Youth in the News |
|
| Raton Duo Sweeps Top Spots in State Championship Shot Put | |
|
Story & Photographs by By Tim Keller Raton senior Haley Gansz traveled to the New Mexico AAA State Track & Field Championships as the runaway favorite in the shot put. The returning 2011 state champion regularly thrusts the eight-pound metal ball 35 to 36 feet, two feet farther than her closest competitors. She was a little off in the competition Friday, throwing the shot 35’ 1.5”, versus last year’s state championship 35’7” and her personal competition record of 36’7”, but she was still a full two feet better than anyone else could do. Then a funny thing happened. Gansz’s teammate, Etta Briscoe, flung one two feet farther than ever before in her life. Gansz didn’t see it: she was off competing in the discus throw. When Briscoe heard that her throw went 35’10”, she recalls, “I freaked out! It was the most exciting feeling in the world.” Briscoe became the new state champion. A longtime champion headed next fall to a track scholarship at CSU Pueblo, Gansz was shocked to learn that someone had beaten her. (Third place was 33’5.5” by Tessa Jones of Hot Spring, not close to either Raton girl.) “It’s frustrating to lose.” Gansz says. “But Etta had her best day ever and I’m glad it was her. I’m excited for her.” Gansz also won second place in the discus throw and fifth place in the javelin throw at state. The three-time district champion has won all-state honors eight times in her four-year career. Briscoe scored fifth at state in shot put last year. She’s participated in track and field since the seventh grade but this year has been special. “My Grandma Jan (Jan Strnad) passed away in October. She was my main driving force this year,” Briscoe says. “I miss her a lot and I could feel her presence at state.” Briscoe also credits good coaching. Head coach Ben Segura and throwing coach Justin Malano “both pushed me hard and helped me get to where I am.” But she had a couple of secret weapons, too. Loretta Smith, RHS teacher and former shot put star for the school, has been helping Briscoe’s shot put technique for three years. RHS alumnus Christine “C.C.” Neurauter pitched in this year. Briscoe says, “C.C. helped me a lot, especially mentally.” Briscoe’s been floating a little above the ground since becoming a state champion. And now she’s raising her sights. “I’m going to try to continue with shot put in college, hopefully at New Mexico Highlands University. My biggest dream is to make the shot put competition in the 2016 Olympics.” A long shot? No one imagined her winning a state championship, either. |
| Poetry Out Loud is a Raton winner! | |
Raton High School's Clair Willden will represent Raton in Santa Fe at the state finals in February 2012.
|
Story and Photos by Tim Keller ~ TimKellerArts.com
Thursday’s first Raton High School Poetry Out Loud competition was a big success, spurred by inspiring performances from thirteen well-prepared Raton teens. Freshman Clair Willden took top honors and will represent Raton at the New Mexico state championships February 12 at St. Francis Auditorium on the Santa Fe Plaza. The state winner will go on to represent New Mexico at the national championship May 13-15 in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud is a six-year-old program designed to rekindle the age-old traditions of recitation and oral interpretation. High school students from all 50 states compete at school, state, and national levels, with students winning cash awards for themselves and their school libraries. Each participating student selects two poems from the program’s 650-poem database, memorizing the poems, then honing their delivery to best bring out the poems’ meanings for a listening audience. One hundred Ratonians gathered Thursday morning in the high school library to hear the young performers. Judges Bill Fegan and Brenda Ferri graded each performance on a six-point scale in each of six criteria – Physical Presence, Voice and Articulation, Dramatic Appropriateness, Level of Difficulty, Evidence of Understanding, and Overall Performance. Accuracy judge Christina Boyce followed the texts to determine an accuracy score which was factored into each performance score. Willden’s second performance, Delmore Schwartz’s “The True Blue American,” was the event’s top point winner, followed by junior Marisa Rose McCarty’s rendering of Edward Thomas’s “The Brook” and senior James Neary’s evocation of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.” Not coincidentally, McCarty and Neary followed Willden in the overall standings as well, with McCarty winning third place and Neary, with second place, designated as Raton’s alternate entry in the New Mexico championship. Other top finishers included Mariah Fleming in 4th, Kristina Jansen 5th, Dominique Zamora 6th, Caleb Stolarczyk 7th, and Sara Caruana 8th. The other performers included Colette Village Center, Makayla Mondragon, Taylor Hull, Moriah Daniel, and Kelli Ortiz. RHS students Megan Holland, Chelsea Chavez, Matthew Ortiz, and Tess Neary helped to make Thursday’s competition run smoothly. As Clair Willden and James Neary prepare for the February competition in Santa Fe, RHS English teachers just received word that Raton’s Whited Foundation will fund nearly half of April’s Poets-in-the-Schools program; the teachers are searching for other funding sources in time to book the poets, who are much in demand throughout the state during April, which is National Poetry Month.
