Panther Pride May 2013

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Panther Pride MAY 2013

The Class of 2013 had another very successful college admissions season. This year, 88% of the senior class applied either Early Decision or Early Action to colleges and universities. Before Winter Break, many of the seniors had already received notification of admission to at least one school, often to one of their top choice colleges. In all, the Class of 2013 submitted a total of 408 applications to 139 different colleges and universities. The Class of 2013 will be matriculating to the following schools:

American University Babson College Boston College (2) Boston University Bucknell University Cornell University Elon University Emerson College Emory University Fairleigh Dickinson University

The George Washington University (2) Georgetown University (2) University of Georgia Haverford College James Madison University Johns Hopkins University Lafayette College Lehigh University University of Miami Muhlenberg College

New York University (6) Northeastern University Northwestern University University of Notre Dame Pace University University of Pennsylvania Quinnipiac University University of Richmond Rutgers University (2) Saint Joseph’s University

Sarah Lawrence College University of South Carolina University of Southern California Stetson University Syracuse University Tulane University (3) Union College Villanova University Washington University in St. Louis


Caroline Korey ’14 Selected to Attend

Prestigious Engineering Program

Junior Caroline Korey (Locust) was selected to attend the New Jersey Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology at Rutgers University. This highly selective four-week residential summer program typically admits less than 25% of the 300-400 applications it receives, which include some of New Jersey’s most talented and motivated high school students.

After attending a program at Stevens Institute of Technology last summer, Caroline decided she wanted to challenge herself with another program this year. She applied to be nominated through Ranney and was selected by the Upper School Selection Committee for nomination. “I am extremely proud of Caroline for this accomplishment,” said Co-Director of College Guidance Mr. Adam Materasso, who served on the committee. “As an aspiring engineer, this program will be beneficial to her as she will be surrounded by others with similar interests.”

At Stevens, Caroline attended a two-week program; the Rutgers program will allow her to stay in the campus dorms during her month-long program to experience life as a college student. “There will be more opportunities and I will be able to choose courses that match my inter-ests,” explained Caroline. “I was honored to be nominated, but was not sure if I would be ac-cepted. When I received the news, I was so excited.”

At Rutgers, students will participate in a research project within a specific field of engineering that will be showcased in a conference-style final paper and presentation in front of hundreds of guests. Caroline will work together with two or more students to complete the project, one aspect which she is particularly excited about. The program will also include workshops, visits to local corporations and activities to connect students with professors and professionals throughout the state. Caroline attributes her prepa-ration for the program to the well-rounded math and science curriculum at Ranney. Her two favorite classes are AP Physics and AP Chemistry, which contribute to her interest in biomedical engineering.

Outside of Ranney, Caroline is active in community service, including volunteering at Cinderella’s Closet , a local organization that is dedicated to providing less fortunate high school students with the opportunity to attend their prom in style. She served as co-chair for the organization’s fashion show this year. Her duties included organizing raffles and assembling gift baskets that were used as fundraisers for the boutique. Caroline also volunteers through her church where she tutors children. At Ranney, she serves as the secretary of the Community Service Club and is a member of the Junior Engineering Technical Socie-ty (JETS), which promotes interest in engineering, science, mathematics and technology and provides real-world engineering and problem-solving experience to high school students. In addition, Caroline has been swimming since she was 7 years old and has been on the Varsity Swim team since her freshman year. As a result of her positive experiences with outside learning opportunities, Caroline encourages students to look into programs that focus on what they are interested in. “My advice for other students is not to be afraid to apply. Enjoy your classes and take ad-vantage of additional experience.”

