Alumni Association Director Glen Arnold, left, and senior Abby Baker visit with '95 graduate Amy Fletcher, seated left and family at the annual Alumni Chili Supper in the LHS cafeteria. Also shown are, seated from right, Robbie Fletcher, Shelby Fletcher, Ireland Fletcher and Mia Fletcher.

The Alumni Association held their 5th annul chili bowl supper last night at the LHS cafeteria, which turned out to be a downturn from last year.

As of now, the Alumni has about $5,000, serving 329 people last night, which is a huge drop from last year, having served over 400 people.  Rowe said there was a big Chamber Banquet the same night as their dinner and they lost a lot of people because of it.

“We are not sure how much money we have as of right now because we are still counting and selling containers of chili for $10,” said Head Director of Relation, Janice Rowe.

The Alumni Association will be holding the chili bowl supper fundraiser again next year in January. They are hoping for a better turnout and that no conflicts will interfere with their sells.

The FCCLA will be giving toys Dec. 17 to the Salvation Army in support of the Angel Tree Adoption Program.

“Years ago we did an organization with the “shoe box” where boxes were stuffed with goods and toys, then shipped to other countries. The students decided that they wanted to do something similar but locally, therefore the Angel Tree came to our interest.” FCCLA sponser JoAnn Fite said.

“Our FCCLA members will learn the importance and value of helping those families in need,” FCCLA sponsor Jennifer Cumbie said. “There are so many children and families that have so little that hopefully our contributions will put a smile on several faces this Christmas season.”

FCCLA has four sponsors who will each be giving to a family. These children with the program have parents or guardians who are in prison. Each student member will be bringing small gifts, gift bags, bows and tissue paper on Dec. 10 to wrap up these gifts. They are accepting a dollar donation from whomever would like to give.

“My hope is that our high school students will continue to learn that “giving” is more rewarding than “receiving” during the holiday season,” Cumbie said.

In October, FCCLA members introduced the Thanksgiving Project, where the students created bookmarks for young children at Herty Primary to encourage them to read. The students from Culinary Arts, which is part of FCCLA, also decorated a bag with a freshly made cookie or a soft rice crispy treat. These gifts were delivered by seniors Aislinn Farias and Daniel Cuevas after their 2nd period class on morning.

“It felt good when I handed the baggies out because their faces looked excited and thankful for getting a gift from someone else who cares about their education,” Farias said.

Carmen Santoyo goes to Mexico through PASF

Senior Carmen Santoyo, vice-president of the PASF Spanish club, had a chance to learn more about her Hispanic heritage when she earned a trip to Mexico from Nov. 20-25.

“I’m glad that I got to know more about each state of Mexico and more about where I came from,” Carmen said. “I learned a little bit about the Mayans and Aztecs and how they built the pyramids. I didn’t know that each new era they had to build another coat of rock over the pyramid that already existed.”

Carmen said her favorite sites were the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon as well as the Basilica of Guadalupe, which houses the tilma of Juan Diego on which the Virgen de Guadalupe appeared miraculously in 1531.

“Since I’m a Catholic, I really, really wanted to see la Virgen de Guadalupe right in front of me, and I think that was the most memorable moment for me,” she said. “And the pyramids were very awesome. We had to climb one of them all the way to the top, and the other one we only climbed up halfway, but I think that was cool. It was a lot of exercise too.”

PASF sponsor Jan Peterson was just as excited for Carmen’s opportunity to learn more about her culture.

“Carmen visited numerous cultural sites, including the Palacio del Gobierno with the murals of Diego Rivera and the Casa Azul, which is the house of Frida Kahlo, the most famous Mexican artist,” she said. “She attended the Ballet Folklorico with the presentation of the original dances from Mexico. She visited the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco, which is what is left of the canals of the original Tenochtitlan. She also visited the Museo de Antropologia, which is the Museum of Anthropology with the various ruins, customs and costumes throughout the ages.”

According to the PASF website, PASF sponsors an annual trip to Mexico for high school members “in good standing.”