The competitors, from left, Marisa Rose McCarty, Mariah Fleming, Clair Willden, Makayla Mondragon, Dominique Zamora, Kelli Ortiz, Sarah Caruana, James Neary, Caleb Stolarczyk, Moriah Daniel, Kristina Jansen, and Collette Village Center. (Not pictured: Taylor Hull.) |
Neary, with second place, is designated as Raton’s alternate entry in the New Mexico championship |
|
| VFW Patriotism Essays Earn Awards for Raton Teens | |
|
Raton High School junior Marisa McCarty topped the Voice of Democracy contest winners
VFW’s Patriots Pen essay winner Cy Brower of Raton Middle School |
Story and Photo by Tim Keller ~ TimKellerArts.com
Is there pride in serving in our military? Raton’s recent Veterans Day events resoundingly gave the town’s answer, but earlier in the month Raton teens responded to the question in the VFW’s patriotism essay contests. Raton High School junior Marisa McCarty topped the Voice of Democracy contest winners with her essay, which is so moving that we’re sharing it below. McCarty receives a $500 savings bond from the Raton VFW chapter. 2nd place Matthew Ortiz wins a $300 bond, 3rd place Blake Washburn $200, and 4th place Callie Wilson $100. All four receive VFW backpacks, pens, medallions, and certificates as well. Raton Middle School students competed in the VFW’s Patriot’s Pen essay contest, with Cy Brower taking top honors, followed by McKenna Valdez, Mabry Requa, and Heather Sandoval. Their prizes are the same as the high school teens, with Brower winning the top $500 award. Brower’s winning essay joins McCarty’s 650-word essay to move on to district competition where after Thanksgiving judges will weigh them against winning essays in their divisions from Las Vegas, Taos, Clayton, and other northeastern New Mexico towns. The two winning district essays will go to the state finals, judged sometime after December 16 but not announced until the VFW’s annual state conference in Albuquerque in February. Should either Brower or McCarty win the state essay contest, they will accompany their essay to the VFW’s national competition in the spring, where 50 winning state essays will compete for the $10,000 national top prize. Last year, Raton’s Dante Sparaco won the New Mexico Patriot’s Pen essay award and represented the state at the national convention in Texas. Brower, an avid horseman featured in the September 2011 Western Horseman magazine with his mother, Raton nurse practitioner Marcia Hefker, is also an enthusiastic woodworker and sportsman – he plays baseball, basketball, and football. He and his mother race their Arabian horses throughout the west: in 2010, Brower was ranked number 2 nationally in junior division 100-mile horse endurance racing. McCarty, daughter of Cindy and David McCarty, approaches her senior year ranked number one in her class with a perfect 4.0 grade average. Active in Key Club and National Honor Society, she’s been president ofYouth Alive since 2009 and was nominated for National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine this year. In addition to her busy schedule with school, clubs, and church, she works as a checker at Super Save. According to Joe Esparza at Raton’s VFW chapter, this year’s Raton entries in the VFW patriotism essay contests dramatically eclipsed last year’s. The middle school’s Patriot’s Pen entries jumped from 30 to 42, while the high school’s Voice of Democracy entries grew from last year’s single entry, by Riley Wilson, to this year’s more robust 13 entries. Combined with this month’s rousing Veterans Day celebrations, it’s clear that Raton is feeling its patriotism this year! There is perhaps no better expression of the feeling than Marisa McCarty’s winning essay, which we share with you here. |
Veteran’s Day -- A Time to Pay Tribute |
|
| Raton Middle School Veteran's Day Ceremony
Guest Speaker Sgt Alfred Tafoya USMC retired, spoke primarily to the students at RMS about respect for the flag and the soldiers.
