![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)
![Lining the center of the room, several printing presses make copies of Community Impact’s latest newspaper. Junior Skyler King shadowed at Community Impact for her Career Investigation Day where she got a tour of the printing press and spoke with several employees including one of the head editors and a designer. “I really think [my favorite part] was talking to the designer,” King said. “Before I thought I really wanted to focus on just pure writing with journalism, but I thought what she did was maybe even cooler and it really made me rethink what I want to do, like if I want to do social media design, or graphic design or something like that.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/CI-edit.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)
![Officer Stephanie Cash is in her second year as an SRO at CPHS. “Seeing [students] grow over the years has been kind of cool,” Officer Cash said. “Freshmen that [are] all over the place and then in the next couple of years get a little more squared away and go to class and do work and start thinking about the future. Being a part of a student's growth is the best way to measure my success as an SRO.” Photo Courtesy of Cedar Park Police Department's PIO, Alicia Gallagher.](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/CPHS-SRO-900x1200.jpg)
![Taking a breath as he raises his arm up and out of the water, sophomore Kaden Padilla swims the 500 freestyle at the UIL state meet on Feb. 21-22. Padilla placed 10th overall and second in the consolation final in the event, dropping two seconds. “My family was there, so being able to drop time for them was really special,” Padilla said. “It was awesome [finding out I advanced to the consolation finals]. I wasn’t expecting it, and I was very surprised. My parents being there definitely made me a lot happier knowing they got to see me swim in finals.” Photo by Skyler King.](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/kaden-padilla.jpg)
![Three defenders try to stop senior point guard Hope Edwards before the ball leaves her hands. The girls basketball team faced Liberty Hill on Feb 21, losing 58-40. “[My season was] definitely bittersweet,” Edwards said. It's definitely sad [because] I'm gonna miss all my teammates, my coaches and just the whole CP environment.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/julia-128-1200x800.jpg)
With clipboard in hand, the girls go their separate ways as a bundle of nerves sets differently in each of their bodies. They finally take a deep breath. They know it’s time to make all the hours of work, practice and dedication pay off.
In their first year as a team, horse judges consisting of sophomores Audree Hearnsburger, Emma McDougal, Haley Evans and junior Lucy Wigert competed at the state level at Texas Tech University on May 3. The team placed 38th overall out of over 80 schools.
“Making it to state was such a game changer,” sophomore Haley Evans said. “I’m so proud of us. I’ve never made it to any type of state for anything, so I was really proud of both me and the girls. No matter how we did, I’m just super proud of us for making it to state.”
Along with the horse judging team, the agricultural communications team competed at state as well, earning sixth overall in the state. The Ag Comm CDE includes creating a marketing campaign for the given agricultural topic at the event senior and FFA President Kacey Miller placed second overall in the state for her part in the event. This was her second time placing second individual in the contest. The other members of her team were sophomores Elizabeth Miller, Mia Moore and Drew Johnson.
“This year, we signed up for the contest a week before it was held because we were short on team members,” Kacey said. “Even though it was rushed and we basically learned the material on the drive to Lubbock, our team did a great job of doing the best we could with what we knew about the contest, and I’m so proud of us.”
Horse Judging is another one of the Career Development Events for FFA. In this event, the girls must rank eight groups of horses without the help of each other based on certain aspects of the horses such as structure level and muscularity. Then, their rankings are compared to the actual judges’ rankings and the group with the closest rank to the real judges earns the highest placement.
“You don’t really have to be a ‘horse girl’ to do horse judging,” Evans said. “Growing up, I rode horses, but I wasn’t actually a horse girl. You basically just follow the pattern and if any horse messes up, then they’re disqualified.”
Both McDougal and Wigert were a part of the team last year and the two recruited Evans and Hearnsburger from their equine class to compete with them. After a few competitions together, the team began to create a strong bond with each other.
“State allowed us to become a lot closer as a team,” Hearnsburger said. “We got to go up with just four girls and two adults, and we stayed in a hotel. We went to the zoo, and we just had a really fun time together as a team.”
With the girls not being able to see one another during the event, the team watches videos of different contests on an app where they can do their scoring and take notes.
“We practiced pretty much every day and in the mornings,” Evans said. “Horse judging takes a lot of practice and time, but once you get the hang of it, it’s like you got this.”
Hearnsburger said the lessons the team learned from their trip to state will definitely help them in the coming years for the team as they continue to compete.
“The hardest part is definitely that we can’t see each other during competition,” Hearnsburger said. “So, we learned a lot on how to work with the horses and look at them. We just learned a lot more about horses in general, which will definitely help us in the future as a team. We also just got to make new friends from around Texas [at state], so it was just a really great experience.”
