![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)
![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)
![Sitting with her friend senior Sohpia Struve at last year’s Austin City Limits Festival, senior Ava Zuniga poses for a picture under a pavilion. They are frequent attendees at ACL, an annual music festival at Zilker Park. “I would recommend seeing a bunch of people,” Zuniga said. “This past year, we camped out for Chappell [Roan] for a really long time. I think the whole point of ACL, [which] is a lot of fun, is that you can go see so many different people, even if you don’t know them. So by camping by one person, it really limits yourself from being able to go see a bunch of people.” Photo courtesy of Ava Zuniga](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/EE9E9484-FE6F-4AA0-B5F5-0C177AB32841-1200x857.jpeg)
![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 the support team sits and poses for a photo in the cafeteria with the counseling team they eagerly wait to start their day. "We [all] seem to be a team, I get up every day and there's days where I don't want to go to work today, but I'm thankful that I have a job and I'm blessed to have what I have," Christopherson said. Photo Courtesy of Julie Weltens.](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AF9E8470-10D7-4C91-BF28-EC8F86BAB66C-1200x852.jpeg)
![Jumping off the ground, senior linebacker Bennett Patton snatches the ball out of the air for an interception at Thursday’s game against Chaparral. Patton had two interceptions in the 56-14 victory, tying the school record for interceptions in a game. “I was just playing the game,” Patton said. “[I’m] going to go into next week, forget about it and stay humble.” Photo by Harper Chapman](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/bennett-interception.jpg)
The cross country team competed at the district meet in Round Rock last Thursday. The varsity boys were named district champions and the varsity girls won third place as a team.
“It was truly awesome [for the boys to win the district championship],” coach Jake Alexander said. “Since I’ve been here, the boys and I have all kind of grown together. Our teams have been doing much better this year which is always what you want as a team.”
Senior Liam Snow came in 11th place in the varsity boys 5K with a time of 17:35. Snow suffered an injury midway through the season and missed four weeks.
“We got district champs so that’s pretty cool,” Snow said. “It’s a pretty good comeback [from my injury].”
Senior Nathan Kukla said he was originally expected to place in the top 10, but he ended up placing 14th. He said he wished he had performed better, but was happy with how his teammates performed.
“I just didn’t have a great push at the end,” Kukla said. “My teammates made up the spots for me though. They did their job.”
Kukla said that seeing the continual improvement of the boys team over the past few years has been a special experience.
“Coming from our past [of struggling the past few years] and moving up now with a good mindset, it’s really different and really good,” Kukla said. “The feeling [of being district champions] is pretty great.”
For the varsity girls, senior Brianna Grandow led the pack, placing fourth with a time of 20:00 and advancing to regionals for the first time.
“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.”
Grandow said the course was very challenging compared to their previous meets.
“I think we all did great,” Grandow said. “We pushed ourselves even though it was a really hard course. There was a lot of dirt in my throat, and even though the hills weren’t that steep, they were pushing us not to give into the pain.”
For the JV girls team, sophomores Rithanya Jeyakumar and Leilana Maul came in second and third place, respectively. The team placed second overall.
“It felt really good to be at the front of the race because I was in first for most of it,” Jeyakumar said. “[While I was running,] I was just thinking about how I couldn’t let anyone pass me. It was really hard to mentally stay with it, but I just knew that I had to finish and I’d feel good after I was done.”
