The Glen Echo MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2014 VOLUME 58, ISSUE I GLEN ROCK, NJ

For students, the approach-ing footsteps of the vice prin-cipal can be even more imitat-ing than that of the principal.

“It’s hard for me,” Purciel-lo said, “Everyone is afraid be-cause I’m the discipline guy.”

For the past ten and a half years, Glen Rock High School has been privileged to have Steve Purciello as the vice principal and he will be leaving his posi-tion at the end of December.

“This is one of the nicest groups of kids that I have ever dealt with,” Purciello said. “We work well with you and it is a nice relationship we have.”

Before joining Glen Rock’s faculty in 2004, he first taught in Lyndhurst, his hometown, and then in Garfield for four-teen years along, where he also coached varsity basketball. Soon after, he became the ath-letic director at New Milford High School for five years. He also taught in various towns in New Jersey, includ-ing Paterson, for seven years.

“I have gone from Glen Rock, economically, so-cio-economically pretty good and then to Paterson. I have hit them all. I have had a taste in all the schools,” he said.

Purciello will finish with 36 and a half years in the teaching industry.

The mild-mannered vice-principal of Glen Rock High School, with his clean appearance and intelligent demeanor, has witnessed a lot of change at our school.

When he first started work-ing in Glen Rock, his greatest concern was learning about the community: specifically,

Vice principal retires after decade of discipline

fitting in and being a part of it. He wanted to make sure he could work with the stu-dents and faculty in a way that would be productive and result in positive outcomes.

For Purciello, the most difficult part about having an administrative position in a high school is deal-ing with some of the par-ents and trying to explain the school rules, “especially when their child does some-thing that isn’t acceptable.”

He said these parents of-ten try to justify their chil-dren’s behavior, even if it was against the rules.

“You try to be as pro-fessional,” Purciello said.

“I went through this with my own kids,” the former vice principal explained. “Some-times people don’t always take it the way it is intended.”

Yet despite these rough patches, Purciello cherishes

the opportunity he has, espe-cially getting to work under two well-liked principals, Mr. John Arlotta and Mr. Jim McCarthy, the administra-tive department, including Dr. Paula Valenti and Mr. Larry Wolff and the two sec-retaries, Mrs. Janice Crow-ley and Mrs. Marisa Davitt.

Crowley said of Purciello that he “goes out of his way to make sure the kids that get in trouble are treated fairly.”

Purciello described his rela-tionship with the current princi-pal, Arlotta, as “great,” saying that they get along very well.

“He is a pleasure to work with and we have became more than just associates working together, we became friendly,” Purciello said, add-ing that working as a team was the best way to achieve goals.

As for Arlotta, the feeling is mutual.

“He’s incredibly loyal. The

way it is structured, in terms of the administration, it’s just me and him,” the prin-cipal said. “He’s been here ten years, and four years ago it was helpful for him to say that it’s been done this way.”

Arlotta will miss the friendship he has with Purciello the most.

“We can talk about any-thing,” Arlotta said. “We’re both former coaches in Ber-gen County; we know ev-erybody, and he can help move ideas forward.”

Yet not everything still runs the same way it had four years ago; this year, the two ad-ministrators began the sched-ule shift that we run today.

“The most rewarding [part of the job] is being able to work as a team and get things done,” Purciello said, “es-pecially with change like the new schedule this year.”

(continued on page 16)

Interim VP endorses fairness, embraces challenge

An interim superintendent has been approved by the Glen Rock Board of Education for immediate instatement pursu-ant to Vice Principal Steve Pur-ciello’s retirement on Dec. 23.

Dan DiGuglielmo, who pre-viously held an administrative position in North Arlington, will begin his role as Interim Vice Principal when students return from winter break.

When the position opened for vice principal, it was listed in The Star Ledger and the elec-tronic application website, Ap-plitrack, where school districts can post vacancies. Forty can-didates applied for the position.

The Glen Rock High School’s administrators screened all of

the resumes and looked for the people who met their criteria.

“Ideally what we are look-ing for is a midyear replace-ment who is going to make the transition as smooth as possi-ble,” the principal of Glen Rock

High School, John Arlotta, said. “We were hopefully looking for someone who has past experi-ence as an administrator, some-one who recently retired, and we were able to find that in him.”

(continued on page 5)www.theglenecho.com

Great Expectations:

A ReviewPage 18

Lilia Wood, Trevor LaVine and Richard GuerenPrint, Online and Senior Editor-in-Chief

InsideDebate team p.2

Student-Teacher Day p.4

Mobius Coffeehouse p.7

Chris Herren Feature p.9

Behind the scenes of the Winter Slideshow p.10

Student Council fundraiser p.12

New Physical Education-teacher p.13

Opt-Out of gym class? p.14

New science teacher p.16

Music features p.17

Homecoming photos p.20

Girls’ basketball team p.22

Bowling team p.23

Football team season review p.24

PHOTO COURTESY OF LILIA WOODDan DiGuglielmo (right) was approved on Dec. 15 by the Board of Education to act as Vice Principal for the remainder of the year following Steve Purciello’s retirement on Dec. 23.

Lilia Wood & Kaitlin StanselPrint Editor-in-Chief & Social Media Editor

PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFF BUCKWALTERAfter ten and a half years as Vice Principal, Steve Purciello will relocate to Key West, Florida.

2 The Glen Echo Student Life

After school he saves livesUnlike the expected high

school student’s afternoon of playing a sport or participat-ing in a school-sponsored club, Glen Rock junior Jesse Weiss responds to medical and trau-ma emergencies around town as an EMT during his afternoons.

The responsibility of an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) is to answer emergency calls and provide efficient and proximate care to local sick and injured pa-tients. EMTs also have to provide transportation to the hospital for the patient as quickly as possible.

The qualifications to be an EMT vary between states, but in New Jersey, you only have to be 16.

Weiss decided he wanted to become an EMT six months prior to getting his official certification on September 7th because of his interest in medicine and curios-ity to explore the medical field.

“I have always heard about it, and I just figured it was some-thing I could do,” Weiss ex-plained. “I drove past the Glen Rock Ambulance Corps building and saw the sign that said vol-unteers needed and then it all sort of just clicked from there.”

Since he turned sixteen in July, he was able to fill out the preliminary application to be-come an EMT last spring. He took the official test at the end of the summer. The application included a police background

check and a tuberculosis screen-ing. Weiss passed both checks.

Once his application was ap-proved, then he could enroll in the training course. The class required 210 hours but even more hours were added on for supplementary training. It ran four days a week from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. and every other Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

An additional requisite was shadowing a nurse for ten hours in a hospital. Weiss observed how the nurse interacted with the EMTs who bring in patients.

Weiss had to pass 12 written tests, 12 practical tests, a mid-term and an accumulative final that were given throughout the training course. The students needed a 70% or higher on each exam and they each had two tries, even though the make-up tests were more challenging.

“You kind of see how you look around each week that the class size dwindles because of people dropping or failing out,” he said.

Along with subject matter ex-ams, a brief physical test was also necessary. EMTs in New Jersey have to be able to lift up to 125 pounds. Between two EMTs, they should be able to lift 300 pounds before asking for extra help.

“It is different for more urban places like New York City, where there are more physical require-ments because there are a lot more stairs and you could be carrying someone like nine flights of stairs,” Weiss said. “But for us, there are not many physical requirements.”

After he passed the course and the tests, he had to pass the state exam and get a score of 70% or higher. The test included every topic that they covered in the course, which Weiss described as “challenging.” For example, the first chapter included back-ground and legal issues to ex-plain what an EMT can or cannot do -- what will get them sent to court and what will get them sued.

“If you’re at a scene with mul-tiple patients and you leave some-one to tend to another without handing off care, you could get sued for neglect. It is very im-portant to not neglect,” he said.

Once Weiss received confir-mation of his EMT certification in the early fall, he immediately started to volunteer in Glen Rock. In town, there are always at least two EMTs on call. During the

day, “general alerts” could also be assigned to the volunteers. This means the EMTs are some-where in town and when their pager goes off, they can respond.

He currently is on call ev-ery Thursday night from 7 to 11, but his hours will soon expand as he gains more experience.

EMTs are required to re-spond to calls within around seven minutes, but that can sometimes “be a stretch.”

“We are typically pretty good with making it quickly. The police are there right away, so they can handle most of it,” Weiss explained.

EMTs are not equivalent to doctors, so they are not allowed to do any procedure that either break the skin or go inside the body, instead practicing “non-invasive care.” These parame-ters are listed in the “Scope of

Practice.” Their main priority is to get the patient to the hospital quickly, safely and efficiently.

