Latest news with #UniversityHigh
Dominion Post
04-07-2025
- Sport
- Dominion Post
Morgantown High girls' athletics captures WVSSAC Class AAAA Champions Cup
MORGANTOWN — Morgantown High's dominance in female sports was rewarded Thursday, as the Mohigans were named the girls' winner of the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission's (WVSSAC) Champions Cup in Class AAAA. Standings for the Cup are based on performances across a variety of sports, with points awarded for success in state championship events. Teams are also awarded points based on the previous year's graduation rate. MHS won the cup with 880 points, highlighted by a state track championship. MHS also placed as the state runner-up in basketball, volleyball and tennis. MHS earned a third-place finish in cross-country, was a state semifinalist in soccer, took fifth in swimming and advanced to the regional final in softball. MHS scored points in eight of the nine sports charted. 'What a great accomplishment for our student-athletes to be recognized with this overall championship,' MHS principal Paul Mihalko said. 'We are very proud of all of the hard work and dedication of all of these Mohigans.' University High took second in the girls' competition, finishing with 678 points. The Hawks celebrated a state cross-country championship, as well as finishing third in softball, fourth in track and seventh in cheerleading. UHS also tallied points with regional final appearances in volleyball and basketball. Wheeling Park was awarded the boys' Cup in Class AAA with 853 points, highlighted by a state-semifinalist showing in soccer. Hurricane was second with 788.5 points and captured state championships in baseball and tennis. Morgantown High was third with 769.5 points. The Mohigans were the state's runner-up in baseball, made an appearance in the semifinals in basketball and took fourth in cross-country. University High, which won state titles in cross-country, wrestling and track, finished fourth with 687 points. Class AAAA girls Morgantown High 880 University High 678 Cabell Midland 584 Washington 568 George Washington 485.5 Class AAAA boys 1. Wheeling Park 853 2. Hurricane 788.53. Morgantown High 769.54. University High 687 5. George Washington 680.5
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
W.Va. National Cemeteries Project helps West Virginia 'remember itself'
GRAFTON — To Nancy Goodpasture, of Fairmont, her mother Ginny Goodpasture was like many moms who cared for her children. "I mean to me, she was just the lady who gave me grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup," Nancy Goodpasture said. However, for a brief moment on Monday, Elizabeth Virginia 'Ginny' Goddard Goodpasture, was among a list of 26 U.S. military veterans whose lives were celebrated as part of the 2025 West Virginia National Cemeteries Project that just finished its fourth year. Funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and managed by the West Virginia Humanities Council, the program is carried out each year with help from students at Grafton High, University High in Morgantown and graduate history student researchers at West Virginia University. 'This work matters. Remembering history matters, documenting history matters, knowing how we got here matters,' Eric Waggoner, executive director of the Humanities Council, told the approximately 65 guests Monday. 'That work is essential and important, and you guys are the ones who have done it once again this year.' Students conduct rigorous research on each veteran they are assigned and are then tasked with writing a biography of each veteran. "I never even thought to ask her about her military life, or anything," Nancy Goodpasture said. "She was never that personal, so this brought a whole different aspect, well, to any of us." Three students from University High spent most of the 2024-25 school year unearthing Ginny Goodpasture's military history where she served as a World War II codebreaker. After obtaining separate bachelor's degrees in English and music, Ginny Goodpasture joined the U.S. Navy served as an officer in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans where she coded and decoded military communications during World War II. This year's National Cemeteries Project had more participation than ever from family members of the military veterans who are interred in the two National Cemeteries in Taylor County. Nancy Goodpasture said this part of the program was rather helpful for her family. "My brother came in from Virginia, and we went to University High School and met with the students," she said. "And it was really cool being able to do that." The project begins each year with a list of names of veterans before assigning the students a veteran for whom they will write a biography. "We basically look through the long list of names in each of these cemeteries every year, and we start doing research ahead of time to determine how much we can find on an individual veteran," Humanities Council Program Officer Kyle Warmack said at the event held Monday at the Taylor County Historical & Genealogical Society offices. "That's the only real bar here to start off, is, what can we find to get started?" The 2025 West Virginia National Cemeteries Project marks the third year that Grafton High senior Karigan Wildroudt has taken part as a student-researcher. She said she cannot stop talking about the veteran she has been assigned each year. She also said working on the project brought history to life for her. "Before this project, of course, I appreciated my veterans. You know, I have brothers who are in the Navy," Wildroudt said. "But, you know, reading their stories and seeing the sacrifices they made and how some of them were not able to graduate or graduated and then, sadly, passed away, makes me appreciate what I have and what am I able to get to today." At this point in the life of the program, Warmack said the work the students did this year is still in draft form whereas, in previous years, at this point the biographies would be considered finished and ready to post online. He said one of the newer aspects this year is that the biographies are longer and more in-depth, an aspect that is gaining attention. "I actually know a West Virginia historian working on a book right now who uses these biographies in his research, so they are contributing in many, many ways, not only to our own community, but to how West Virginia remembers itself," Warmack said.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