“To be eligible to go, Carmen had to have attended a previous state convention, her grades were considered, she had to write an essay on why she should be chosen and she had to do research work on 10 specific sites in Mexico City and present them in written form as a tour guide would,” Peterson said. “She did an excellent job, outstanding, and I’m very happy that she was chosen.”

Peterson said Carmen was one of seven students in Texas chosen by the Mexico Cultural Scholarship Committee to go on the trip.

“We can only have one applicant from our school each year,” she said. “The Mexico Cultural Scholarship is worth hundreds, maybe over a thousand dollars to her, but the experience that she has is priceless. She is probably the fourth student to receive the Mexico Cultural Scholarship, and we hope to have many more in the future.”

One student who hopes to go on the trip next year is junior Saul Santoyo, PASF president and brother to Carmen.

“I wanted to apply this year, but there was an option of me going next year because it’s preferably for seniors,” he said. “I asked Carmen if she wanted to go, but she said yes, so then I chose to go next year. I’m looking forward to it.”

Mary Rojo
Managing Editor

Seniors of the robotics team utilize their leadership qualities by creating a petition against a Gold-Purple Schedule–an alternating schedule that splits the robotics team so that the extracurricular hour limit is met.

All school organizations working on a task during after school hours have an eight hour time limit. Recent robotics teams have put in up to 40 hours a week to meet building deadlines for the robot, which decreased each members’ physical capability.

Career and Technology Director Stephen Rhoades feels that the new schedule is the best idea for the robotics team and will strengthen the team’s overall performance.

“Fatigue can have adverse affects on staff performances– personal, academic and extracurricular,” Rhoades said. “I believe that the new schedule will allow robotics members to perform to the best of their abilities in all endeavors.”

Robotics Supervisor Robyn Segrest is in agreement with Rhoades in that the Gold-Purple schedule has been set for every members’ benefit, but believes the team has established the freedom to disagree.

“First off, I am very proud that they have taken the initiative to do this,” Segrest said. “What I don’t think that they realize is how difficult their senior year is in the spring, but they have earned the right to petition.”

Senior Ariel Hardin, co-captain of the robotics team believes in assisting the underclassmen and teaching them in-depth knowledge on a one-to-one basis.

“We know what we are doing and with us being there from last year, we can help the new members,” Hardin said. “ We have so many new members on the team that they should be on the new schedule so they don’t get worn out.”

According to Rhoades, new members have not yet experienced the long work hours and the demand it takes to build a robot. Sophomore and one of the new members to the team, Shelby Walters is unsure how to take the Gold-Purple schedule.

“I don’t agree with the schedule because it should be our choice of how long we want to be here and on what days,” Walters said, “but I can see where Mrs.. Segrest doesn’t want us to get burned out.”
Sophomore Juan Alvarado see both the ups and downs that the Gold-Purple schedule creates.

“The main benefit that will come from the Gold-Purple schedule is that we can be closer as a smaller group,” Alvarado said, “but there is a down side because you won’t get to know everyone on the whole team.”

Senior and co-captain, Jeffin James, encourages the team to strive for what they want and to work hard no matter what the circumstances.

“The petition is a step to show the incentive that we want to be here and that we want to work hard,” James said. “Going alternate days can get confusing but if we can step up and have people there every day, we can accomplish a lot in a short amount of time.”

The petition is still in the process of being signed and will then be presented to Rhoades for consideration.

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The Panther Pride has begun preparing for their Christmas Spectacular show on Dec. 17.

“It’s just a really short kind of recital where Panther Pride does a lot of dances that are all Christmas-themed,” Captain Madeline DuBose said. “It gets everyone in the Christmas spirit.”

According to DuBose, most of the choreography has been kept from the first Christmas Spectacular show two years ago.

“Most of it stems from the original ideas of the officers of 2008, who were the first officers to put on the Christmas show,” she said. “But this year we’re changing a few of the dances and the opening number. The opening number is kind of supposed to follow The Polar Express, and we have a train.”

DuBose said a short playoff season gave the drill team more time to practice for the Christmas Spectacular.