“Trouble breathing, excessive bleeding and lack of oxygen are the main things we can help out with,” Weiss said. “We cannot do anything too serious. There are some things we can assist with though. For example, we are trained in childbirth, so we known how to deliver a baby. If there was a terrorist incident, we could be the head of the medical divi-sions, if we are the highest ranked officers there, which is rare.”

Weiss has been on call in Glen Rock for around two months and he has already assisted many lo-cal citizens in different incidents. He has helped residents who have had possible strokes, who are sui-cidal, who fell off a chair, who cracked their head opened, who have had a severe fever, a baby with an allergic reaction and a football player who got injured.

Weiss wants to study in the medical field in college, but he has not decided specifically what type of medical. He is consider-ing neuroscience and pharmacy.

His advice for people who are considering becoming an EMT is to not give up. The class is diffi-cult and challenging, but EMTs are responsible for someone’s life and, in the end, it will pay off.

“You just need to realize the impact of what you are doing and how important you really are to the town you are working for and just not give up even though it may get hard,” Weiss said.

No debating itGlen Rock High School offers

over fifty clubs to its students, including Model UN, Chess Team and the Latin Club. How-ever, one ‘arguably’ seems to stand out from the rest – the Glen Rock High School Debate Team.

In order to be successful in debate, members of the debate team have found that they need developed skills in a number of areas: researching, writing, plan-ning, and public speaking. Yet many students will go through high school neither knowing nor mastering these skills, lat-er finding themselves at a dis-advantage in the workplace.

This year the ‘resolve’ (or the topic being debated) is ‘Should the United States Federal Gov-ernment increase its nonmili-tary exploration and/or devel-opment of the Earth’s oceans?’

“There’s a lot of problems that are actually facing our generation,” said junior Em-mett O’Toole, a varsity debater. “Our plan this year is to clean up the oceans, and there are some real serious benefits eco-

nomically as well as in terms of health and stuff like that.”

Debate is not about just ar-guing, as a lot of work has to go into each debate. The students must first research the resolve, form an opinion and create their

stance, make a plan, and figure out how to effectively commu-nicate this plan to their audi-ence and the opposing team. Members of the team have to put a lot of time and effort into each debate they participate in.

“We would meet up over the weekend, and we kind of just go over everything,” said Itay Ka-zaz, a junior on the varsity debate

team and O’Toole’s partner. “A big part of debate is research, and you want to research the other team’s plan that you might see.”

Kazaz said their success de-pends on their ability to “work together as a team to research

text of arguments are going to be like,” O’Toole said. “Then we pretty much just go to work and start thinking and brainstorming random ideas that we could do.”

O’Toole said that he and Ka-zaz then “type it in on Google and go to work researching random articles and trying to find as many numbers and statistics as you can.”

“It really is a lot of work,” he told The Glen Echo.

Although debate requires ded-icated work and attention, to the teammates the benefits outweigh the workload. Members of the de-bate team see themselves develop into better students, researchers, and thinkers because of what de-bate requires from them. They are more effectively able to analyze situations, especially those laid out in political and complex texts.

“I think that debate has made me a better speaker, definite-ly. I’m less nervous in front of large crowds, and I’m better at analyzing complex politi-cal topics or world topics, and I can speak about them with fair ease,” O’Toole said. “I think it has helped me as a student.”

These skills that debaters learn and perfect through practice are often very valuable. In places like the work area, the skills (like analyzing and critically think-ing about texts and being able to communicate eloquently and ef-fectively) are all very important. Being in debate and being able to practice and master those skills

turns into a very big asset for the members of the debate team.

“Debate is a place where you can learn those kinds of things, and you learn how to commu-nicate, you learn how to debate, you learn how to research, you learn how to work in groups, all of those things that are go-ing to be beneficial to you, not just in college, but in the work-place as well,” said Justin Eco-chard, the Debate Team adviser for the past eight years and a History teacher. “By joining de-bate you really have to branch out and use words, you have to get up in front of people; you have to expose yourself, which would be beneficial to anyone.”

Kazaz, a recent winner of the First Place Speaker Award, also understands the many benefits of being in debate and thinks it is a positive use of his time.

“I think it has really helped me become a more confident person. I think it has also helped me, it has taught me a lot about how to research and just for school and for life, being able to use sources, such as the Internet, to your help and to be able to use these out-side sources to benefit you,” Ka-zaz said. “Debating, pretty much for any career, it’s a really good asset to have, and the ability to speak in front of an audience, and just to prove your point to others and to argue what you believe in.

“I think it’s a skill that every-one should have.”

as much as we can and get as much information prepared.”

Yet not only is research im-portant, but they must also pre-pare the actual speech itself. The students say this is a lot of work.

“We prepare for a debate by getting together and we read through, we get a large book called the Baylor Brief and we get a basic idea of what the con-

Maddy DoubetStaff Writer

PHOTO COURTESY OF MADDY DOUBETVarsity Debate member, Emmett O’Toole with his award for the first place team from the North Jersey Debate League.

Lilia WoodPrint Editor-in-Chief

PHOTO COURTESY OF LILIA WOODJesse Weiss (‘16) is one of the newest volunteer EMTs in Glen Rock and is on call four hours a week to report to emergencies.

3The Glen EchoStudent LifeCold

closing in closes

courtyard

More questions regarding the new schedule have come up as temperatures plummet, specifically regarding seat-ing during the block lunch.

With the new rotating drop schedule, the court-yard had been opened during lunch to provide more room for students to sit.“I like being outside in the open because it’s better than sitting in the crowded cafeteria,” said junior student Jason Palmeri.

On the other hand, some students still pre-fer to remain indoors re-gardless of the weather

“You could fit more peo-ple at a table so all my friends can be together,” said Paige Lemieux, a sophomore, who prefers sitting inside.

With the popularity of the courtyard seating, it’s no sur-prise some students desire to continue to eat lunch outside even with the steadily drop-ping temperatures. Yet with the onslaught of the winter months, those who like eating outside will need to relocate.

“We don’t anticipate courtyard seating during the cold weather,” Princi-pal Arlotta said. “We are using 50 degrees as the cut off for seating outside.”

Some students agree with this temperature cut off.

“Personally I think that 40 degrees is way too cold to stay outside. Students can get sick very easily from sitting out there the whole lunch,” Lemieux said.

Palmeri echoed her sen-timents, adding that “50 de-grees” was a good cutoff point.

“50 degrees is too cold,” said Julia Gaffey, a junior, who doesn’t enjoy the cold.

Yet the idea of a blanket temperature-restriction did not sit well with her. “Stu-dents shouldn’t be forced to sit inside considering how many kids eat lunch at the same time,” Gaffey said.

Steps have been taken to avoid over crowding inside.

“We anticipate increased use of the Media Center, café and gym. We have some things planned like enter-tainment and games for the gym to liven that up... We will be opening up the com-puter lab in The Media Cen-ter as well,” Arlotta said.

Mobius invites new writers into the loop

“What is Mobius?” asked Mark Vadeika, a freshman.

Mobius is the art and lit-erary magazine that displays the work of students from Glen Rock High School.

“We basically read [work sub-mitted by students] and decide if it will be put in the magazine, might be put in the magazine, or won’t be put in the maga-zine,” said Kayleigh O’Connell (‘17), a member of Mobius.

The adviser of Mobius, teach-er Patricia Mahoney, explained that Glen Rock High School has always had a literary magazine. Mahoney has been the adviser for “well over twenty years.”

Although Mahoney does not know why the magazine was named ‘Mobius,’ she ex-

plained that a mobius is a geometric shape that has no beginning or end. “It is some-thing like the infinity symbol,” Mahoney said. The club was named by the class of 1959.

The content of the maga-zine is decided by members of the Mobius club. The submit-ted writing is read out loud, but the pieces are read anony-mously. Only Mahoney knows who the authors are. After each piece is read, it is then dis-cussed fully by the group. The members then vote to decide whether or not the work will be published in the printed copy.

Any student is allowed to join Mobius. The club meets on Thursdays in room D-222. People who are unable to at-tend meetings can still partici-pate by submitting their work

online. Mobius is distribut-ed in June in English classes.

“Students can also submit artwork and photography by de-positing their work in the Mobi-us file in Graphics on Zeus on the school server,” Mahoney said.

There are a number of edi-tors who help put together the finished copy of Mobius. The editors are chosen after they submit an application, which is then reviewed by the adviser. The editors-in-chief this year are seniors Sam Halpert Rodis, David Merkle, Amy Baren-boim, and Kyle O’Connell.

