![The cross country team poses for the camera after finishing the district meet. The varsity boys, JV boys and JV girls all placed third and the varsity girls placed fourth. “Coach put in the right training for us for this season, so I think we will be peaking this week and the next couple of weeks,” varsity runner and junior Nathan Kukla said. “The chances of making it to state are very high, but we don’t settle for the lowest and there is always going to be that chance, so [we] race for the best.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Heidi-831-1200x900.jpg)
![Sucking in a breath of air, freshman Lily Pope competes in the 200 yard individual medley. On Oct. 25, the swim team competed in the AISD Swim Invitational. Overall, the girls team took second place and the boys team came in eleventh. “My favorite stroke is butterfly because I do the best in that stroke,” Pope said. “I feel like [butterfly] can test how [your ability] to convince yourself to keep going. The hardest part of swimming is convincing yourself to stay strong and keep pushing during a hard race [when] everything is tired.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/POPE-1200x804.jpg)
![Smiling at the camera, Author Ehigbor Okosun, members of Page Turners, and other students reflect on the author's visit. “I thought the visit was great,” Senior Amia De Leon said. “It was interesting talking to her and [getting to know] her process and her thoughts and books in general. But I think the reason it went well [was that] people got to ask questions. I'm glad that she said so much in response to the questions and it wasn't just one and done. [The author’s responses] felt very articulate.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Sebastian-5-1200x800.jpg)
![Standing in front of the field at a freshman football game, cheerleader freshman Jacob Gaudreau along with teammate freshman Bella Gibson pose for a photo during halftime of game. “[Cheer has] definitely given me a much more outgoing personality,” Gaudreau said. “I used to be very introverted, so it's definitely made me more extroverted towards people.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Ingrid-204-1200x800.jpg)
![Holding a wooden pizza toy, senior Taylor Peterson plays with small children in Bucaramanga, Colombia. During the summer, Peterson traveled to Colombia to help build an elementary school that only had two classrooms but five or six grades with one teacher. “We add[ed] two more classrooms,” Peterson said. “It’s kind of hard when you have two or three grades in one classroom and you only have one teacher. It’s very hard to actually get some beneficial learning. [The extra classrooms will give the students] a better quality of education because they’ll actually have a place specific for their learning.” Photo by Taylor Peterson](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Taylor-P.png)
![Swinging with his arm extended, senior Nolan Park hits the ball smoothly over the net and to the opponent’s side. Park is one of four varsity tennis captains and helped the team win district championships. “Winning district champs was a pretty awesome feeling,” Park said. “We had lost to Liberty Hill a couple of weeks before, but when we played them [again], we came out and really took care of business. We took them out and it was just a really awesome night.”](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Kassidy-419.jpg)
![Standing proud, varsity senior athletes Rafael Escobar, Griffin Jacobs, Jakob Martin, and juniors Jackson Springer and Jack Morris pose with their newly earned medals. The varsity team finished third out of 14 teams on Sept. 25. “The team's primary goal is to win the district championship,” head coach Cody Price said. "We're confident that with our action plan in place, we can accomplish this mission. [For the next tournament], our preparation involves assessing our strengths and weaknesses, celebrating milestones and creating individual development plans." Photo courtesy of Cody Price](https://cphswolfpack.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/golf.jpg)
The fire alarm went off unexpectedly around 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, March 24. It was not a drill. Many students assumed that someone had pulled it—a perfectly plausible explanation. But when three additional fire trucks rushed to Cedar Park High School after the usual one, plus an EMS vehicle and police, students began to think that there was a real fire. Standing outside in the cold mist, students speculated as to what could have caused the assumed fire and fretted about their belongings.
“I was mad because it was cold and I didn’t have a jacket,” Jackie Blaine, sophomore, said.
At first, the cause of alarm was unknown, so four fire trucks came to the rescue, including trucks from neighboring departments, not just the station on Cypress Creek.
“It’s better to come with [all the firemen] and have it be a false alarm than wish we had sent everyone because it would take so much extra time to call everyone. By that time, people could be hurt or even killed,” a representative from the Cedar Park fire department said.
When the firemen arrived, they spread out and searched for fire, smoke, or even the smell of smoke. Finding nothing, they allowed people to return to class in all buildings but the C building, where the alert came from. Turns out, there wasn’t actually a fire.
There’s a big sprinkler pump in a room in the back of the school responsible for keeping water pressure up in the fire-prevention sprinkler system. The pressure falls when one of the sprinklers in the ceiling turns on, and this drop in water pressure is detected via a sensor on the water pump. The alert sets off the fire alarm, because generally when a sprinkler turns on, it’s because there is a fire. In this case, there wasn’t really a fire.
“A sensor said the pump turned on, but it actually hadn’t,” Joe Ciccarelli, assistant principal, said. “We knew it was a sensor, so at that point, the fire chief let people back into the C building.”
The specific sensor that had malfunctioned was discovered later Tuesday afternoon.
