![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)
The Best of Both Worlds
Senior Combines Passion for Music and Athletics
Senior Leah Wilcox has been a part of the marching band for all four years of high school, but she said that the most memorable part was the competitions. “You get to be with your best friends all day long and march alongside them to put on a show that you’ve been working on for months,” Wilcox said.
May 28, 2019
Juggling over five honor societies, leadership positions in band and a rigorous track and cross country schedule, senior Leah Wilcox has learned throughout her years in high school how to manage such an attentive schedule.
Wilcox hands her ability to manage her schedule to staying organized and on top of what she needs to do.
“Being involved in a lot of activities can often be very stressful in trying to balance all the schedules,” Wilcox said. “I definitely had quite a few freakouts over the past four years between trying to balance doing well in school and making it to all my activities.”
Although being in many different programs can be stressful, she said that she has found her own ways to make it work.
“Taking the time to plan out ahead of time what I was going to do when and working on improving my time management skills allowed me to spread myself pretty far across the school,” Wilcox said.
One major part of her time in high school has been her dedication to the school’s marching band. As a sophomore, she was given the opportunity to be a uniform officer, which means she was in charge of all things visual, from summer uniform fittings, to football game uniform checkoffs, to hair fixes at competitions and more. Then during her junior year, she became the trumpet assistant section leader, and this year, she led the band as one of the four drum majors.
“Band has definitely been the most impactful of all on my life as I was on the leadership team for three years,” Wilcox said. “It really showed me how to step outside of my comfort zone and shaped me into the person I am today.”
According to Wilcox, after being given this leadership experience she’s been taught many life lessons on how to be a leader.
“Band has really taught me how to interact with people that you’re not used to talking to,” Wilcox said. “It has taught me how to be more outgoing and assertive and how to lead people enthusiastically and with a smile.”
Now that her four years in the band are coming to an end, Wilcox has had time to reflect on her time spent in the program.
“I like to think that I’ve made a significant impact on the band with my positive attitude and endless energy,” Wilcox said. “I really focus on getting people moving to where they’re supposed to be and leading them to want to work hard to achieve all that they can.”
Along with being involved in the school’s band, Wilcox is also in track and decided this past year to take on cross country. She said that because she grew up doing triathlons and running in 5k races, these sports were the perfect fit for her. She was the JV district champion in the 800 and mile in 2018, and she was a varsity runner for the cross country team.
“Track taught me how to enjoy a sport not necessarily because you’re the best at it, but just because you enjoy the activity and the people in it,” Wilcox said. “It also taught me how to live a healthy lifestyle and find the motivation to stay fit.”
Being in two different programs have given Wilcox the ability to learn and grow from both. She said that they worked together to make her the person that she is today.
“Being in cross country and track kept me active and physically fit, which contributed greatly to the high performance that I was able to produce in both marching and conducting an entire show,” Wilcox said. “This also helped me become a sort of team mom to the cross country girls, a title they gave me after our very first team camp.”
Ever since she was five years old, Wilcox said that she kept busy with competing in gymnastics, playing the piano and driving race cars until she was 11 years old.
“Even before coming into high school, I was always a super busy person,” Wilcox said. “My life has been moving quickly since the age of five and that’s the way that I like it.”
This fall, she is attending Texas A&M University as a business honors and finance major.
“I can’t wait to see where this next chapter in my life takes me,” Wilcox said.