Despite its popularity with upper classmen, many fresh-men do not know what Mobi-us is. Jessie Stern, a freshman, guessed that it was “some type of club.” In order to make freshmen more aware of what

Mobius is, “staff members will be going to freshmen English classes to explain what it is and to distribute copies of last year’s issue,” Mahoney explained.

Mobius also hosts two coffee-houses during the school year. The first coffeehouse was on Dec. 4 in the school cafeteria at 7 p.m.

The coffeehouse is a “very popular” event, according to Mahoney, in which students may perform music and read their poetry or short pieces of prose.

“Only freshmen don’t know about it,” said a ju-nior referencing the popu-larity of the Coffeehouse.

Members of Mobius also have opportunities to be involved in other events such as poetry festivals.

“This year, a group of ten members of MOBIUS attend-ed the Dodge Poetry Festival High School Students Day at NJPAC in Newark on October 24. We attended readings given by numerous famous poets, as well as several younger, up-and-coming poets,” Mahoney said.

Members felt privi-leged to be able to attend.

“The Dodge Poetry Festi-val occurs every two years, and this year’s High School Students Day was attended by over 4000 students from around the country,” Mahoney added.

Students at Glen Rock High School are encouraged to join Mobius, submit their artwork online, and submit their writ-ing by sending it to Mahoney or any of the senior editors.

Juniors set out to support Children’s Aid and Family Services

Two junior students at Glen Rock High School hosted a fund-raiser outside of Kilroy’s Wonder Market on Saturday, Nov. 16 for the Youth Ambassadors Club.

Matthew Isaac and Kevin Connor started the Youth Am-bassadors Club during their sophomore year. It is an orga-nization that supports under-privileged children from ne-glectful and abusive families in the Northern New Jersey area.

“Each child has a different background,” said Isaac, ex-plaining his motivation to help.

The duo thought of the idea last year after they noticed that there was not enough attention given towards underprivileged children in the school. They were inspired by the organiza-tion TWICS (Teens Working in Community Service), which is the offshoot of Glen Rock WICS (Women in Community Service). These organizations help local charitable services.

“We saw the opportunity and seized it,” Isaac said. “We thought it would be a good

idea and thought that other stu-dents would want to help us.”

The Youth Ambassadors Club is affiliated with Children’s Aid and Family Services (CAFS). CAFS is the leading nonprofit contributors of human services and child welfare programs.

“We began by giving our con-tact information out to Erica West and Henah Parikh,” explained Connor. “Then we got in contact with them and discussed what they needed and how we could help.”

West is the Donor Engage-ment Manager and Parikh is the Community Rela-tions Coordinator for CAFS.

On Saturday, the pair hosted a fundraiser in front of Kilroy’s for the Children’s Aid and Fami-ly Services Baby Basics Program from 10 AM-5 PM. Baby Basics serves low-income families with children ages newborn through two years. These families are pro-vided with free formula for one year and diapers for two years.

“We asked Kilroy’s if we could hold a drive and they agreed,” Isaac said. “We had volunteers make posters and we set up Saturday morning,”

“We gathered a group of high school students to help us

stand outside of Kilroy’s,” Con-nor said. “There were multi-ple shifts throughout the day.”

At the culmination of the day, the group raised close to $700 and received over 350 diaper donations.

“Although we were freez-ing our butts off, we succeed-ed in raising a lot of money for Children’s Aid and Family Services,” said Kieran Rooney (‘16), one of the volunteers.

“Kevin and Matt worked re-ally hard to put together such a rewarding event and their efforts

were shown through the amount of money they raised,” said Kaitlin Stansel (’16), another volunteer.

So far, the Youth Ambassa-dors Club has raised over $1,500, which has been given to Chil-dren’s Aid and Family Services.

As for more volunteer op-portunities, Isaac said there are ideas in the works. “We may have a handball tournament sometime in the future,” he said.

“We are going to try new avant-garde ways of raising mon-ey for children in need and we hope to save lives,” Connor said.

Killeen McDonaldStaff Writer

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTINA HOWIEDespite the cold, Kevin Connor and Matt Isaac had a successful day and then brought all of their collected donations to the Children’s Aid and Family Services headquarters .

Christina HowieStaff Writer

Anastasia ZenkevichStaff Writer

PHOTO PROVIDED BY MRS. CELLAThe members of Mobius work together in order to decide which submissions are included in the final copy, attend festivals, as well as host two Coffeehouses during the school year. Above, they are pictured in their club photo.

4 The Glen Echo Student LifeAnnual tradition swaps students, teachers

The annual student teacher day took place at Glen Rock High School on Nov. 26.

Student teacher day is held the Wednesday before Thanks-giving, when seniors are able to choose a teacher to follow around during the day and teach that educator’s class-es. Usually, students will not only teach classes but also dress to in a style that resem-bles the teacher’s daily look.

85 seniors participated this year, ranging from gym teachers to science teachers.

Math teacher Leah Wit-tenberg, one of the teach-ers who participated, has fond memories of the event.

“We meet the students in the cafeteria and then they follow us throughout the day,” said Wittenberg, who is also the senior class adviser this year.

“My favorite memories are seeing some of the male students dress up as female teachers, or any of the stu-dents getting the aspects of the

teachers down pat,” Witten-berg said, “Phrases they say, shoes they wear, and anything like that -- they are very ob-servant of their teachers and really imitate them very well.”

Some students were very precise when it came to pick-ing out their outfits for the day,

“It was at the point where people were like ‘Oh, are you guys Mr. Feldman?’” said senior Agatha Blevin, who spent the day with Psychol-ogy teacher Alan Feldman.

For those who plan the day, much of their enjoyment comes from seeing students take on the role and responsibility of running a class for a day.

“It’s a fun day, students to

get a bit of a sense of what it’s like to be a teacher in the classroom or an administrator if they choose to do that,” art teacher Deborah Cella said. “It’s just a fun day to bring in the Thanksgiving holiday, and it’s a good opportunity for people to have a little fun.”

Though some students pre-pare slideshows about their teachers or just play games, Blevin and classmates Ariana Felipe and Michelle Greeley, found themselves creating a les-son plan for Feldman’s classes.

“He required us to actual-ly teach the class. He gave us a subject that we had to do,” Blevin said. “So we made a lesson plan, and it was half

a sheet of paper with the plan and all of the quotes he said. So we actually taught.”

“It was really fun, and we nailed his outfit,” Greeley said.

Most students were thoroughly prepared with whatever it was they were going to do with their class-es, or so they thought.

“Student teachers have a lesson planned and they’ll fin-ish it in 15 minutes and they have to fill the other 15 min-utes and they don’t know how to do that,” Wittenberg said, “We as teachers do, we ex-pect things like that, we plan for things like that, student teachers don’t always real-ize that what they have goes

very fast, so sometimes they have to think on their toes.”

Students do not realize that what they see as “down time” is when teachers com-plete a lot of their work.

“We prepare lessons for the next day or the next week or sometimes we go to meet-ings,” Wittenberg explained.

Journalism rocks RutgersIt was the morning of Mon-

day, Oct. 27 and Glen Rock High School journalism students ar-rived earlier than most, waiting in the Hamilton lobby ready to board the idling bus. Accompa-nying the bunch were newspa-per faculty adviser Jason Toncic and video production teacher Troy Kroft. The autumn morn-ing had treated them well; it was a beautiful late-October day.

After an hour journey to Rut-gers University for the GSSPA (Garden State Scholastic Press Association) convention, the stu-dents were greeted in the main lobby by Miss New Jersey, Cierra Kaler-Jones, a senior at Rutgers.

“It was pretty cool meeting her,” said Colin Morrow, a soph-omore journalism student. “She was one of the first people to greet us and make us feel wel-come, which was a nice feeling walking into a new environment.”

Toncic organized the trip and brought along fellow colleague Kroft, a fine arts teacher. The trip resulted in a second place award for a third year Journal-ism student and two honorable mentions for articles written in the 2013-2014 school year.

“There were two things on the trip that I found fascinating,” Kroft said. “One of the things was that they actually had a cate-gory for best op-ed arts (political cartoons or artwork in general).”

The trip, which was first planned in Glen Rock only last year, generally has good recep-tion from students. However, this is not a “Glen Rock only” trip, as students all throughout New Jer-sey ventured to Rutgers in hope for some insight or guidelines on how to make their writing better.

Although Rutgers is not too far from Glen Rock, there are mul-tiple steps in planning this trip.

“First thing we do is we wait for the official announcement

from the GSSPA about what’s actually going on in regards to the date,” Toncic said. “Then I need to get board approval.”

The adviser for The Glen Echo also talked about the reception of the trip.