Congratulations to our fifth grade French students for their outstanding scores on the Elementary Level National French Exam, Le Grand Concurs. A total of 15 students took the exam, and five scored within the top 16 at the state level. This accomplishment qualified them to represent the New Jersey Chapter of French Students at the national level. Congratulations to Madame Rosenthal and the following students: Charlotte Clark (Tinton Falls): 3rd place state, 6th place national ranking Thomas Jensen (Colts Neck): 11th place state, 8th place national ranking Olivia Knoop (Tinton Falls): 12th place state, 9th place national ranking Uzay Takil (Holmdel): 13th place state, 9th place national ranking Marisa Riebesell (Manalapan): 16th place state, 10th place national ranking

FIFTH-GRADE FRENCH STUDENTS EXCEL ON EXAM


NICOLE VAIANI Freshman Nicole Vaiani (Wall) recently was selected to the New Jersey Interscholastic Association (NJIFA) First Team All-State for Women's Foil, a first for Ranney School. This honor is based on a vote from all the high school coaches in the state of New Jersey, in addition to accrued points throughout the fencing season. In March, Nicole won the 2013 Dis-trict Individual Championship and the 2013 New Jersey Independent School Individual Championship. She also earned the silver medal in Girls' Foil at the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association

(NJSIAA) State Championship. Nicole was among the 18 best New Jersey high school fencers who qualified. This 2nd place finish was the first NJSI-AA podium for a female Ranney fencer.

As a team, the foil squad captured the 2013 NJSIAA District Championship, finished fourth at the Squads States and also won the New Jersey Independent School State Championship.

ROBOTICS CLUB

The Ranney School Robotics Club has been working hard all year to design, build and drill their robots for multiple competitions—and in April their hard work paid off when one of the Upper School robotics teams—Team A led by Raymond Moser '15 (Shrewsbury)—had the opportunity to travel to Anaheim, California, to compete in the VEX World Robotics Championship. More than 15,000 people, including students, teachers, coaches and industry leaders attended the event, represent-ing 24 countries. Approximately 700 teams competed at the Middle School, High School and College level. Simply qualifying for the championship meet meant that the Ran-ney team ranked in the top 9% of all teams worldwide. The trip represented the first time that Ranney has quali-fied for the World Tournament and the students were more than excited to compete against top teams from across the globe. For a team only 2 years old, it did extremely well, coming in in 349th place among 420 high school teams. Congratulations to: Raymond Moser ’15 (Shrewsbury), Vasilios Nicholas ’16 (Holmdel), Brandon Gioggia ’16 (Belford), Amy Winkler ’15 (Manasquan), Ryan Eaddy ’15 (Sea Girt), Jack Fink ’16 (Middletown), Josh Goikh-man ’15 (Morganville), Caitlin Mullally ’15 (Red Bank), Ava Papetti ’15 (Colts Neck), Avani Bhatnagar ’15 (Holmdel), Marykatherine Horan ’15 (Rumson) and Samantha Chiarello ’15 (Holmdel).

Head Fencing Coach Agota Balot and Nicole Vaiani ’16


LOWER SCHOOL COMMUNITY SERVICE CLUB

Ranney third-, fourth- and fifth-graders brought smiles to residents of the Kensington Court Assisted Living Center as part of their work in the Lower School Community Service Club.

Approximately 20 students participated in the trip to the nearby Tinton Falls center, where they helped the residents play a horse-racing bingo game. They also delivered

hand-made cards and flowers to the residents.

UPPER SCHOOL COMMUNITY

SERVICE CLUB

The Upper School Community Service Club has been working hard this month to raise 1,000 cans for Lunch Break, in honor of the local organization’s 30th anniversary. The club has also tutored children at the First United Methodist Church of Freehold.

BROOKE SCHMELZ Fourth-grade student Brooke Schmelz (Monmouth Beach) has combined her love of art with com-munity service. She recently used some of her art work to create notecards to sell to raise money for the Monmouth Beach Cultural Cen-ter which is in need of huge repairs after Hurricane Sandy. Inspired by the efforts of the young artist, Soc-cer Stadium Eatontown is gifting each participant with 20% off all store non-sale merchandise after

they purchase the notecards. Brooke hopes to open her own greeting-card business some day. The cards are on sale at both loca-tions for $15 (pack of 8 notecards, 4 large, 4 small with envelopes). All proceeds will go to the Monmouth Beach Cultural Center.


