Author: EMMERT

GO BRITNI

EMMERT

Britni Atwell had to find gym time wherever, whenever it was available.

For much of a six-year stretch, she coached herself, doing anything for gymnastics.

“It’s more than just a sport. It’s everything,” said Atwell, a senior from Heritage. “Without it, I don’t know where I’d be today.”

 

Rest of All-Region team

Brooke Atwell, jr., Heritage: Placed eighth on vault at 4A state meet.

Jessica Curley, sr., Union: Placed eighth on beam at 4A state meet.

Jazmin Harris, sr., Union: Placed seventh on vault at 4A state meet.

Shaylan Hawthorne, sr., Columbia River: 11th on vault at 3A state; 3A GSHL gymnast of year.

Suren Kanchanavaleerat, sr., Union: Placed sixth on bars at 4A state meet.

Nicole Moss, so., Heritage: 4A bars state champion; placed 3rd on vault and beam at state.

At the high school level, Atwell will leave Heritage as the most decorated gymnast in Southwest Washington history, with nine state championships in her four years. Last month, she won the prestigious all-around title at the Class 4A state meet. She was the easy choice for The Columbian’s All-Region gymnast of the year.

“It’s still a shock,” Atwell said. “When people congratulate me, it still affects me like the day it happened. It’s a big deal.”

The next day, she became a four-time state champion on both the vault and floor exercise. No one in the 45-year history of the event had ever won four consecutive individual event titles.

“Not only did I do it once — something that had never been done before — but I did it twice,” she said. “It was a-MAY-zing.”

That is the Heritage gymnastics way of saying “amazing.”

Atwell began gymnastics at the age of 2. It can be an expensive sport, and her grandmother Phylis Bacon helped pay for the training. But when Bacon died in 2006, and the family’s budget did not have room for gymnastics, Atwell was a gymnast without a full-time gym.

She did have a lot of support, though. She worked out at Naydenov when she was allowed, kept working on her skills.

Last summer, Northwest Gymnastics Training Center in Gresham, Ore., gave her a scholarship, despite the fact that Atwell would not compete for NGTC during high school season — a rarity for the club sport.

“They knew high school was more of a priority for me. They accepted that,” Atwell said. “They wanted their younger girls to see what gymnastics had done for me. And if you want it, if you put everything on the line, it can come to you.”

Atwell never gave up on her pursuit. It resulted in nine state titles in her Heritage gymnastics career.

BRITNI ATWELL, Heritage High School

Season highlights

  • Atwell was already one of the most decorated high school gymnasts in Southwest Washington history. Then she dominated her senior year at the Class 4A state championships.
  • Atwell won the all-around title on the Friday at state, qualifying for all four individual event finals for Saturday.
  • She won the vault and floor exercise state titles, each for the fourth consecutive year. No gymnast had ever won four titles in the same event.
  • She concluded her career with nine state championships.

More about Britni

  • Plays the viola.
  • Favorite movie: “Tangled” by Disney. “It reminds me of wanting something so bad and going out to get it no matter how much trouble you might get into on the way.”
  • Favorite subject: Science. “Always different things you can do with it.”

Next year and beyond

She is not sure if she will be going to college in the fall. She plans to keep training and hopes to one day attend Seattle Pacific and compete, even if she must wait a year. She wants to study criminology.

“I’m proud of keeping my floor and vault titles. Making history for Southwest Washington was just icing on the yummy, delicious cake.”

Britni Atwell, Heritage gymnasts

Written by Paul Valencia for The Columbian

THE BURNS

EMMERT

 

 

Alright guys, bros, boys and men. It’s time to talk toilets.

We see this all the time; it’s in almost every guys’ bathroom in this school: The burns on the separators of the urinals. As with all vandalism, the perps are pretty quiet. The rest of us have to look at that ugly stuff when we’re getting our business done, and come on, who wants that?

 

 

 

 

“It’s a bigger problem year after year,” said Debbie Ball, our school custodian. “The people doing it just won’t take responsibility for their actions.” She mentioned how wasteful it seems to replace them at times—they just get trashed all over again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each panel costs about $80, plus an average of $45 for labor—a grand total of $125 per panel. Pretty sad waste of our parents’ tax money.

Get caught, and the school can charge you with every panel that needs replacing—a grand total of nearly $3,000. And that would be just for the urinal separators, not the other ones between the toilets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re here for four years, five days a week, nine months out of the year—who wants to be melted urinal plastic for that long? Even stupid Sharpie drawings, or the primal carvings of your ex-boyfriend’s name—What are we, cavemen?