“After I get board approval, I need to get enough students to actually come, which sometimes is harder than you would think. It’s a fun trip and you guys learn a lot and have a good time out

there, but students either don’t want to miss school, or they don’t want to pay for it, or they don’t know what it entails,” Ton-cic said. “Once I have enough students, usually it’s more than ten, I get another chaperone.”

Kroft agreed to come on the trip for the second consecutive year. Although not a formal ad-viser for the newspaper, Kroft has lent his video and multimedia expertise to reporters from The Glen Echo on multiple occasions.

A main event at the conference is a write-off competition during which students from numerous schools write the best article they can produce within a cer-tain amount of time on a specific topic. The topic of this year was centered on freedom of speech, derived from the keynote address.

Third year Journalism student Lilia Wood was selected as the participant from Glen Rock High School and placed second overall.

“About a week before the write-off, the GSSPA emailed Mr. Toncic the topic of the write-off and articles about it so we each read them. Then he guid-ed me in the right direction as I took notes that helped me during the presentation,” Wood said.

At the keynote seminar, one of the main ideas was censorship. Many people, including Kroft, found this to be an interesting topic, as many did not realize how prevalent censorship is through-

out high school newspapers.Kroft said that he was

“struck” by the keynote address.“We first got there and we

listened to a panel discussion about censorship and about what rights students have and how to fight for having their reviews heard,” Kroft said.

Senior journalism student Tim Mountain tweeted in a ques-tion to the panel through The Glen Echo’s Twitter account (@

TheGlenEchoGRHS) and had it answered during the live panel.

After the keynote, students dispersed to areas of interest, attending different classes and seminars throughout the day.

The panels that students attend-ed were designed to help improve the young journalist’s writing, ed-iting, and media abilities. Jack Jen-sen, a junior journalism student, learned much in the first seminar he attended, called “Sports 101.”

“The first class that I took was someone who interned at a newspaper and had the oppor-tunity to interview Mike Trout, who is arguably one of the best players in baseball, and I found it really interesting because get-ting an interview with someone huge, it’s something that the average person can’t do with no special skill,” Jensen said.

Max Felsenstein, junior at Glen Rock High School, also attended the same seminar.

“Being a sport editor, we went to the Sports 101 class, and it was very helpful because I not only learned about jour-nalism at this level, but also at the next level,” Felsenstein said.

He went on to say that intern-ships play a key role in getting to interview a player like Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels and that the way to contact the team is not as hard as some people think.

“First you need the internship, then you go to their home page, email the manager and then say who you’re writing for and that’s pretty much it,” Felsenstein said.

Anne Vandervalk & John FiorinoStaff Writers

PHOTO COURTESY OF JASON TONCICGlen Rock High School students with Miss New Jersey, Cierra Kaler-Jones , and GSSPA President, Bill Allen, during the annual GSSPA conference in Rutgers University.

Beth KeefeManaging Editor

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEBORAH CELLAMrs. Cella with Kate Mackie, a senior.

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEBORAH CELLAMr. Feldman with seniors Agatha Blevin, Michelle Greeley, and Ariana Felipe.

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEBORAH CELLACoach Dowell with seniors Kate Kelly, Carly Benjamin and Kaitlyn Bernard.

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEBORAH CELLAMr. Luckenbill with Andrew Farfalla, a senior.

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEBORAH CELLAMs. Perry with seniors Jordan Babin and Annie Burke.

Student Life The Glen Echo 5 Interim VP endorses fair-ness, embraces challenge(continued from frontpage)

Student Council plans for the futureWhen it comes to the func-

tion of the student council, many students don’t know much beyond the organi-zation of the Homecom-ing dance. Glen Rock High School has had some form of student government since its foundation, and the student council has become an inte-gral part of its community.

Yet incoming freshmen and underclassmen often have an incomplete understanding of the functions of student coun-cil and the important roles that these officers play in our school.

The main function of the student council is to give a voice to the student body and effectively communicate its views to the school adminis-tration and faculty. Seniors and juniors can run for positions on the student council. The offic-es are recording secretary, trea-surer, president, vice president and corresponding secretary.

The elections are usual-ly organized at the end of the school year and voting booths are set up for the occasion. Candidates are allowed to put up posters around the school and campaign before the of-ficial election. Regardless of the office they hold, student council officers invest time and effort into what they do.

In addition to the stu-dent board, the first year stu-dent council co-advisers are teachers Sonia Bawa, Tom Lyon, and Katherine Bennin.

Yet despite the commit-ment they all make, many students are nonetheless un-aware of the effort put in.

“I think student council is in-volved in Homecoming. I don’t know of any other events that they organize,” Rothstein said.

The student council plans many different activities throughout the year. Teach-er J.P. McCarten, a previous student council adviser, had first hand experience with the student council, specifical-ly the Homecoming Dance.

“A big function of the stu-dent council is to create a theme for homecoming, be a part of the homecoming pa-rade, decorate, and basically run the homecoming dance,” McCarten said. “They also raise funds for the dance.”

226 students attended the Homecoming dance this year, and many agreed that it was a positive experience. This was largely thanks to the hard work of the student council.

“Homecoming was a lot of work, but it was fun,” stu-dent council president TJ Begg said. “We wanted to keep homecoming and con-tinue some other traditions.”

Yet Homecoming is not the only event that the stu-dent council organizes.

“We plan a number of events throughout the year, includ-ing the Homecoming Dance, holiday fundraising (gather-ing gifts for children in need), and Glenstock,” said Harrison Gale, Student Representative

to the Board of Education. The student council is also in-volved with planning the pep rally and the club walk-around, hosted in the courtyard during the beginning of the year.

Another nota-ble event is Glenstock.

“Glen Stock is basical-ly a Woodstock of sorts, which is basically battle of the bands,” McCarten said. “Last year we got a produc-tion company to come in and do the lighting and the sound.”

Many bands sign-up for the event and the student council and advisers choose the set list and oversee the auditions.

“I love hearing all the musical talents of the stu-dents and it’s a great way to celebrate the end of the school year,” Gale said.

Student council officers in-vest a lot of time and effort to make these events possible.

“It’s definitely a good amount of work. I think some kids don’t realize how much work is involved. There are just a lot of odds and ends that have to be done,” McCarten said.

Despite the workload, students choose to join student council for sev-eral different reasons.

“I wanted to have a say in how events were run, and I thought I could help,” Begg told The Glen Echo.

Joining student council, seen by some as a resume booster, is also a rewarding experience.

“I really enjoy student gov-ernment and I saw this as a great opportunity to see more of the local government first-hand with the Board of Educa-tion,” Gale said. Students in-volved in student council have a desire to lead and be involved with the school community.

“They find they can rep-resent the class and the school,” said Lyon, current student council co advis-er. “They want to help make the school a better place.”

Unfortunately, many stu-dents have misconceptions as to the extent of the student council’s power. According to Begg, the hardest part of be-ing a class officer is “having to deal with students thinking we have more power than we do.”

Student council serves as a voice for the students, its ideas still has to undergo approv-al from the administration.

“At some times there is friction when student council pushes for one thing and the principal and vice principle might say that it’s not appro-priate or we want to go in a dif-ferent direction. It has to be a give and take,” McCarten said.

Often, underclassmen are hesitant to get involved with student government. They don’t know what to expect and perhaps are less confident in themselves and their abilities.

“It’s a great experience for the real world, but it is worth it. When the events all come together it’s a great feeling,” Begg said.

Livin’ life on horsebackJulia RooneyStaff Writer

“One of the most notice-able things about Olivia is how dedicated she is,” said freshman Julia Blando. “You can tell how passionate she is about horseback riding.”

Olivia Lorenzo is a fresh-man at Glen Rock High School who loves throwing up the peace sign. She can be spotted with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and lean build.

“Throughout my life, I’ve ridden around 100 horses,” Lorenzo said. She is familiar with all different types of hors-es, but she says that she has always connected with one.

“His name is Sebastian, but his nickname is Mr. Smush,” she told The Glen Echo.

Lorenzo says that horseback riding is similar to other sports, since she has to worry about her-self and her team -- in horseback riding, though, her horse is her team. Horseback riders win as a team and lose as a team, but ul-timately having fun is her goal.

It is often hard for Loren-zo to get Sebastian to coop-erate with her, and she has

battle scars to prove it. She has experienced a few con-cussions and a broken wrist.

“The hardest part is get-ting my horse over the jump or when I’m competing and an-other horse rides next to him,” Lorenzo said. “Once when a horse passed him, he threw me into a fence and that’s how I got one of my concussions.”