“Now we have the rest of November and all of December to prepare for the show. It’s the only thing we have going on,” she said. “Last year we only went to the second round of playoffs, so this year we only have one more week than last year, but of course one more week makes a lot of difference.”

Director Johnna Walker said the team practices in the morning and after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“They start about 7:30 in the morning, and they practice until 9,” she said. “Then they practice after school until 5:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that’s three hours a day two days a week and an hour and a half two days a week.”

Walker said the team first learned the finale and the squad routines, which the girls had to sign up for to determine which group they would be in.

“What we try to do is we honor seniors, who either get their first or second choice,” she said. “Re-runs usually get one of their three choices, and as much as we can honor new members’ requests, we do, but sometimes we have to put them in a dance that maybe was their fourth choice, depending on different dances and their popularity.”

The JV Drill also has a part in the Christmas Spectacular.

“The JV Drill does one routine for the show, and that’s ‘Hot Chocolate,’” JV Drill director Debbie Hemphill said. “They’ve done it every year, so it’s a traditional thing for them. They’re the elves, so they also do all the skits between performances.”

Sophomore Kaitlyn Cook said that as a Panther Pride new member who was on JV Drill last year, she has a bigger role in the show this year.

“We do a lot more dances this year. In JV Drill we only had one dance and did skits, but this year I have four or five dances,” she said. “It’s fun, it’s a lot of hard work, but the hard work will pay off.”

Junior Brooke Lazarine said Christmas Spectacular will have a variety of dances.

“There’s a jazz dance, a lyrical dance, a character dance, a tap dance and of course the finale at the end where we kick,” she said. “We have all these different kinds of dances, so there’s something for everyone.”

The drill team will present the show five times on Dec. 17th only.

“It’s a one-day-only type thing,” senior Christie Squiers said. “We perform all day on the 17th at the middle school, and then we have one showing in the evening for parents and family.”

Panther Pride members will sell tickets for $7 each. Tickets will also be available at the door.

The 1982 film “Annie,” based off of an early 1900 comic strip called Little Orphan Annie, will be put to action in the Lufkin Middle School auditorium. Many members from Lufkin High School will be on stage playing the roles of the cast of “Annie” for  people awaiting the performance.

Members of the cast have been preparing for this play since the beginning of October following auditions. Auditions for “Annie” were held early in October in the choir room. The play is put on by the Theatre Department at Lufkin High School.

“I believed Annie would be a good fit for my actors,” Cay Billingsley said about why they are to perform “Annie”.

Bilingsley is the director of the play assisted by student teacher, Chad McElveen and student director, Emily Weaver.

Mike Tyer is in direction of the music performed throughout the play and he is expecting a great performance from all the cast.

“This is a very energetic group and they have put many hours of hard work into this play. They are all very involved and we’re very excited. It’s going to be a great show,” he said.

The Role of Annie will be played by junior Megan Yeager whose natural red hair is just a plus that will add to her character.

“I was excited and couldn’t believe it at first,” she said about being cast as Annie.

Megan is also enthusiastic about the play in itself.

“We are all different,” she said about the cast members, “So it brings a wide variety to the play. There are lots of good dance numbers and the singing is great, so come and see it!”

In addition to performing on Thursday and Friday, on Wednesday the 18th the cast performed “Annie” from 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for the students of Lufkin middle school.

“We attend their school to perform for them to give them a taste of high school,” Cay Billingsley said.

Tickets will be available for $5.00 at the door on Thursday the 19th and Friday the 20th before the show, which will begin at 7 o clock p.m.

Jeffin James and Ariel Hardin were recently named team captains of LHS Robotics team

The 2009-2010 Robotics team captains, Ariel Hardin and Jeffin James, were announced last Monday.

According to Supervisor Robyn Segrest, the format for choosing the team captains changed this year.

“Before, we’d always let the students choose their team captain; this year, to get away from it being a popularity contest, we shifted to a format where nominations were made by the team,” she said. “If the nominee accepted the nomination, then we had them answer a set of questions. The questionnaires were handed over to a selection committee made up of teachers who were involved with the program, and they made their selections based on those answers.”

