Record-breaking Viking Football Season

Vikings #1!! With fans like these, having a winning season is even better. Here cheering on their team are student section regulars (front row) Kinzie Pierce, Sydney Chase, (2nd row) Kyelee Putnam, Breanna Wickerink, Carissa Jones, Mya Bianchi, Erica Potter, Kennedy Saige, Lexi Hickey, Rosa Vasquez, Adrian Almas, (3rd row) Allison Pfeifer, Kennedy McLeod, Isabela Acker, Emily Burke, (4th row)Haylee Marks, Elly Cobb, Collette Sharp, and Emily Perkins.

- by Ian Smith -Lakewood High School’s foot-

ball team made history for the second year in a row, and the 2016 season brought with it a new title, landing the team in uncharted waters for competition. Winning the Division Championship No-vember 4th on Unity Field against Lansing Sexton sent them to Hud-sonville Unity Christian to battle for the Regional Championship title. While the Vikings ultimately lost on November 11th, by a score of 36-16, the Lakewood Vikings fought a hard battle and earned much respect from the school, the community, and the state for their performance in Class C Division sports.

The season ended with 10 wins and 2 losses. Statistics for the season are as follows: 9/1-Lake O/ Belding:44-30; 9/9- Lake O/Perry:37-32; 9/16-Lake O/Maple Valley-51-21; 9/23-Stockbridge/Lake O – 21-57; 9/30 – Lake O/Olivet – 34-27; 10/07 – Leslie/Lake O – 34-56; 10-14 – Char-lotte/Lake O – 36-38; 10/21-Lake

O/ Ionia –30-35; 10/28- Lake O/Battle Creek Pennfield–38-32; 11/04 – Lake O/ Lansing Sexton – 36-28; 11/11- Hudsonville Unity Christian/ Lake O – 36-16.

The energy has been palpable during these games, with school spirit present like never before, with overall unity among stu-dents and community members increasing due to the pride for our team and school. The stands rocked with cheers, the pep and marching bands played stel-lar performances, and families bonded with hope. During these tumultuous times in history, and while reading and understanding the division, anger, and hatred displayed at other schools in cur-rent times, Lakewood is honored to report that the performance of the football team has been a uni-fying factor. Their record for the last two years hasn’t only brought pride to the students involved in sports, but has changed the tone for the entire student body regarding setting and reaching goals. We’re very proud of our Vi-king football team.  

Photo by Megan Hollern

Senior pranks look like a no go for the class of 2017. Senior pranks have been banned at many other schools, due to the pranks leading to vandalism. Senior pranks distract other students ability to learn, cost money to fix any damages done to public or personal property, and can lead to crimi-nal charges against an individual. I spoke with Matthew Markwart about his view on senior pranks and this is what he had to say, “They’re terrible!” He spoke about his previous his-tory on senior pranks. “Kids camped outside the school getting drunk to where they couldn’t walk, they’d open all the lockers, pull out everyone’s belongings and throw them on the ground, some students

even urinated on things.” The punishments for these acts, were students involved were not al-lowed to walk with their class at graduation, a French foreign exchange student was even de-ported back to France. Senior pranks usually aren’t a simple whoopie cushion on your least favorite teachers chair, they lead to worse acts upon the school itself. Ultimately, causing damage to the property affected meaning money has to be spent to recov-er from these pranks. The senior class should be able to come togeth-er and prank the school as long as it’s safe right? That’s how many of the seniors here at Lake-wood feel.   Monique Hicks, a senior, said “I think they’re a right of passage for us seniors who are leaving, we should be able to go out

The end of senior pranks as we know it?- by Livvy Dummer -

Practice makes perfect! Senior Erick King finds time to prac-tice TP’ing a tree in front of the school. Could senior pranks be a no-go this year?

Photo by Tyler Foltz

- by Larissa Mater -Some people have heard about peer-to-peer, but

do they really know what it is about? Many students at Lakewood High School participate in peer-to-peer and love it. Peer-to-peer helps students with autism participate in different activities by using icons, schedules, and peer helping. Icons show the pictures or words of what they need to get done or what they should be doing. Reinforcers are also used in peer-to-peer; a reinforcer is used in positive ways. Reinforcers can be anything from giving them their favorite food, letting them have more leisure time, or giving them something that smells appealing to them. An example of this would be when a student with autism is asked to wave or clap. When they do it their health care aid gives them their reinforcer, encouraging the student to do it again when asked.

Meredith Tobaben, who has been working with people with autism for over 10 years, says peer-to-peer is exciting. Her reasoning is that the students in her class, Gage Sherrow, Tiara Eastman, and Pat-rick Mendez, can build relationships with anyone, without this class the relationships wouldn’t be built. Peer-to-peer provides an opportunity for typical students to build relationships with students with autism who wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to create them. Having the peer-to-peer class pro-vides an opportunity for the students to be included in regular school day activities. For example, Tiara was able to go to prom 2016 with a date and Patrick participated in a choir concert without his parents accompanying him.