LOWER SCHOOL CELEBRATES

EARTH DAY Ranney’s Lower School kicked off Earth Day during the week of April 22, 2013 with a new recycling project that focuses on electronics. In collaboration with Ter-racycle, which provides free waste-collection programs for hard-to-recycle materi-als, students and their families are collecting unwanted or no longer useable iPads, iPods, cameras, calculators and more through the end of the school year. For each item collected, Terracycle rewards the school with points that can be re-deemed for a monetary donation to a charity or nonprofit organization. The chil-dren will vote on where the funds go. “One option may be to use the funds to cre-ate new recycling programs here at the school,” said Mrs. Judith Salisbury, Lower School Science Teacher. Renata Bodner (Ethan ’25) came up with the idea for the project when she stum-bled across the Terracylce website online. “We all try to do our part by leaving our recyclables at the curb, or even bringing them to a recycling center or other drop-off sites, but [Terracycle] allows us to go a step further and recycle items that a town may not take,” she says. “And even better, everybody involved in it wins.” Many items can be recycled, so why focus on electronics? “A lot of people don’t

think about recycling their electronics, but they are actually quite useful,” explained Mrs. Salisbury. Electronics are also worth more points from Terracycle compared with bottle caps and juice pouches, for example, and cleaner to store on campus. Families can support the project by sending in their recycleable electronics (a list of acceptable items is below). Two bins are available for dropping off items in the Lower School (at the Commons and outside Mrs. Salisbury’s science lab, room 127) until the end of the school year. Mrs. Bodner said she believes it’s important for children to learn about recycling at an early age. “It's all about habits. The earlier you start on a habit, good or bad, the greater the chances you'll stick to it for life,” she explains. “Although this is an experimental program, I hope to get the children engaged and enthusiastic about it. I hope they feel that they can make a difference at any age and realize that no action is too small.” To keep them motivated, Mrs. Bodner plans to chart the col-lection progress so that the children can see what they’ve col-lected so far and how many points they are earning (which are calculated by weight). “Showing them the progress may give them an idea of their collective impact and encourage them to keep going,” she says. “In a wealthier environment, consumerism is usually higher and so is waste,” adds Mrs. Bodner. “I hope that the children will get in the habit of thinking about the impact they have on the planet from the moment they purchase something … and hopefully they will start thinking of reducing other types of waste as well such as energy, water and other resources.” Adds Mrs. Salisbury, “The children are quite excited about this project and we hope that it will serve as a springboard for future recycling brigades at Ranney.”


Knowledge Vision.Honor

Roey Hadar ’13

ACADEMIC CHALLENGE TEAM The Academic Challenge team broke its previous scoring rec-ord and finished fourth in New Jersey and 39th in the nation of 500 teams competing in the International Competition known as the “Knowledge Master Open.” In addition, the “Nerd Squad” finished ninth in the State at the State Champi-onships, held at Princeton University. Senior Roey Hadar (Fair Haven) was selected by the state coaches’ fraternity to the All-State team, selected as the # 2 player in the state of NJ.

HISTORY BOWL TEAM Congratulations to the History Bowl Team members that competed in Nationals in Washington D.C. Ranney’s “A” Team made it to the Octofinals. Roey Hadar reached the Sem-ifinals in the Geography Olympiad and Round 1 Finals in the History Bee. Congratulations to the team and Roey!