University High lacrosse faces sanctions after forfeiting semifinal to attend prom
The University High boys' lacrosse team didn't have enough players for its City Section semifinal match on Friday night against Palisades because the school's prom was the same night and players chose the prom instead. City Section Commissioner Vicky Lagos said the match time could not be changed, and now University is facing a $100 fine and a ban from next year's playoffs under City Section rules. Advertisement Lagos said the school has not responded to phone calls from her. The school has not responded to an email from The Times. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District indicated on Monday they were working on a response. The lacrosse finals will be played at El Camino Real, with the boys and girls finals matching El Camino Real against Palisades. Sign up for the L.A. Times SoCal high school sports newsletter to get scores, stories and a behind-the-scenes look at what makes prep sports so popular. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
28-04-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
University High lacrosse faces sanctions after forfeiting semifinal to attend prom
The University High boys' lacrosse team didn't have enough players for its City Section semifinal match on Friday night against Palisades because the school's prom was the same night and players chose the prom instead. City Section Commissioner Vicky Lagos said the match time could not be changed and now University is facing a $100 fine and a ban from next years playoffs under City Section rules. Lagos said the school has not responded to phone calls from her. The school has not responded to an email from The Times. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Unified School District indicated on Monday they are working on a response. The lacrosse finals will be played at El Camino Real, with the boys and girls finals matching El Camino Real against Palisades.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
A magnetic pouch is key to enforcing school cellphone bans. Kids are getting around it
The bell dinged and the University Charter High School students gathered their things and headed for the door. As students flooded from classrooms, a strange, new sound filled the long hallway: the din of hundreds of students talking. To each other. Before the Los Angeles Unified School District cellphone ban took effect in mid-February, the use of mobile phones was ubiquitous on campuses. Not anymore. To enforce the new policy, University High — and about 250 other LAUSD schools — have turned to a local company: Yondr, the maker of a lockable pouch commonly used at film premieres and live shows to foster a distraction-free atmosphere. The pouches, which are sealed with a magnet, are the most popular choice among schools to enforce the new policy. Some schools have given teachers cubbies where students deposit their devices; others simply require them to be powered down and stowed. Yet, if there is a symbol of the crackdown, it is Yondr's gray neoprene pouch. The ban, which affects some 800 campuses, has been praised by teachers and administrators — one told The Times it was the best thing to happen to education "since the invention of cellphones." Amid the roll-out, they have cited anecdotal evidence and data that show the negative health effects of unfettered access to smartphones, which have contributed to an increase in anxiety, depression and other issues for students, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. "When I started talking to schools that were implementing [a cellphone ban], I heard from psychologists who were saying that ... fights were down, drug sales were down and kids were reporting a better school day," said LAUSD school board member Nick Melvoin, who authored the resolution to create phone-free campuses. But what do the students at University High, the Sawtelle neighborhood school known as Uni High, think a month into the ban? "It's not the best, but I think it's for the best," said Angie Mendoza, a senior and a member of the school's student leadership council, which gathered for a casual debrief with Melvoin earlier this month. "Sometimes the lectures can be a little boring, and you have that urge to scroll on TikTok or Instagram, but that's not the best habit. I've been getting better grades because I've been paying more attention in class." Others on the council also said they were learning to live with the new rules. But not every student is so charitable. "After allowing my phone for 12 years ... they are just going to take it away for three months?" asked Madison Thacker, a senior at Van Nuys High School Performing Arts Magnet. "They should have started it at the beginning of the school year. Students just don't like change in general. Kids are going to find a way around this no matter what you do." Indeed, students spoke furtively of the dark arts of circumvention. Some have simply told school officials they don't have a mobile phone. Others find decoys to place in their pouches, pocketing their real devices for surreptitious use throughout the school day. "As of today, I don't know anybody who has put their phones into a pouch," said Thacker, 17, who is allowed to use her device on campus because she manages her school's Instagram account. "Kids are putting in old phones, they are putting in burner phones, they are putting in battery packs. And most popular: calculators." Then there are the various methods to break into a sealed pouch: via a magnet, with brute strength, or by using a pencil to pop it open — methods revealed in a genre of YouTube and social media videos. Yondr Chief Executive Graham Dugoni isn't surprised by students' initiative. He said that the company, headquartered in Mar Vista, has talked with teens about their breaching techniques so that the company can refine its pouch design. "We're not naive," said Dugoni, a former professional soccer player who launched Yondr in 2014. "We know that anything we design — and we're constantly making improvements — they're gonna keep finding different ways around it." Dugoni said that the "crystallizing moment" that led him to found Yondr occurred at a music festival in 2012. He noticed