![Senior Jett Mckinney stores all the clothes in his own room, with half of it stored in his closet along with his personal clothes, and the rest taking up space in his room.
“There’s been times [when] there’s so much clothing stored here and it gets overwhelming, so I end up having to sleep somewhere else in the house,” Mckinney said.](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DSC_0951-1200x800.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)
![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)
Venezuela to Texas
After Moving 2,405 Miles, Sophomore Compares Schools
Sophomore Giselle Muniz moved from Venezuela to Texas only two years ago. She compares her old home to her school and life here in Texas.
September 7, 2018
A new country. A new school. A new language. After moving here just two years ago from Caracas, Venezuela, “new” has been a keyword for sophomore Giselle Muniz.
Only a month after moving to the U.S., Muniz began eighth grade. She said she immediately found that besides the language difference, there was a difference in how students were treated.
“What surprised me the most was that they expected kids to know what they wanna be when they grow up,” Muniz said. “I was so confused because I [didn’t] know what I [wanted] to be.”
While she may have felt overwhelmed at first, Muniz said that she began to enjoy the freedom offered in choosing her classes.
“It [feels] really nice to be able to study whatever [I want],” Muniz said. “I’m able to study things that I like and want to learn more about.”
In addition to freedom over courses, students enjoy the privilege of expressing themselves through their outfits, as long as they abide by the dress code. However, in Venezuela, Muniz dressed for school everyday based on the specific colored uniform assigned to her grade.
“I [was] annoyed that I had to wear [uniforms] and not whatever [I] wanted,” Muniz said. “Now I feel annoyed that I have to buy clothes.”
Muniz got used to attending a school with only 600 students when she lived in Venezuela. Once she got to Cedar Park, Muniz said that she had to adjust to sharing the hallways with 1,950 other students.
“I thought I was going to be late to class every day and that I was going to get in trouble for it,” Muniz said. “If you were late to class more than five times in my old school you got in trouble.”
Being able to rent out a Lenovo laptop may not phase some students, but Muniz said that she sees that both students and teachers here are quite privileged when compared to those in Venezuela, where phones and computers were uncommon due to the high crime rate.
“The homework, we had to write it down,” Muniz said. “The teachers didn’t use a computer. The students didn’t use computers. You know how dangerous it was in Venezuela to even have a phone? How would you bring an actual computer to school? And [why would the] school actually provide a computer for you if they knew it would get stolen?”
Muniz said that she has experienced a completely new sense of pride, between pep rallies and Friday night lights.
“Here you have districts and you compete against each other. There we didn’t really care that much,” Muniz said. “It’s really nice to be in a place where people are proud to be here.”
Muniz said that she is looking forward to her next few years of high school and she hopes to figure out her path in life.
“I want to take some more fun classes,” Muniz said. “This is my first year taking theatre and it’s really fun so far. I want to take some more advanced art classes and when I decide what I want to be when I grow up, I’ll take a class that’s related to that.”
![Holding a microphone, baseball booster club president Chris Cuevas announces the beginning of the annual cornhole tournament. The event has been held for the past two years and is designed to raise money for the baseball program in a fun way. “We’re a baseball team, so people love to compete,” Cuevas said. “So we figured we better do something that gets [their] attention. They want to compete. It’s not a hard sport to do, and we have all different [skill] levels [of participants].” Photo by Henry Mueller](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Henry-715-1200x900.jpg)
Alicia • Sep 13, 2018 at 2:57 pm
Thank you, Morgan, for the interview with our Giselle. It is an honor for us that she is part of CPHS.
German Muñiz, Sr. • Sep 8, 2018 at 9:48 am
I am a very proud grandfather. We lived together in Caracas in separate floors of the same house. I got accustomed to being amazed at Gigi’s accomplishments in and out of school. As with her family, I too had to leave our country Venezuela which was the richest and warmest country in Latin America. We thank the USA for having given all of us a new home and renewed hope.