Sophomore Alethea Jadick, who has also been riding for sev-eral years, echoed the difficulties of horseback riding. Nonetheless, both girls continue to compete.

“Even though riding is hard at times, it’s a lot of fun,” Jadick said.

Even with these complica-tions, Olivia still rides through her competition. “My most

memorable competition was the Sussex County Horse Show 2014. I came in first out of 50 people,” Lorenzo said.

When Lorenzo is not riding, she’s usually shar-ing stories with her friends.

“Olivia talks about horses so much,” Blando said with a smile.

Since horseback riding is Lorenzo’s favorite hobby, she always seems to have it on her mind. Her excitement to-ward horses channels into her everyday life, whether she’s at school or with her friends.

Lorenzo plans to contin-ue her horseback career. She currently trains William Pat-terson’s horses and hopes to one day ride in college.

PHOTO COURTESY OF OLIVIA LORENZOOlivia Lorenzo has placed in all of her competitions when riding Sebastian.

Laura YuanStaff Writer

PHOTO COURTESY OF LAURA YUANTJ Begg is exhausted from the responsibilities of being the Student Council President.

DiGuglielmo was a math teacher, a summer recreation director, ath-letic director, vice principal, mid-dle school principal and a coach for various sport teams in North Arlington before retiring last year.

Despite being a tough math teacher, DiGuglielmo endeav-ored to remain reasonable with his expectations from students.

“That would be the key word from me: fair,” he said. “I treat people the way I really want them to treat me.”

Arlotta, who had coached against DiGuglielmo during his time in Cran-ford High School, was already famil-iar with the Interim Vice Principal.

“I always thought he kept a calm composure even on the athletic field,” Arlotta said. “Being a coach, being a teacher, being an administrator, is similar because you have to deal with people and different personal-ities. I have always liked that he al-ways kept a calm nature with things.”

DiGuglielmo already knew about Glen Rock before the op-portunity came for this position.

“It has a great reputation ac-ademically and also athletically,” DiGuglielmo told The Glen Echo. “I have coached for a long time, and I follow the state tournaments each year in the papers, and I still visit a lot of games and Glen Rock is usually there. It has a real sound reputation.”

DiGuglielmo has been on Glen Rock turf before but in the posi-tion of a coach for opposing teams.

“I’ve been to this school as an opposing coach for football scrimmages, girls’ basketball head coach for North Arlington and in a state baseball tournament. I coached baseball and played back on this field,” DiGuglielmo said.

DiGuglielmo has shepherd-ed hundreds of athletes over the past thirty years and coached over two-thousand games. His disciplinary mannerisms sprout from his coaching experience.

“I’m not resistant to having a conflict resolved or dealing with a conflict,” DiGuglielmo said. “If you’re a coach you deal with a con-flict every day. Sometimes it’s inju-ries, sometimes it’s opponents, bad referees. Whatever it is, coaching makes me a strong teacher and ad-ministrator because you deal with the unexpected at the moment.”

Although high school altercations can be intimidating to many, the In-terim Vice Principal remains unfazed.

“Conflict is just something you have to adjust to,” DiGuglielmo said. “Discipline is just part of growing up. I never run from the conflict. I deal with it and if I think I’m right I stick to my guns. I like to sim-plify things if I can, I don’t like to make things bigger than what it is.”

DiGuglielmo’s first day will be on Jan. 5. He is looking forward to being a part of the high school and finding out how it works, especial-ly since each school is different.

“My advice for him is to lis-ten and learn. Every place is dif-ferent. So to just learn about the culture around here,” Arlotta said.

The interim vice principal, who had previously worked in an area both economically and socially dis-tinct from Glen Rock, will need to be ready to adapt to new surroundings.

“You have something that is tra-ditionally a working environment with academics and athletics and now coming in and no one knows me, it is a challenge to me to be part of something that is not so close to home,” DiGuglielmo said.

The high school administration will be looking for a permanent vice principal for the 2015-16 school year in the spring. Their decision is antic-ipated to be made by May 1, 2015.

6 The Glen Echo Student Life

it is meant to be celebrated.Most students ate tradi-

tional things for Thanksgiv-ing dinner, like turkey and stuffing, but some went a little bit outside of the box.

“My grandma doesn’t really know how to cook, so we ate pizza,” Madeline Hay (‘18) said.

The interesting thing about Thanksgiving is there are many traditions that are fol-lowed, but many are changed. Some students don’t even cel-ebrate Thanksgiving at all.

“My family has never cel-ebrated Thanksgiving,” said Christina Rivara, a freshman. “I’m not really sure why, but for us it seems just like a long weekend, because of like a teacher’s convention or some-thing. I usually just sit at home and go on my laptop. It’s not like anyone is around to hang out with. They’re all with their families, and I’m just home, doing what I usually do.”

The turkey is in the top ten most popular foods to eat on Thanksgiving: it is what pops-up in most Americans’ minds when they think about this holiday.

But why is turkey a tradi-tional Thanksgiving food? It is not for the taste, or how easy it is to cook. Turkey was orig-inally eaten on Thanksgiving because of the size; the bird’s large size allows it to feed many hungry people at once.

Many students in Glen Rock look forward Thanksgiving, like freshman Julia Sanowski.

“I had fun. I ate,” Sanowski said. Some of her favorite food items included turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, asparagus, cake, and pie. She considers Thanksgiving to be one of the days of the year that you have to stuff yourself in order to have fun, and celebrate the day how

Julia BlandoStaff Writer

Thanksgiving in Glen Rock

Giving the gift of goldChristina Howie

Staff Writer

Despite the stress and work-load of junior year, student Jes-sica Needleman has managed to start a volunteer group at the Glen Rock Jewish Center for her Girl Scout Gold Award.

Needleman has been involved in Girl Scouts for 12 years, starting at the kindergarten age.

“Originally, I joined Girl Scouts because my mom made me, and it was a good way to make friends with all the other kindergarten girls. I stayed in Girl Scouts to com-plete my Silver and Gold Awards,” Needleman said.

The Girl Scout Gold Award is an individual service proj-ect that requires a minimum amount of 80 hours. The idea of the project was introduced in 1980. Only about 5.4% of eligible Girl Scouts suc-cessfully go on to earn their Gold Award, making it an elite and prestigious honor.

Before beginning a Gold Award project, a girl scout must complete her Bronze and Silver Awards, which are less intensive versions. Both of these awards can be complet-ed in groups, rather than alone.

“The Bronze Award my troop and I did was we plant-ed trees in the nursery at the arboretum, kept them in pots, and took care of them for a while, until they could be planted on their own,” Needleman explained.

“I also did my own Silver Award. First, I held a collec-tion for art and school sup-plies for a school in Nicara-gua. I was able to collect 140 lbs. of supplies, and I deliv-ered the supplies myself to Nicaragua when I went on a trip with my aunt and uncle,”

she said. “After I got back, I went around to five young-er Girl Scout Troops to teach them the importance of vol-unteering. I showed them how easy it is to volunteer.”

Needleman’s Gold Award project consisted of founding a volunteer group for teenagers at the Glen Rock Jewish Center called Teen H.E.R.O., which stands for Helping Everyone Reach Out. She organized different volunteer opportu-nities for everyone to partici-pate in at least once a month.

“A main problem with the Jewish Center is that once teens have had their Bar or Bat Mitzvahs, they pretty much stop being involved with the temple,” Needleman said. “My dad thought a volunteer group would be a great way to get teens back involved with the temple and give local orga-nizations the help they need.”

Needleman has been vol-unteering for Glen Rock WICS (Women in Commu-nity Service) for a number of years and felt that she should show others the reward-ing feeling of volunteering.

The process a girl scout must go through in order to complete her Gold Award is very chal-lenging and time-consuming.

“First, I had to see if my idea was even possible, so I talked to the Jewish Center’s community service coordina-tor, Fran Skrobe. Next, I had to get my idea passed by the Girl Scout Council, which involved a lot of paperwork. After it was approved, I had to get the idea for the teen volun-teer group officially approved by the Jewish Center. After it passed, I was able to start the group,” Needleman explained.

Once the technical work was completed, it was time to begin the actual project.

“I held the first meeting in January 2014. I then began to plan volunteer events for the group to attend. Since then, Teen H.E.R.O. has made Val-entines for soldiers from Glen

Rock, unpacked food at the Center for Food Action, tu-tored at Oasis, and raked leaves for an elderly women, just to name a few,”Needleman said.

Although she was some-times discouraged by the lack of reliability from teenagers, Needleman had help from all over.

“My mom definitely helped me the most with my proj-ect. She is always driving my group and me to differ-ent events, helping me come up with different events, and making sure I am on top of what I need to do for the project,” Needleman said.