UPPER SCHOOL PERFORMING ARTS

The Upper School Drama Program recently earned four Basie Award Nominations. Similar to Broadway’s Tony Awards, the Basie Awards honor excellence in Monmouth County High School Dramatic

and Musical Theatre. An evaluation committee of professional actors, singers, directors, choreographers and graduates send four adjudicators to assess each production. This year, the following members

of the program received nominations from the Count Basie Education Department:

Ben Puvalowski ’13 (Matawan)

Twelfth Night Outstanding Lead Actor in A Drama

Karl Brand ’16 (Holmdel)

Man of La Mancha Outstanding Supporting

Actor in A Musical

Noah Goldstein ’14 (Spring Lake Heights)

Twelfth Night Outstanding Lead Actor in A Drama

Mr. John Doyle Twelfth Night

The Carole Malik Award for Outstanding Costume

Design

HUBERT WANG Congratulations to Hubert Wang ’21 ( Holmdel) who qualified to compete at the state level after Pi Math Day in March. Hubert competed at the state competition on May 9 and earned fourth place out of all competing fourth graders at the NJ Math Olympiad Competition.


Performing Arts at Ranney

ALICE IN WONDERLAND JR. Congratulations to the cast and crew of Ranney’s Lower School production of

“Alice in Wonderland Jr.” on a wonderful performance.

For behind the scenes interviews, visit the Ranney School website Multimedia Gallery.

FORENSICS TEAM

On April 13, Ranney School hosted its 10th Annual Forensics Festival. The Ranney School Forensics Team competed against students from Oak Hill Academy, The Winston School, St. Jerome School, Ocean Township Intermediate School and Rum-son Country Day School in front of an audience of more than 300 guests for top honors in the categories of dramatic pairs, storytelling, humorous interpretation of literature and dramatic interpretation of literature. Overall, Ranney students earned

recognition for 18 performances.

Most Outstanding Performance: Karl Brand ’16 (Holmdel) Humorous Interpretation Carmine Mastrokostas ’18 (Freehold) Humorous Interpretation Ankur Govil ’18 (Manalapan) Dramatic Interpretation Sathya Edamadaka ’19 (Allentown) Storytelling Samantha Riebesell ’19 (Manalapan) and Alexandra Greenberg ’19 (Marlboro) Dramatic Pairs Second Place Awards:

Taylor Zenner ’17 (Spring Lake) Humorous Interpretation Evan Schultz ’17 (Colts Neck) Storytelling Mackenzie Schultz ’19 (Colts Neck) Humorous Interpretation

Commended Performance Awards: Kyra Citron ’16 (Brielle) Storytelling Leigh Brandt ’17 (Shrewsbury) Humorous Interpretation Liam Fitzmaurice ’17 (Spring Lake) and Matt Torpey ’17 (Colts Neck) Dramatic Pairs Madison Chamas ’18 (Millstone Twp.) Dramatic Interpretation Shana Fitzmaurice ’19 (Spring Lake) Humorous Interpretation Honorable Mention : Jacob Wahba ’16 (Holmdel) Dramatic Interpretation Julianna Poupard ’17 (Tinton Falls) Storytelling Leah Nawy ’19 (Lincroft) Dramatic Interpretation Alyssa Mendez ’19 (Old Bridge) Storytelling Aidan Denver-Moore ’17 (Red Bank) Humorous Interpretation For behind the scenes interviews, visit the

Ranney School website Multimedia Gallery.


LOWER SCHOOL GIRLS’ LACROSSE

The Ranney Lower School Girls’ Lacrosse Team competed in the 2013 Tri-State Lax Luau Tournament on Sunday May 5th at Mercer County Park. This is the second year the team has represented Ranney School at the event, which has served as a great opportunity for the junior lacrosse players to experience a variety of competition. More than 70 teams from the tri-state area participated in the tournament this year. The team, comprised of girls from the third, fourth and fifth grades, played hard throughout the day, finishing with a record of two wins, one tie and two losses. Their time spent on fun-damentals and skill development at practice has paid off and contributed to their success on the field. At the tournament, the girls also participated in limbo and costume contests and enjoyed a tailgate courtesy of their parents and Coach Dave Poupard. Overall, it was a fun day for the young Panthers who were proud to represent their school.

ETHAN BODNER Ethan Bodner ’25 (Eatontown)posed with his art teacher Mrs. Bar-bara Levine after receiving “Artist of the Week” from Artsonia, an in-ternational online museum for art students. Ethan’s prize-winning sculpture was made out of white clay which he hand dyed and mold-ed into the shape of a dog.