Mary Haskins, one of many students in peer-to-peer, believes that being in this class helps others to become better people, as well as teach the typical students about the different disabilities in the world and what they can do to help. Trista Shattuck, an-other peer-to-peer student says, “It helps us under-stand more of what they [the students with autism] go through and what autism means.” She loves peer-to-peer and wants to continue helping people with autism in a later career.

Eating it up. Patrick Mendez and Tiara East-man eat their lunch in the cafeteria with other students.

by Montenae Reid

Vol. 30 No. 3

ontageThe

Nov. 18, 2016Lakewood High School Lake Odessa, MI 48849

M

with a bang.” Hearing that senior pranks are not allowed, students are upset. Many ask “What if the prank doesn’t damage anything? Is it

okay then?” You’ll need to take that up with Mr.Larner; you wouldn’t want to risk your chance to walk at your own graduation, right?

Lakewood High School will be introducing 2 new AP (Advanced Placement) courses to the cur-riculum. Mr. Larner believes the addition of new AP courses will allow the students to, “compete on the same playing field when trying to compete for post-sec-ondary education.” He explained how success in AP courses cor-relates to success in college and also equips students for life.

Beginning next year Lakewood High School will replace the exist-ing course, advanced chemistry, with the new course, AP Chem-istry. This Course will be taught by Mrs. Cobb, who is highly qual-ified to teach AP Chemistry and has taught AP courses in the past. Also, the current Advanced En-glish 11 will be replaced with the course AP Language and Compo-sition. This course will most likely be taught by Mr. Kadwell.

Noah Caudy, a Lakewood High School senior who has tak-en every currently available AP course at Lakewood, believes, “they’re difficult but worth it be-cause of the academic rigor they offer.” Another Lakewood student who has taken every available AP course Lakewood has to offer, current senior George McNeill, has similar views of the courses; they have “required me to work harder and manage time.” George also agrees that he would have,

“taken advantage of the upcoming options and courses” if possible.

Current Lakewood Junior, Paden Morris, is currently in Advanced Chemistry. Paden would have chosen AP Chem-istry over Advanced Chemistry, and that is exactly what students next year will be able to do. Mr. Larner believes that there will be, “excitement for the opportunity of a more rigorous system” from the student body. He also agrees that students will be satisfied with the long term gains of taking AP courses.

- by Karlee Shapley -

2 new AP coming in ‘17- by James Leadbetter -

George McNeill and Noah Caudy study for their AP courses in lunch, setting a good example for students who will be taking the new AP courses next year.

Bathroom passes seem to be an issue for many students here at Lake-wood High school. At the beginning of every year, each student is given an agenda. The purpose of the agen-da is to list all the rules and have a few blank areas where you can write things down. The agenda also allows three passes every day. Those passes could be used for permission to go down to the office, or in this case to use the bathroom.

Many students complain that there aren’t enough passes. Senior Jason Leach believes there should be allowed more passes. “There have been a few times where I would have to ask a friend for their agenda be-cause I already used all of my passes.” Some teachers will not accept certain passes because they have their own way to use bathroom passes, such as Mrs. Kaatz.

Mr. Nordman, subbing for Mrs. Kaatz, does not agree with the agenda passes and claims it gives us way too

many passes. “I think school should prepare you for college, and in college you never see someone get up during class just to use the bathroom, that’s what the breaks in between classes are for.”

Christian Kohn walks into the bath-room carrying a pass. Students at Lakewood are required to fill out a pass in order to go to the bathroom, which doesn’t always happen.

by Garrett Oesch

by Cole Haring

Bathroom pass problems

Peer-to-Priceless: Building relationships one at a time

With the recent LHS production of the musical Once Upon a Mattress, we wondered what musicals the cast likes. Their answers are interesting and insightful. Perhaps a future LHS production is among the answers?

Olivia Burns, Senior: “Chicago! I like the lyrics and the theme of female empowerment, and it’s also just awesome.”

Taylor Smith, Senior: “I love so many! If I had to pick one I would choose Phantom of the Opera. I have loved it ever since I was younger and I just connected with the show. Plus I have watched it so much I know every single song and most of the words.”

Abigail Mater, Senior: “I like Once. The music is part of the character’s lives rather than being an unnatural addition to the story. It’s not there to entertain so much as to truly express emotions. It captures a beautiful story and lots of feelings through the perspective of a musical mind.”

Karlie Sprague, Senior: “Beauty and the Beast, because Beauty saw the best in the Beast when no one else did. Also, I can sing pretty much any song from it by heart.”

Kris Fahrni, Senior: “Sweeney Todd, I love the whole dark Victorian aesthetic, and the music is well written, and the actors were chosen well.”

