from high schools can compete for the winning scholarship of $10,000, after passing the requirements of the competition. Hoppe has participated in the competition before, but this was his first win.
“I did the competition last year so I knew from participating in the first time, that I wanted to do it again and try to get that scholarship,” Hoppe said. “I suspected that I was going to do it again during the school year, and so I started preparing for it and signed up in November, so from mid-December to early February I studied and spent the bulk of my time for training for it.”
Hoppe didn’t prepare alone, FFA sponsor and agriculture teacher Jack Winterrowd helped Hoppe learn the necessary information for the competition. The assessment covers skeletal parts, cuts of meat and tools of the trade. Hoppe tried several different methods of preparation for the competition.
“After they posted all the study material online I printed it out and looked over it whenever I got the chance,” Hoppe said. “Then I practiced for about three months preparing for the hard part of the competition, the essay requirement. There was also a speech at the end, if you made it to the finals; so I went over current topics and prepared what my speech could potentially be over, it took a while to get the right topic.”
The $10,000 scholarship really motivated Hoppe to enter the competition again, especially after not winning last year’s competition.
“We were there anyway showing purebred gilts and so it was just another opportunity to compete,” Hoppe said. “I always had been interested in the swine industry and I wanted to do things with pigs and learn about them, so the competition got my attention; I felt like I could do well in it this year and winning one of those scholarships was my major incentive for doing it.”