 

Our school has limited funds to fix itself up and look pretty. We’ve got tons of art classes where you can be creative on surfaces far better than stall dividers. The money our parents dish out of every paycheck deserves better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Written by Matt Fry
Images by Jessi Proulx and Alek Taras

MAKE IT RAIN

EMMERT

Don’t take it too personal that Mother Nature lets it rain a ton on us Northwesterners—there are scientific reasons why we get dumped on all the time.

We have a constant windy blast above us called the jet stream. Think of it as a gigantic train in the upper atmosphere that chugs a bunch of weather systems right through where we are. During December, the jet stream brings through a weather system phenomenon called “The Pineapple Express”—nicknamed as such because our weather comes from the waters by our pineapple-y friend, Hawai’i.

The Pineapple Express chugs its way through, bringing storm after storm from the waters surrounding Hawai’i, up to the Gulf of Alaska. This time of year, we get the least amount of light and the most amount of rain—6.4 inches of rainfall in the month of December alone and only 8 hours of daylight as opposed to the 15 hours of sunny-shine we get when school lets out.

Our positioning next to the beautiful Cascade Mountain Range does us in, too. The storm-train has a tough time chugging up those mountains and kind of stalls over us—traffic gets backed up so it just dumps out its cargo during the delay. The cool air condenses, making the clouds smaller and tighter with water, and easier for them to dump their water supply.

Scientifically, we were destined to get drenched. Mama Nature’s jet-stream train and the Cascade Mountain train-stop make sure of this—but it’s because of them we get the thirst-quenching weather that makes the Northwest lush and green. Most of the grass seed used in the FIFA Soccer World Cup came from Corvallis, Oregon. We have a plethora of salmon running through our waterways, and we’re pretty famous for our apples.
With every cloud there’s a silver lining.

Written by Jeremy Hess
Video by Daniel Ostapenko

DEATH TO COOTIES

EMMERT

Remember way back in the day when we were kids- We used to cut hearts out of construction paper, write silly little love notes and give out Valentine cards and candies to all our friends classmates? The good old days, when no one was left out or lonely on Valentine’s Day. Things have changed since then.

“When we were little it was about friends, but now it’s more about relationships,” says HHS senior Yelena Guseva.

Candy and hearts used to be the only thing that mattered. It wasn’t about boyfriends or girlfriends, or relationships and romance. Boys and girls had “cooties,” but candy was candy and friendship was reason enough to celebrate.

Now what used to be cute and thoughtful is considered “cheesy.” We grow out of our innocence the older we get. Candy gives way to bigger and better gifts: Heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, red roses, jewelry, stuffed animals, balloons, cards, fancy dinners—Now handmade stuff is “cheap.”

The expectations get bigger the older we get. “We become more romantic and put our feelings into it. Some people aren’t as satisfied with just candy as we used to when we were little,” says HHS’s Zhanna Antosenka. The stakes get high for this one particular day we’ve chosen to celebrate love.

V-day grows up with us—it means more the older we get.
No more cooties.

Written by Nadezhda Simakov
Image by Jessi Proulx

FIRED UP

EMMERT

Most teenagers like to hang out with friends, go to after school jobs or anything to take up the time you have to think about homework. Gabe Morales, a senior at Heritage, brings after school activities to a whole new level –using kerosene. He has a passion for Fire Poi— a type of fire dancing.

It was the summer of junior year when he first heard of this new hobby. A friend from his wrestling club mentioned it to him and advised him to try it. Gabe was intrigued to start so he bought a starter kit and went to YouTube to learn how to Poi. Once he was more comfortable with playing with fire, Gabe started using a staff, and then upgraded to a sword. The final upgrade: spitting fire.

Burns come hand in hand when it comes to playing with fire and Gabe is no exception. When it comes to accidents, Gabe has had a few; nothing hospital-serious, usually just some mild burns. He finds the fire calming and warm, and is really only scared of burning off his eyebrows or hair.

Right now Gabe is involved in our Concert Choir and Varsity Wrestling team, keeping busy and enjoying his after school activity. He doesn’t plan to give up Fire Poi anytime soon and wants it to become a part job so that he can share his talent for everyone’s enjoyment and make some side cash. After high school, he plans to go to Portland State to study in music education so that he can be a high school music teacher.

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Images by Cody Calhoon
Written by Julia Garcia