that a drunk man was being recorded by other concertgoers without his consent. Dugoni felt the gathering should have been a safe space where revelers could enjoy themselves without being filmed. The incident sparked introspection. "Smartphones [were] just coming out, the internet was clicking into another gear," said Dugoni. "That's when I started to [ask] ... how is this affecting people?" Dugoni, 38, said he began imagining "device-free" environments where people could get away from the "tug and pull of modern life." He began refining an idea for a lockable pouch and started building prototypes using materials he sourced from a hardware store. Dugoni's first customer was a biker bar in Oakland that hosted a burlesque show. Then came a school in San Bruno. In 2015, a phone call from comedian Dave Chappelle's manager changed Yondr's trajectory: the performer wanted to use the pouches at his shows, Dugoni said. Before long, Chappelle became an investor in the company. The association with the comedian gave Yondr a boost: Soon, scores of schools were signing up, including local ones. In the years before LAUSD's ban, about 30 campuses in the district decided on their own to begin using the Yondr pouches. Starting in early 2024, Dugoni said, public policy support for phone-free spaces increased significantly, leading school districts across the country to institute cellphone bans. Today, Yondr pouches are used by about 2 million students in all 50 states. Dugoni said his company hears directly from students: Many thank Yondr for restoring some normalcy to their school days, so that they're "actually able to make friends," he said. But the company also gets "hate mail," he conceded. "It's like, 'What are you doing?' " Dugoni said of the missives. "You know, 'You're ruining my life, taking my phone.' ... It's not all daisies." LAUSD allocated about $7 million for schools to purchase equipment to enforce the cellphone policy, which also covers devices such as the Apple Watch and smart glasses. About 80% of the middle and high schools eligible for funding are using Yondr pouches, the company said. Students at Uni High and other schools who are caught breaking the rules for the first time lose their phone for the rest of the day. If they are found in violation again, their device is confiscated — and their parent or guardian is notified and required to retrieve it on a designated day. That last part is key, said Claudia Middleton, Uni High's principal. Getting buy-in from parents — so that students are also held accountable at home — has helped smooth rough edges of the program's debut. The district has left the choreography of pouching — and policing — to the schools. At Uni High, each morning, students arrive via the Texas Avenue campus' main entrance, where school personnel watch as they place their phones and other devices in their pouches and seal them. At the end of the day, unlocking bases are placed at various exits. Middleton said Uni High has found ways of identifying scofflaws. Take, for example, the process undertaken when a student, at the morning check-in, claims to not have a cellphone. Middleton said that the pupil's parent or guardian is contacted and told what the teen has said. That roots out some of the rule flouters. "We've actually had a couple of parents say, 'What?! They do have it," Middleton said with a laugh. In the three weeks after the school of roughly 1,400 students began using the Yondr pouches, Middleton said, the administration had confiscated about 15 phones. Mendoza, who noted that her average daily screen time has plummeted from about seven hours to as little as three, said none of her friends had ever had their phones taken away. Senior Uleses Henderson, another student on the leadership council, said that underclassmen may feel that the Yondr program is "random," but juniors and seniors grasp that "there has to be some type of enforcement with the phone." "They're definitely not in agreement with it," Henderson said, "but there is an understanding of why it is happening." Thacker, however, complained that the ban has upended classes at her school where mobile phones are regularly used. She studies journalism and previously used her iPhone to record interviews. When the ban was instituted she had to buy a standalone recorder. "We are having to jump through a lot of random hoops," she said. Educators saw things differently. Soon after the new policy went into effect, Paul Duke, Uni High's dean of students, said that a teacher pulled him aside to tell him, incredulously, that students were actually paying attention to his lessons. "Teachers," Duke said, "are being listened to." Lennox Middle School Principal Lissett Pichardo talked about the scourge of cellphones on her South Bay campus as if it were an existential threat. She said that upon return to in-person learning in fall 2021 after the pandemic had forced a retreat to distance learning, phones were a major contributor to an atmosphere that proved so toxic she considered leaving her job. "The cellphones were gonna kill us. That was the worst year, professionally, of my life," she said, explaining that the use of digital devices was rampant, despite already having a ban in place. Then there was the fighting. Students "would video tape each other [fighting] and they would AirDrop it to everyone," Pichardo said. "It was terrible. I was like, 'I'm gonna quit.' " Instead, Pichardo reached out to Yondr and struck a deal with the company. Its pouches debuted at the middle school, which has 1,195 students, in fall 2022. The changes were almost instantaneous. Kids became increasingly engaged in class. They socialized more and fought less, Pichardo said. Students shared similar sentiments with The Times. "It makes me concentrate more on my work," a girl said. "The school would be different if everybody was on their phone," a boy said. "There would be more drama and there would be fights on a daily basis." The strides made at Lennox Middle School over the last three years may give a sense of what's in store for LAUSD schools. "They'll roll their eyes at first," Dugoni said. "They'll resist the idea — they've never known a world without a smartphone. Most of them will reluctantly admit after three or four weeks that they feel less anxious, that they enjoy not being on their phone." Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