She also received guidance from Rabbi Neil Tow and Mi-chelle Stassberg, the secretary at the Glen Rock Jewish Center.

Needleman hopes to have the project complet-ed by the spring and hopes that it has had an impact.

“I hope everyone involved in Teen H.E.R.O. has learned how enjoyable and rewarding it is to volunteer. I hope they continue to volunteer and help other people,” she said.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRISTINA HOWIEOrganizing a volunteer group at the Glen Rock Jewish Center for her Girl Scouts Gold Award Project, Jessica Needleman has a lot of responsi-bilities on her plate.

Former Latin teacher retires on Halloween

Alex Hay and Christina HowieStaff Writers

After 23 years of teach-ing, a long time Latin teacher has decided to ‘Carpe Diem’ [Seize the Day] and retire.

Roberta DaGiau, whose experiences include teach-ing in both public and private schools for many years before coming to Glen Rock, retired on Oct. 31 from the teaching profession. During her time in Glen Rock she has served as adviser to the Latin Club and has chaperoned many Europe trips, including those to Italy.

DaGiau enjoyed her many experiences as part of the Glen Rock faculty and recalled fond-ly those that she had worked with over the many years.

“Most of all, I will miss my students and my col-leagues,” DaGiau said.

Although she will miss teaching Latin, some of her most memorable moments include bringing students to Certamen (Latin Quiz Bowl) at Princeton University, New Jersey Junior Classical League Competitions, and the World Language Poetry Contest at William Paterson University.

“After the contest, Mrs. DaGiau and I sat together during the awards ceremony and shared a moment that I will never forget,” said Kier-an Rooney (’16), a past com-petitor in the poetry contest.

Patricia Mahoney, an English teacher, has been a longtime friend and coworker of DaGiau.

“I have known Mrs. DaGi-

au for close to 25 years. She came here from DePaul High School in Wayne, NJ. I had started here a few years before her, in the late 1980’s, and I had also come to GRHS after teaching for several years at a private, Catholic school, so we had that in common right from the beginning,” Mahoney said.

The pair served on the In-structional Council for many years, which is the team of department leaders and the school’s administration.

DaGiau has also taken many trips with students to places including Austria, Ger-many, Ireland, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Belgium.

“What I will always re-member about Mrs. DaGiau is her love of travel and her willingness to share that love with her students,” Mahoney added. “She led many stu-dent trips over the years to Italy where students could see the sights that they were learning about in Latin.”

As the adviser for the Latin Club for over 20 years and the head of the Language Depart-ments for eight years, DaGiau has helped both in many ways. The Latin Club donates to the Bergen Ramapo Animal Ref-uge. The shelter sends a wish list and the members provide the items. Some members choose to contribute monetary dona-tions as well. The Latin Club has also gone out in December to sing seasonal songs in Lat-in to middle school and high school classes. They have sang Jingle Bells, 12 Days of Sat-urnalia, and the Dreidel song.

“I miss her little quirks, like saying ‘hail sneezer’ af-ter someone sneezed,” said Kaitlin Stansel (’16), a cur-rent Latin IV Honors student. “I hope that she enjoys her retirement, and I am excited to continue my Latin career with a new, modern view.”

DaGiau had a significant impact on the Latin pro-gram at Glen Rock High School, and it was known throughout the school.

“When I heard that Mrs. Da-Giau was retiring, of course I felt happy for her because she has worked incredibly hard throughout her career, and she certainly deserves a long and healthy retirement, but I also felt sad for GRHS,” Mahoney said. “She was an outstand-ing teacher, a wonderful col-league, and a dear friend. I know that we will all miss her.”

Classic language gets new teacher

Christina HowieStaff Writer

Throughout the years, Mrs. Roberta DaGiau has shared her expertise and passion for Latin to the students at Glen Rock High School. Upon her retirement at the end of the first marking period, the torch has been passed to her re-placement, Brian Montalbano.

Montalbano grew up in Bo-gota, New Jersey. At the age of five, he was introduced to the classical world, which sparked an interest that would lead him to his future career path. He attended Ramapo College, earning a B.A. in History and a teaching certification in So-

cial Studies. He continued his education by earning a M.A. at Montclair State University in History, minoring in Classics.

“From the moment I had started taking Latin cours-es, it began the process of overtaking my passion,” he said. “It also made me real-ize how much of a linguist I had always been when analyzing primary sourc-es for my history courses.”

Shortly into his educa-tion at Ramapo, he recog-nized that he enjoyed not only learning, but also shar-ing his knowledge with oth-ers. This realization opened up the career of teaching.

(continued on page 15)

Student Life The Glen Echo 7

Coffeehouse, a smash hitNicola Fornino & Anastasia Zenkovich

Staff Writers

On Thursday, Dec. 4 at 7 p.m., the Mobius pro-gram presented its 37th Coffeehouse at which au-dience members gathered to drink Starbucks coffee while listening to students perform music and poetry.

This year, the Coffeehouse was hosted by Kyle O’Con-nell and Sam Halpert Rodis.

The Glen Rock High School Coffeehouse allows students to have the chance to perform in front of their peers, teachers, and par-ents. It includes a variety of unique performances and

only occurs twice a year. Stu-dents choose to either per-form a song of their choice or read an original poem.

“The coffeehouse, like other school events, helps students express their cre-ative talents,” said Sam Halpert Rodis, also a per-former at Coffeehouse.

Coffeehouse was orga-nized by the literary Mag-azine of Glen Rock High School, Mobius, and its adviser, English teach-er Patricia Mahoney.

The first performer on the coffeehouse stage was Drew Coll, a sophomore, singing De-Evolving. Coll played guitar while he sang this

Jonathan Coulton song. This wasn’t his first performance at a Coffeehouse; he was also a performer in last year’s pro-duction, and he also plans on performing in the next one.

Coll said he was “a lit-tle” nervous, but he was able to overcome those nerves because he has per-formed “a few times before.”

“I practice for like two hours,” Coll explained. “I just sit down at my home and practice for two hours, and then I walk there listening to the song I’m working on.”

Whether he practiced for two hours or two months, the audience left impressed not only by the acts but also by the confidence dis-played by the performers.

“It’s really amazing that they have the confi-dence to perform,” Brid-get Darcy (‘17) said.

Bella San Lorenzo (‘17), like many others, views Coffeehouse as an oppor-tunity to learn new things about her classmates.

“I really like to see the talent our school has to of-fer,” said San Lorenzo af-ter attending the show.

Other students who par-ticipated in musical perfor-mances for the first act were Tom Gierut (performing in-strumental guitar and sing-ing), Kayleigh O’Connell (performing In The Morn-ing Light), Erik Vreeden-burgh and Justin McCollum (performing Never Saw It Coming), Aaron Halpert Ro-dis and Matt Zilvetti (per-forming I’ll Rust With You), and Michael Zilvetti and Justin McCollum (perform-ing an untitled song). Harri-son Gale also performed an original song called Philp Fitzroy, This Is Your Life.

Megan Stoddard and Del-phine Troast, both sopho-mores, performed Ode to My Family. Both Stoddard and Troast took part in vo-cals, and Troast accompa-nied the song with piano.

“My friend Delphine and I thought it would be fun,” Stoddard told The Glen Echo.

Since it was her first time performing, though, Stoddard was nervous. Pri-or to entering the stage, the two girls reassured each other that even if any mis-takes were made, they would just keep performing.

“That was my first time performing, but I had such a positive experi-ence that I’ll definitely do it again,” Stoddard said.

Stoddard felt that the lon-ger she was on stage perform-ing, the more comfortable she became. She added that the crowd was very supportive.

Aside from musicians, performers who present-ed original poetry included Kyle O’Connell, Sam Halp-ert Rodis, and Kyle Wrede. Tim Mountain and David Merkle presented multiple poems throughout the sec-ond act of the Coffeehouse.

Brandon Oliff, a junior who sang and played gui-tar for the song Rude, also had a positive experience at the annual Coffeehouse. He has performed in three Cof-feehouses prior to this one.

Oliff told The Glen Echo, “To be honest, I felt a little bit nervous.” He ex-plained that he hadn’t prac-ticed the song beforehand.

But after he got off stage, Oliff felt confident about the performance that he put on. “It was definitely a lot of fun,” he said, relieved.

After the intermission,

the Coffeehouse contin-ued with performances by Cristal Santos and Jasmin Koester (performing House of the Rising Sun), Trevor Lavine (performing A Tear for Eddie), Kieve Colligan (performing Girls), Blythe Owen (performing I Do), Zach Brookler and Matt Zil-vetti (perfoming River Flows in You), Quinn McHugh and Kristen Thompson (perfoming Ventura High-way), Gabriella Piella (per-forming Basket Case), and Max Alba and Ryan Byrne (performing instru-mental guitar with drums.)

