![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)
![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)
![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)
![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)
![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)
![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)
Reserved Parking
Seniors Paint Their Own Spots For Second Year
Ashlyn Gazlay poses with her brand new parking spot featuring her car in the background. Trying not to “be basic,” she said, she decided to mix her pink and green paint both with white to make two new colors and make the lines different sizes. “I looked up some ideas on Pinterest, but those were ones everyone was doing, so I decided to just use the two colors I wanted -green and pink- and just drew random, curved lines that were different sizes and added my name,” Gazlay said. “The process was pretty long and took four separate days to do it.” (Photo Courtesy of Ashlyn Gazlay)
November 18, 2022
For a second year, the school has brought back seniors being able to paint parking spots. For $75, seniors were able to purchase a parking spot, submit a design to paint on that spot, and park in the painted spot for the rest of the year
Early in the morning on Sept. 18, students lined up outside the gym to get the approval to start painting. The parking lot was surrounded by caution tape, and the only items allowed inside the spots were paint. Students, alongside their family and friends, spent their weekend perfecting their spot to arrive the day after with a flashy new parking stall reserved for them.
“It’s helpful because I have a morning off period, so I know I have a good parking spot,” senior Ashlyn Gazlay said.” Because I’m in PALS, I go off campus in the middle of the day, and I would come back to literally no spots left and have to park on the curb.”
With 2022 being the second year of the school bringing the parking spots to life, senior Wyatt Turner mentions how big the school’s parking lot is, and how other students shouldn’t be worried about no parking spots being available.
“I think it’s something cool that we get to do,” Turner said. “I mean there are a lot of spots, it’s not [going to be] the end of the world if they clear off some spots for seniors. I think it’s nice they did this.”
Turner’s spot, for example, was covered in different colors and stripes, each color representing each first responder. With America’s stars in the corner, the colors of the flag represented gray for corrections, yellow for dispatchers, red and white for nurses, blue and white for EMS, red for firefighters, blue for police and green for military.
“I always loved and appreciated the work that our first responders do for us, so I wanted to do something to give back to them and show them my support,” Turner said. “It took a while to do, but I wanted to make sure it was good and I wasn’t just going to do a half job on it. So it took some time, but I enjoyed it.”
Senior Ella Downey knew she wanted to do something that featured her favorite artist, Harry Styles. She decided to paint her background pink, then add one of her favorite Harry Styles quotes in the middle.
“It’s significant to me because it means I get a specific spot every day and I don’t have to worry about parking,” Downey said. “I love seeing Harry’s quote each day I go to school.”
The parking spots that gained the most attention on the following Monday were the Home Depot spots. Led by senior Lucas Tenrreiro, seniors Julian Rabago, Mikail Sadic, Aidan Ursey, Austin Parente, Clayton Yeoman, Patrick Riordan, and Jonah Jordan all claim the infamous spots, also helped by senior Dominic Caruso and juniors Aidan Gonzales and Luke Barsun in the painting process.
“The Home Depot is the name and brand of our friend group and has been a running inside joke for us for years, so a Home Depot logo represented us,” Tenrreriro said. “The idea for multiple spots that all come together to form one huge spot is something that brings us together and signifies our friend group being unified. Nobody has to park in a particular part of the logo, but we still park together.”
The group decided to take a different approach to the spots. While most seniors painted one that was important to themselves, they came up with a logo that was significant to their friend group. Tenrreiro said there were pros and cons of doing the simple, but well thought of group parking spots.
“The planning and execution was very difficult,” Tenrreiro said. “I originally designed some plans for each square to design them perfectly, and it worked for a couple of spots, but once mistakes started adding up we had to improvise. Overall, for all of the challenges and setbacks, I am very proud of how well it came out, and that we were able to accomplish this. I definitely think it made the friendship more connected. Projects that involve all of us and bring us together, like the parking spots, are the sort of things that define our friend group, and helps us be so close.”
