![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)
![Posing with their UIL State Trophy, the Robolobos Van Halen Team beams with excitement after their win. “It was a team effort,” junior Noah Vo said. “I was happy because something happened in the first match and the match was also really close. So [when] they finally revealed it, I was pretty happy.” Photo courtesy of Amy Lovelace](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/IMG_0910-EDIT-1200x723.jpg)
Sweat dripping off their forehead down to the controller, weaving in and out of obstacles and stacking cones onto one another, the timer ends, and the FTC Robotics team erupts in joy. On May 11 the Robolobos Van Halen team went down to Corpus Christi, winning the state championship against all other 5A Schools, for the third time in a row. This win wasn’t by single effort and required everyone to pull their weight as much as possible.
One of the many who helped lead the charge in winning state was the Head of Hardware junior Michael Moracchi, who oversaw the production and planning of the bot and helped make its conception into a reality.
“I was a big part of the build process,” Moracchi said. “We have our master design source that evolves over the year to maximize point scoring and [I try to] just improve our bot.”
Besides the initial build of the robot, the competition mainly relies on the Drive Team. The Drive team operates the bot with a controller, one managing it and moving it around, while the other coaches and keeps it on course. The Robolobos Van Halen drove the bot to success, bringing home another win.
“It was a team effort,” junior Noah Vo said. “I was happy because something happened in the first match and the match was also really close. So [when] they finally revealed it, I was pretty happy.”
The competition features a lot of team building exercises, as you must form alliances with the best bots to maximize points, creating your own super team.
“A big part of that is talking to other teams, socializing, understanding what they’re good at and trying to forge alliances,” Moracchi said. “I’m like our team’s diplomat when we’re on site.”
The bot also won the Innovate Award for a highly ergonomic and modular design. The competition wasn’t all business for the Robolobos, however, as they got to spend a lot of time together over the weekend throughout travelling.
“We had some people from [Team] 61, who are our premier senior team, come over,” Morrachi said. “They got wiped out earlier in the season, but a lot of them came along to support and provide advice, which was really valuable, and [they were] just being able to hang. We already spent a lot of time together for after school meetings and collaborating on stuff, but the travel and staying in the hotel together and the shared experience, that closeness is something you can’t get anywhere else easily.”