Constant Conversations was performed by a group that include Sam Halpert Rodis, Marino Aldaz, Dan McAuley, Zach McCollum, Tim Mountain, Abby Koe-nig, and Kyle O’Connell.

The finale was a large group, including Dylan Kennedy, Sam Halpert Ro-dis, Maddie Basirico, Jack Whyte, Tim Mountain, An-drew Peiser, Kyle O’Con-nell, Delaine Karcanes, and David Merkle, performing How Long Must I Wait.

Coffeehouse is a popular event among parents and some students. Neverthe-less, some performers still wish it were better attended.

“It’s a popular event, but it could be more pop-ular,” Stoddard said.

In an effort to increase the size of the audience, students have suggested hanging up posters, telling friends, submitting more announce-ments, and serving more food.

“I see mostly parents here,” said Tom Gierut, a singer at the Coffeehouse, as he surveyed the crowd.

The 38th Coffeehouse will be held in the spring.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONEDrew Coll, sophomore, sings and plays guitar to a dynamic song.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONEKyle O’Connell, senior, reading an original poem.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONETom Gierut, junior, covering a Bob Marley song.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONETim Mountain (‘15) and Zach McCollum (‘16) performing with Bad Susan, an eight piece band.

8 The Glen Echo News Welcome to Tabata: Are you ready?

Githmie GoonatillekeStaff Writer

JEFIT is a new exercise and workout app recently in-troduced to high school class-es that helps users track their progress with an extensive ex-ercise database and multiple personalized workout routines.

Brian Gelalia, a physi-cal education teacher, brings this technologically sav-vy approach to his class-es, which he brought from his old school, Wayne Hills High School. According to JEFIT, the app claims to “help keep you on track, live healthier and stay motivat-ed with your fitness goals.”

The app also has short videos to demonstrate how to do a specific exercise. In addition, JEFIT allows us-ers to create their own pro-file, where they can add friends to help with workouts.

“We learn about differ-ent types of workouts and learn about stuff that they may not know,” Gelalia said. “If we didn’t use it, we may not be able as teachers in the Phys. Ed department to get

to all those different types of exercises that the app has available to the students.”

Students seemed pleased that the app had made it into their class.

“I do like using the app be-cause it helps me track what exercises I have done and how much progress I am making. The app is organized in a way that is easy to use and easy to start working out with,” said Tara Szawaluk, a freshman.

By using the JEFIT app, Gelalia is also taking the BYOD program to a new area. The BYOD program is a newly instated policy that allows stu-dents to bring their devices to class for educational purposes.

“For us, we’re not real-ly researching words per se, we’re researching different exercises and different tech-niques to utilize in our class-room and the weight room is our classroom for this class,” Gelalia said. “I think it’s a way that the students get to utilize the BYOD program which I think they all like.”

“Not many teachers use the BYOD program to their advantage,” said Anasta-sia Zenkevich, a freshman,

who liked Gelalia’s use of the BYOD program. Zen-kevich believed the app was a great way to “utilize tech-nology” in her personal life.

“I work out after school and I need things to help me with that. Also I just feel that it would be more interesting to work with more technology,” said Zenkevich, noting that apps like JEFIT were benefi-cial to her personal lifestyle.

The JEFIT app is compati-ble with iPhones and Android phones. Yet not every student has one of these devices. Zen-kevich, who praised the use of the BYOD program, was also aware that she would not be able to participate.

“If I was in that class it would really inconvenience me because everyone would be using it except me,” said Zenkevich, as she does not have a compatible device.

Gelalia has a simple solution.“We partner students up

that don’t have one with a partner that does have it. The only advantage is the app re-cords your data. If you don’t [have an iPhone or Android Phone] we record your data on paper to let the students

who don’t have it to keep that paper with me and on a daily basis they would fill it out,” Gelalia said. “If the app didn’t work that’s the route we would’ve ended up going.”

Nonetheless, students like Szawaluk believe that the app is a much better choice than using the tra-ditional pen and paper.

“I think it is better than paper and pen because the app is so organized, and you can just plug in your infor-mation much faster than us-ing pen and paper,” she said. “It gives examples on how to do the exercise and gives details on your progress.”

With longer class periods, the Phys. Ed department is now focusing more on fitness and personal health. One way to have a more fitness-orien-tated gym period is utilizing the weight room. With both the weight room and the JEFIT app together, students have in-creased their focus on fitness.

“I think it’s a different way to attack the fitness aspect of Phys. Ed. We do the work-out and the warm-up which I think is helpful and a lot of kids are getting a lot of suc-

cess on the push-ups and to bring that down into the weight room,” Gelalia said, “is certainly a way to increase the knowledge down there and primarily focus on fitness.”

Szawaluk, who is in the class that uses the phone appli-cation, also feels that it could be useful in her everyday life.

“I might want to use it in the future because there are many different exercises on the app that could help me get into shape,” Szawaluk said.

As of right now, only peri-ods one and eight of Gelalia’s classes utilize JEFIT. Current-ly the two periods are testing out JEFIT. Although future use of JEFIT is undecided, Gelalia makes it clear that it would be a great goal to reach.

“I know the other teachers in the department are excited to learn more on how to uti-lize it. Being able to take the fitness components and the workouts learned in the class, will take them on to your per-sonal life and that’s the overall goal. I think that this has some legs and has an opportunity to definitely be a thing that can be department wide by the end of the year,” Gelalia said.

Pathways leads the wayJohn FiorinoStaff Writer

2012: it was the current se-niors’ freshman year, Princi-pal John Arlotta’s first year in Glen Rock and the beginning of a school sponsored club that would change lives. Pathways for Exceptional Children is still currently running in Glen Rock and has grown in popularity.

“We have a handful of many loyal volunteers of vary-ing grades who come almost to every event,” said cur-rent junior and Pathways co-lead mentor, Kaitlin Stansel.

Pathways is a club that is designed to help chil-dren with special needs ex-press themselves, practice socializing with others and get one-on-one attention from high school mentors.

“We do anything from bowling, to going to Bounce U, to scavenger hunts around the school,” Stansel said.

Its history Prior to being the principal

in Glen Rock, Arlotta was the assistant principal at Cranford High School where they al-ready had a Pathways program.

The program came to be when a student at Cranford with a brother with autism mentioned the program, which had originated in Montville. The student’s brother would

have to drive miles away to so-cialize. Arlotta took this idea and started to plan for a way to give kids with mental disabili-ties a way to locally socialize and be mentored by high school students in their own towns.

“Pathways to me means a place where kids with dis-abilities can be themselves and not have to worry about the tribulations they face every day,” Stansel said.Pathways’ new path with the

PanthersBack in the fall of 2011,

when it was Arlotta’s first year as principal, he broached the topic of en-richment to the students.

He mentioned “going to live surgeries” and that “we’ve brought in professional play-wrights for students who are interested in those areas.” Ar-lotta also mentioned his inter-

est in enrichment and clubs in the November edition of On The Air With Arlotta, a film produced to discuss top-ical issues and available on The Glen Echo website. .

When Arlotta found Karoli-na Callahan, a freshman at the time, he originally had the idea that the club could take hold.

He had asked the then freshman, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

Her response was exactly what Arlotta was hoping to hear.

“Freshman year, my finan-cial literacy class, we were talking about what we want to do when we grow up, and I said I want to work with special education,” Callah-an said. “Mr. Arlotta told me that, at his old school, he had Pathways and was wonder-ing about bringing it here.

“He needed help.”

Starting a new pro-gram is never an easy deal. The program needed both support and recognition.

“At the end of the day, I take away the happiness that it brings all the chil-dren. It’s beyond exciting to hear the kids get excited over the events and beg to stay longer when their parents pick them up,” Stansel said.

Pathways started out with an average of ten high school students (or “mentors”). Sometimes, in the early days, there would be fewer children with special needs than men-tors. However, as time has gone on, the club has grown immensely on both sides.

“It went from about five to seven to over forty as years went on,” said Callahan, refer-encing about the amount of chil-dren the club now works with.

In her junior year, Callah-an made history when she be-came the first person in Glen Rock to be a lead mentor.

“We normally just try to have our lead mentors be se-niors, but Karolina is such a talented and giving young woman that she wound up being our first junior lead mentor,” Arlotta said.

Originally, lead mentor was a one-person role, just like a captaincy in sports (with an assistant or two to help out). However, as time went on, it made less sense to have only one lead mentor.