CHRISTOPHER NIVERA

Christopher Nivera ’17 (Holmdel)recently competed in the NJMTA competition on April 27 where he received Honors recognition for his

piano playing. He will attend the award ceremony on May 18.


GREGORY MARX Gregory Marx ’17 (Marlboro) was recently honored as one of the brightest young students in the nation at a statewide awards ceremony for academically advanced children sponsored by The Johns Hopkins University Center for Tal-ented Youth (CTY). The center honored Gregory, one of more than 40,000 students from more than 120 countries who participated in the CTY Talent Search, for his exceptional performance on a rigorous, above-grade-level test given to academically talented students in grades 2-8.

EIGHTH-GRADE FRENCH STUDENTS Eighth-grade French students have received wonderful results on the National French exam, taken earlier in the year. Jillian Ross (Rumson) -4th place-and Olivia Nisbet (Monmouth Beach) -9th place- received the bronze medal for achieving a national top 10 ranking. Congratulations to our students and Mrs. Moran!

David Piskun ’19 (Morganville)

has been named the winner of the Amateur Astronomers Asso-ciation of Princeton poetry con-test. At the recommendation of his English teacher, Mrs. Red-

dington, David and approximate-ly 20 other sixth-grade students submitted pieces for the contest, joining more than 70 total from around the state of New Jersey. David will receive recognition and an award at an upcoming

association meeting.

EIGHTH-GRADE SPANISH

STUDENTS

Eighth-grade Spanish students have earned top results on the National Spanish Exam taken earlier in the school year. Out of the 52 students who took the exam, 32 students placed in the top 50 percent of scores na-tionally and five students posted scores in the top 20 percent nationally. Congratulations to all participating students and their teacher, Senora Hernandez!

DYLAN WARREN Dylan Warren ’21 (Rumson) and his U10 Players Development Academy (PDA) soccer team recently won the NJ State Cup—making them the state champions for the highest ranking com-petitive league in their age group in New Jersey. Dylan practices and plays daily and his dedication and hard work have paid off.

DAVID PISKUN


HUBERT & LYNNA WANG Ranney siblings Hubert ’21 and Lynna ’25 Wang (Holmdel) compet-ed in the Little Mozart Festival Competition last month at Carnegie Hall and both won second place in their age groups. Determined to return to the Carnegie Hall stage after Ranney’s grand performance in January, Hubert played an elegant piece of Musette by Bach. Lynna played Dance of the Little Swans, an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

ANKUR GOVIL

Ankur Govil ’18 (Manalapan) won first place in the

French Beginner cat-egory of the William Paterson University Annual Poetry Reci-tation Contest. Con-gratulations to Ankur on this achievement!

KYRA CITRON Kyra Citron ’16 (Brielle) was recently honored by The Bridge of Books Foundation (BoB)—a nonprofit that provides gently-used books for underprivileged and at-risk children throughout New Jersey—as an outstanding supporter at its 10th anniversary fundraising event. Kyra serves as the director of Kid’s Corner at The Charles Lafitte Foundation and actively volun-teers, including organizing two annual book drives within the school and the community.

HANNAH STAMER At a tribute dinner on May 20 for the program “Hand in Hand,” Hannah Stamer ’16 (Rumson) will be speaking about her experiences as a volunteer. Hand in Hand provides support to children with special needs and their fami-lies throughout Monmouth County. Every week, Hannah visits a five-year old child with special needs at his home to encourage him with friendship. Hannah is one of many dedicated teenagers in the community who volunteer for "Hand in Hand,” which provides unique programs, outreach and support to children with special needs such as Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Au-tism and Asperger’s. These teen volunteers become mentors and role models to the children—establishing a poignant and powerful two-way bond. The tribute dinner will take place at the Two River Theater in Red Bank.

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Panther Pride May 2013