![The cross country team poses for the camera after finishing the district meet. The varsity boys, JV boys and JV girls all placed third and the varsity girls placed fourth. “Coach put in the right training for us for this season, so I think we will be peaking this week and the next couple of weeks,” varsity runner and junior Nathan Kukla said. “The chances of making it to state are very high, but we don’t settle for the lowest and there is always going to be that chance, so [we] race for the best.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Heidi-831-1200x900.jpg)
![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)
![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)
![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)
To the student body of Cedar Park High School:
It seems to me that our generation is becoming more and more apathetic towards issues around the world. If you ask a typical 16 year old what was on the news last night, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you. If one were to ask this teenager about current events, such as the latest economic crises in Mexico or even news within our own country, it’s doubtful that many students would know what you were talking about. How many high school sophomores can talk about the increase in the stimulus package that Vice President Joe Biden recently announced – not many. However, if you bring up Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMA awards, these same sophomores would probably be able to tell you all about it.
While global issues do not affect us suburban, middle-class high school students directly, these events definitely affect us indirectly. Anything that goes on within our own nation really does affect us as students. What is happening in the world now defines the future, and as soon-to-be-voting American citizens we need to pay attention in order to make educated decisions in the future.
I won’t deny that many students have reached out to global issues such as the disastrous earthquake in Haiti, the Invisible Children organization and the charity work involved in mission trips. I am consistently amazed with the amount of hard work that students put into raising money for so many different causes. However, the everyday issues, the ones that don’t kill thousands of people, seem to be overlooked. There are things we need to be aware of that aren’t posted on your favorite celebrity’s blog or talked about on the Bobby Bones Show.
There are several ways a student can educate themselves, whether it be taking that current event project in your History class seriously, or turning on the morning news while getting ready for school. Also, with today’s technological world you can subscribe to news sites and have breaking news instantly delivered to your email or even download a news app for your Blackberry or iPhone. We have so many resources all around us; why not browse CNN.com as you chat with friends on Facebook? Why not read a newspaper while you wait for your friend to come pick you up? Why not make an effort to stay informed of noteworthy events around the world?
As a high school newspaper staff, The Wolfpack is constantly striving to report on noteworthy news events around the school and even around the community. In this issue, we cover everything from students at Cedar Park participating in the Latin Forum to budget saving ideas for the prom season. While some of these stories you see in the paper may seem boring, try reading them. They caught the interest of the student who wrote it, so maybe the story will interest you too. If you don’t like something in our paper and have any critiques or suggestions, let us know! We want to print news that students are interested in and we welcome comments. They let us know that we do have some readership and we are always looking to improve. And, if you really want to make a difference in our paper, apply to join our staff!