Taps is being played and each veteran honors the fallen in their own way.
Veteran's Day ceremony at Raton Middle School |
By Marty Mayfield
Its 11-11-11, not only a numerically significant day but it is also Veteran’s Day, a day that is celebrated each year at the Raton Middle School and today was no different as the students and staff held their annual Veteran’s Day ceremony.
All of those lead into the words spoken by guest speaker Sergeant Alfred Tafoya USMC, Retired. Tafoya directed his remarks mostly to the students, because the students are our future and the ones who will one day defend the flag and the freedoms it stands for. Tafoya went on to add,""This flag, that we as veterans, so proudly defend has draped over 1,000,000 coffins over the years. Veterans who have given the ultimate sacrifice to protect the freedoms you enjoy today".
A Soldier is responsible for the free speech you hold dear not the reporter. A right to a fair trial is a freedom given by the soldier not the lawyer. It is a soldier each one of these men who sit here today that we call brothers, brothers that have defended the flag and our freedoms. He added, “If it’s worth fighting for have the courage to fight for it.”
|
| A Screaming Good Time | |
Review of Dracula
 Coleman and Neary  Tegan Thompson, James Neary, Ila Medina  Kuchan, Coleman, Neary
Raton High School Mask & Wig Club Performed Their First Full Length Drama Over the Halloween Weekend
|
Reviewing small town community and high school theater is more about appreciation and promotion than criticism and finger-pointing, but the fecund state of Raton's local theater scene has brought us to a point where such positive commentary is more often accuracy than generosity. Raton High School's Mask & Wig Club -- young actors in a young club -- this weekend mounted a dramatic production of "Dracula" that was startlingly good. Almost to show off their youthful energy, for Halloween weekend they mounted a second Saturday night performance at 11 p.m. last night, running the full-length play well into Sunday. (On the other hand, when you accomplish something very good, doesn't it give you a burst of energy?)
Most high school drama clubs mount their shows in the school's auditorium; some have to settle for the school's "cafetorium." In Raton, the venerable 97-year-old Shuler Theater always makes room in its schedule of professional productions for the local community and high school plays, which goes part way toward explaining the town's strong theater scene. My first impression of this production of Dracula was that there was a lot of screaming. And then there was more screaming. Let's say the young actors really bit into their roles. But then the story settled down and developed into a forceful drama. This was both the first drama and the first full-length play by this young drama club that's only in its second year, founded with the arrival at the school of its director, Cian Hazen, who clearly deserved a great deal of credit for this weekend's success. But sixteen young actors and a dozen young crew members all threw themselves into this production with relish, and it was obvious that they had a bloody good time. Several of the roles had as many lines and as much stage time as the lead role of Dracula, but senior James Neary's performance was so demonically commanding and possessed that there was never any doubt that he was the star. With not even the slightest nod to Bela Lugosi, he made the role his own. His Dracula had had 500 years to build such confidence that his smile was both ever-present and chilling. It was impossible not to suspect that the smile also signaled how much fun Neary had with the role. As the serious doctor Van Helsing, sophomore Nathan Coleman shined in only his second foray on stage, following one appearance in a fifth-grade musical. But after Neary and Coleman, the other juicy performances mostly belonged to the girls. Senior Etta Briscoe played the captive mad doctor Renfield to the hilt, causing two momentary interruptions to the play when the audience insisted on applauding her. Tegan Thompson again demonstrated that she's a natural actor, immersing herself and emoting convincingly, here in her role as Lucy Westphal. That leaves two performances to note, tiny roles but hard to wipe from the mind. Ila Medina as Mina Grant had simply too much fun being blood-thirsty, but that was a good thing in this context. Kristina Jansen's part as "Child" was similar, but she provided the play a chilling coda when, after Dracula had received the climactic stake through the heart, Jansen skipped into a cold spotlight front and center: as she went down to drink from yet another victim's still-warm neck, her bloodlust was unsettlingly chilling. In that moment she equaled -- indeed, she replaced -- Neary's Dracula and closed the play on an appropriately frightening note. - by Tim Keller / TimKellerArts.com |