Molly Macleod, Junior: “This caused me an existential crisis, but I guess The Sound of Music? That musical has always been near and dear to my heart, plus Julie Andrews.”

Once Upon a Musical

Atomic Vikings power on despite no school funding- by Noah Jewell -

Lakewood High School has had a robotics club for the past two years. In these years the club placed 8th in a tournament with forty other teams. The members of “Atomic Vikings Robotics Team #5256” have shown the commitment and ability of our school. Even with our peers showing the achieve-ment of our team it is still strug-gling due to the lack of funding. All of the robotics team equip-ment has come from either do-nation or the team fundraisers. The robotics team does have funding from sponsors but the school is not funding the team’s equipment. Lily Gray has been a member of the robotics team since the beginning. Gray is the robotics team’s safety captain and she placed third place for top safety captains. Gray said that the team is a hardworking group of students out to prove that Lakewood High School has talent and determination for the robotics program.

The team consists of eigh-teen students, not including new recruits or mentors. They have won multiple grants for the school, and they are con-stantly working on their next creation, even spending time over the summer.

Regarding the new recruits Lily Gray said anyone wanting

to join is free to join, no expe-rience is needed as long as you are willing to learn, and work hard. The robotics team is an excellent way for Lakewood

High School to show how far we can go with hardworking students and mentors. The team meets in the robotics room ev-ery Thursday after school and

continue to work on their proj-ects for the next competition. It is impressive with how far our team has made it without the school funding that other

extracurricular activities have. The team is really showing the practicality of our school and how it is possible to succeed with hard work.

Atomic Vikings crush it! Members of Robotics Team #5256 last year was (front row) Will Weygandt, Andrew Wellwood, Michael Scobey, Vic the Viking, Dakota Keeler, Matthew Reed, (back row) Cuyler Rine, Lily Gray, Hawkins Amos, Alex Smith, Jarrod Storey, Ashleigh Raymond, and Will Steverson.

As bow season comes and goes, hunt-ing stories start circu-lating school. Some stories tell of big bucks, some small, and some really big ones. This is a story a nicely sized buck that caught atten-tion through the halls in school, the man be-hind this story is Kody Farr. he recounted to me the story:

“I got to my tree stand at about 3pm and by the time I had climbed up, it was 3:15. I pulled my bow and knocked my ar-row and made sure I didn’t jump any deer. I sat down and snap-chatted my cousin and brother of the area that I was hunting at. I put my phone away and took a drink of water and made sure all my stuff was good. I sat

till about 3:45 I think it was, then I started to feel my phone vi-brating in my pocket, instinctively I went to check it. At that mo-ment I heard a noise to the right of my tree stand. Right after that, I saw two does sprint-ing by me so I figured there was a buck be-hind them. so I stood up and grabbed my bow. Not 30 seconds went by, then this beast

came out by a tree line 15 yard away from me, I grunted to get him to stop. I was in full draw with my phone still vi-brating in my pocket when I took the shot and let the arrow fly. I saw where I hit him and freaked out and grabbed my phone and answered; it was my brother calling me saying there was a huge buck headed right to-wards me!”

- by Matt Koetje -

Buck fever and the cell phone

Kody Farr shows off the buck he shot last year.

The school’s fall pro-duction of Once Upon a Mattress came to a close last Sunday, Nov. 13th, after a run of four perfor-mances. With a cast of 40 high school students, and a crew of 10 supplement-ed by many adults from the community, the show was a success.

Many comments on Facebook, tagging mem-bers of the cast, crowed about the positive event. “You all are BRILLIANT,” one said. “Our communi-ty is proud of you!” An-other said, “The perfor-mance is amazing!” There are many other posts and quotes throughout social media, with pictures and accolades.

Laura Julian, pit pi-ano and music director for Mattress, said, “So many kids asked in the beginning what the deep-er meaning of the story was.  I smiled and said, ‘There is no big lesson in this one. What you see is what you get.’ ” Julian also said that it was perfect-ly timed to be the right show for right after the election, which had been so divisive this year. “The musical was pure enter-tainment. We all needed a good laugh.”

Over 600 communi-ty members came to see the show, and around 225 students came to the pre-view show.

The ticket sales help to fund all aspects of the show (and future shows)

which include royalty costs for the right to per-form the show, program costs, costume rental fees, any costs associated with building/dressing the set, props, lights, and sound equipment needs.

Lakewood is fortu-nate to have professional musicians in the pit or-chestra, professional the-atre, music, and English teachers/professors on the directing team, and countless loving parents and grandparents who continue to contribute to a strong program.

Coming next are the middle school produc-tion of Alice in Wonder-land, Jr., which auditions Nov. 22nd, and The Secret Garden, which will be au-ditioning in January.

- by Ian Smith -Musical ‘Mattress’ first success of 2016-17 season