The selection committee was made up of welding teacher Jeffrey Pillows, drafting teacher Robert Foley, and Building Trades teacher Calvin Fry.

“For me, after reading all the responses, I found that some had more experience than others in handling certain situations,” Pillows said.

Fry said that in the students’ answers to the questionnaire, he looked for strength and a lack of favoritism.

“I looked for someone who would follow the project through from beginning to end and that  their main focus was to get the robot completed,” Fry said. “Friendships and favoritism are out when you’re doing projects like that. I looked for someone who would put his heart into the project, not just someone who was trying to be the leader of something but who would take the project first.”

Although the questionnaire was the only aspect taken into consideration to choose the captains, Segrest said the questions required practical thinking.

“The returning team members and I worked together to create those questions based on issues we’d faced in the past,” she said. “From there I took the questions and fine-tuned them and changed them from yes/no questions to scenario questions where they really had to sit and think and give an answer that they would follow through with. And really, the scenario questions that we developed gave us a very good overall picture of the individuals.”

Besides the format for determining the team captains, another thing that is changing this year is the team captain role.

“It’s shifting from being a symbolic position to being more of an integral position across the team,” Segrest said. “As opposed to being a team lead, where they’ll be very focused in one area, the team captain has to focus on everybody. They have to take care of everybody emotionally, they have to help me keep things organized and meet due dates, they’re going to help me structure the team, and they’re going to be the face of the team at certain types of meetings.”

Segrest said Hardin and James are “well-matched” as co-captains.

“[James] is a third-year team member, lots of experience, and actually has some teaching experience now because of his job. He’s an assistant taekwondo instructor, so he’s gained some experience on leadership and how to focus people,” Segrest said. “Our other team captain has younger children in her home, so she’s used to giving direction. I think that with their guidance and direction, we will have a very successful team.”

Hardin said she is prepared to help the team improve their time management.

“Last year we got behind on a lot of things that we did,” she said. “I would really like to get the team focused this year and just keep them on schedule because we really need to get things done.”

James said he expects that he and Hardin will work well together this year.

“We both have a lot of what it takes to help bring this team together and hopefully have this team mesh together as well,” he said. “I think this year would the best team we’ve ever had, so it will make it easier on us to actually function as a team.”

However, Segrest said it could take time for the team to start working well together, especially since the majority of this year’s team consists of new members.

“They’re not quite a cohesive unit yet, but that also comes with having six veterans on the team and 30 new students,” she said. “And it’s always like that. It takes some time to become that unit, and you really don’t start functioning that way until about the fourth or fifth day of build season; that’s when it’s all-out, go for broke, pedal to the metal, don’t look back. It’s going to take some time to get that going because we’re starting so much earlier this year, but they’re getting there.”

A spectacular fireworks show, hot dog dinner, and patriotic performances from all of the Lufkin ISD bands is what will be taking place on Saturday at the 15th annual Honor America Night.

From 5 p.m. until 6:30 p.m., an All American Dinner including hot dogs, chips, a drink, and America’s favorite desserts–apple pie and ice cream–will be served in the Lufkin High School cafeteria.

Dinner will be followed by a 7 p.m. program with a welcome from Head Band Director Scott Williams. After a prayer and the pledges, the LHS trumpet section will play the National Anthem. Soon after, guest speakers Rep. Jim McReynolds, Joe Deason and Brian Crews will present Star Spangled Moments honoring the veterans. After recognizing the veterans of every branch of the military, the 7th, 8th, and high school bands will be performing military style marching performances dedicated to those who served in the military branches.

Williams, along with senior P.J. DeJesus  play Taps in reflection of those who lost their lives while at war. The last performance of the night will be a combination of the 7th, 8th, and high school bands performing two patriotic songs while a spectacular fireworks show is taking place over Abe Martian Stadium.

Band students are selling tickets for $5, which includes the All American Dinner and entry into the stadium for the performances and fireworks show. Tickets also can be purchased at the gate of Abe Martian Stadium, or the entrance to the cafeteria for the same price.