News briefs: april/may 2022

design: Cris Montoya

Signing Students

Many seniors signed to continue their athletic career at their respective colleges on April 13 in the gymnasium.

Tyler Davy, Camryn Earl, Mathias Koo and Meghan Moser signed to continue playing soccer at Thiel College, Otterbein University, Ohio Wesleyan University and Mount Vernon Nazarene University respectively. Katie Walcutt committed to Trine University for synchronized skating and Ainsley Dean signed to continue rowing at Eastern Michigan.

Abigail Schroff and Bella Homorody signed to continue their cross country and track at John Carroll and Mercyhurst University respectively. Aidan King will continue to play basketball at Denison and Alex Knodel will swim at Florida Tech.

“John Carroll stood out to me because of their historical successes, team atmosphere and coaching staff,” Schroff said. 

Karol Korotkin, Sophia Meek and Josh Pearson committed to Thomas Jefferson University, Wittenberg and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology for tennis, lacrosse, and football respectively.

“I chose Thomas Jefferson because I knew I wanted to be far from home, play tennis and have good academics,” Korotkin said.

A few seniors also signed to serve in the military after graduation. Nick Seitz and Aiden Frazier are going to the Marine Corp and David Morgan is going into the army.

“Oui” Had an Election

The French presidential election, which occurs every five years was from April 10 to 24 this year. The two candidates were Emmanuel Macron, who served the previous term, and Marine Le Pen, a lawyer and politician.

It was a close election; with 18,768,639 votes, Macron won the election, while Le Pen earned 41.4 percent of the votes, according to dpa-infocom. However, French elections are structured very differently from American elections, as there are two rounds in France. 

“The first round is with all the people who managed to qualify to run for presidency,” French teacher Sarah Haynes said. “The first round was two and a half weeks ago and there were 12 people running in it.”

From there, the two candidates with the most votes out of the 12 move on to the second round, and citizens are able to directly elect who they want for president between the two.

“During the second round, the candidates this year were Emmanuel Macron, the current president of France, and Marine Le Pen,” Haynes said.

French citizens living in America were also able to vote for the president in designated areas. Haynes was able to travel to Cincinnati to vote in the second round of elections, with the top two candidates. 

“I did not vote for the first round, but for the second round I felt it was important to vote,” Haynes said. “I drove to Cincinnati with my family and we went to The French Alliance office there to vote.”

Singing Soloists

One of the biggest events of the year for the choir program occurred on the weekend of April 29. The choir showcase had the theme “Out of this World” and was a three-day program filled with lots of music.

“Choir showcase is an annual end-of-the-year concert that the choir program puts on,” junior and featured showcase soloist Loren Geiger said. “The theme is ‘Out of this World’, and we are singing a bunch of different songs related to all things space and sky.”

From solos to group performances, there was a wide variety of music being featured throughout the showcase.

“We performed three different nights with an arrangement of songs from each choir group as well as some featured soloists,” Geiger said.

All choir members put in a lot of hard work to make this an amazing experience for the audience, and they had high hopes for their performances.

“We worked in class on our songs and choreography for the past quarter, and the week leading up to the showcase we had practice until 6 p.m.,” junior choir member Shannon Barr said. “I hoped that everyone got excited about the showcase and that our energy showed on stage and was infectious.” 

Showcase this year was a very special one, as the choir program had to do a virtual one last year due to COVID.

“This year is our first year doing an in-person showcase performance since 2019,” Geiger said. “It was a really awesome event and everyone put in a lot of hard work to make it an amazing show.