“Since Karolina was a lead mentor as a junior, we kind of stumbled on the fact that it’s not a bad idea to have one senior and one junior so that when Karolina leaves next year, hopefully Kaitlin will have this turn-key approach and take her role and be pre-pared for it,” Arlotta said.

For Thanksgiving, Path-ways came together to share the spirit of giving and gratitude.

“In addition to doing a lot of craft activities and games and so forth, they tried to maybe have the kids reflect on what they’re thankful for as well as having them bring in do-nated food and so forth to try to make the idea of giving as well, it’s been a nice tradi-tion that started,” Arlotta said.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN FIORINOYoung kids at the annual Pathways Thanksgiving event decorate the sign hanging in the senior hallway to show what they’re thankful for.

News The Glen Echo 9

It was a rainy day in the city of Boston and while most of the city’s inhabitants recoiled into the depths of their homes, nearly 17,000 animat-

ed Celtics fans gathered at the Fleet Center and anticipated the exciting basketball game to

come.

It was 2001. Sitting excitedly amongst the 17,000 devotees were the family and friends of newcomer Christopher Herren, the Celtics 6’2

Caucasian point guard who had defied all odds to land a spot on the team’s starting lineup.

It was moments before the players were to make their debut on the court, but Herren was nowhere to be found. Herren’s family watched anxiously

as the team scrambled to find their new prospect. Where Herren was, it was cold – very cold.

Herren stood on the corner of the Fleet center adorned in his Celtics uniform, new and freshly

pressed. As fans continued to trickle into the stadium, Herren was feverishly waiting. After a

few moments a car rounded the corner and blinded Herren with its headlights. He, however,

breathed deeply in relief.

It was a drug dealer: Herren’s drug dealer. Herren hurriedly popped a pill before he ran proudly onto the court. The crowd

erupted in joy at the sight.

world I was living in

back then it was a total

Kaitlin Stansel and Mike SpichigerSocial Media Editor and Illustrator

CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

10 The Glen Echo NewsInterview with varsity debater regarding the Pascack Valley debate on Nov. 20

Maddy DoubetStaff Writer

The Glen Echo: What is your plan for the resolve this year?

Eric Cosgriff: We want to increase…we want the Mexican State run oil compa-ny to increase its drilling in Mexico because it’s drilling in the Gulf [of Mexico], so we would like to increase the amount of oil we get from the Gulf of Mexico.

GE: How well did the debate go?

EC: Not that well, for really anyone, Glen Rock didn’t do that well at that debate. Pasca-ck Hills, I think, took every-thing. They had counterplans, they did a lot of research on everyone’s plans so they could win it, so I think now we’re

going to try to do a lot of research with the plans that we faced so that we can do better next time.

GE: What did go well?

EC: I mean, we didn’t win any awards, but our teams didn’t go that bad, it was like 2-2, 2-2, nothing above that really. But it wasn’t terrible, it just needs to better so we can get awards, get to the cup.

GE: What could have gone better?

EC: We need more negative quotes, more negative infor-mation, so that we can really refute more, because they just had more information on us on the negative so they had more of an advantage.

GE: Did Glen Rock win any awards?

EC: No.

GE: What other Glen Rock students were there?

EC: At the debate there was Itay Kazaz and Emmett [O’ Toole], and Matt Zilvetti and Zach Brookler.

GE: What other schools were there?

EC: There was Paramus, Frisch, Pascack Hills, Pasca-ck Valley was there, I think Ramsey.

GE: What were your initial expectations going in, know-ing what schools you were going to debate?

EC: Well, we thought we

were going to do pretty well, because Glen Rock got first place last time and we thought we would continue that and do well, but it just didn’t go that well.

GE: What was the most sur-prising argument from your opponents?

EC: There was nothing too surprising, since we really had a lot of stuff for the negative, we won all of our affirmatives, I think, because we won our affirmatives, Emmett and Itay won their affirmatives, but it’s really the negatives that we didn’t just have information.

GE: What was your favorite moment of the debate?

EC: There was one where we were debating and then I think Bernie [Marc Bernstein]

gave a definition of this one word and then I was on the negative, and I just said “And just so we’re clear, he is not an expert on this so his [Bern-stein’s] opinion doesn’t matter at all.”

GE: What statement that you made were you most proud of?

EC: Well, we want to reduce the funding to OPEC [Or-ganization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries], which is like Saudi Arabia and those countries work with OPEC and we just said that they ba-sically fund ISIS and everyone was just like “What?! What are you even talking about?” and then they just didn’t have any negative quotes and it was really good to do that and they were speechless.

Yeheun Son & Agatha BlevinAdvertising Manager & Staff Writer

The holiday season would be incomplete without Glen Rock’s annual holiday slide-show.

Spearheaded by art teacher Deborah Cella, the Media Arts classes (and a few students from other art-based courses) put together short videos, per-taining to their theme, featuring just about anyone and every-one they can find. These vid-eos each comprise a different component in the slideshow, which is then featured on the last school day preceding win-ter break.

Before Thanksgiving break, students in the media arts class-es and volunteers from other art courses divide into groups and begin to hone in on their plan.

“[Students] get an idea of the direction they want to go in; what’s their focus. Then, they create a storyboard to see how it is going to develop,” Cella explained to the The Glen Echo. Yet where these students end up is entirely up to them.

There are many different creative approaches that are taken in the making of each featured video. Joe Saulenas, a student in one of the Media Arts classes and an aspiring videographer, has taken a more theatrical approach to his idea.

“My group is creating a par-ody of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ that takes place here in the high school,” Saulenas said. “Our working title is ‘The Twinkling’.” Saulenas’s group members—Olivia Blomstrom, Jack Whyte, and Kyle O’Con-nell—began filming two weeks prior to the slideshow’s airing.

Other students have taken a

Tradition slides students into winter recess

completely different angle—a more thematic take. “My theme is ‘Under the Mistletoe’,” said Alexa Garrido, a Media Arts student and Photoshop expert. “We are filming a lot of couples together. There are also a few teachers who, some more gra-ciously than others, agreed to take part in the slideshow.”

Dylan Kennedy and Andrew Farfalla, another duo creating a slideshow, have taken a non-con-formist route. “I know it’s going to involve a green screen. I am doing it in my house. It’s going to be in the dark, and in the base-ment,” Kennedy said.

Farfalla added: “There will be some dancing, some yelling, and Santa Clause. There could even be a lot more. It’s all a mystery until the holiday slideshow.”

As for props, they are provid-ed by both Cella and the group members— “about 50/50.” It is quite common for the groups to make or bring their own props (a loose bring-your-own-prop policy). The “Under the Mistle-toe” group has primarily used a few handmade signs and a pole with mistletoe hanging off the end. “The Twinkling” group, not wishing to divulge too much, is making use of a chicken patty and a baseball bat.

This year, there are 18 groups of students who are taking part in this long-held tradition.

“It is still called a holiday slideshow because it really started out with a projector and carousel of slides with a little recorder that had little tape in

music,” Cella said. The origi-nal name carried through, even though it has evolved to a me-dia-based display today.

After the Thanksgiving break, each group received around ten days (two school weeks) to videotape and edit its work before it was turned in to Principal John Arlotta and Vice Principal Purciello for evalua-tion and approval.

This deadline proves to be quite a challenge, especially in the editing process. “It’s not a lot of time, and most students are unfamiliar with the pro-gram used for this process,” Cella said. Students have found, though, that this disgruntling ed-iting program can be avoided by using the more familiar iMovie on a Mac or iPhone.

“The editing is my person-al favorite part of the process, since that’s when you can really mess around with the video and see it coming together,” Saule-nas said.

As for her expectations for the final show, Garrido made hers clear: “I expect a lot of people to like it. Lots of laughs, maybe some crying, but a lot more laughter.”

As for Kennedy and Farfalla, they said that they’re anxiously awaiting the Oscar season this coming February.

“We are definitely up there for a sound, design, and a fea-ture film,” Kennedy said. “Let me tell you, it’s gonna be fan-tastic.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF ALEXA GARRIDOPrincipal Arlotta and Vice Principal Purciello join in the pro-duction of the “Under the Mistletoe” video.

holiday season to never for-get. On the horizon, there are other events before and after the holiday break.

There are two big events in particular that should draw a lot of attraction in the coming weeks. Today, there will be a holiday party for the young children right before the holiday break.

Additionally, there will also be a trip to Volt Fit-ness in Glen Rock on Mon-day, Jan. 12 2015, right after the holiday break. The intent of this trip is for the young kids to have fun and workout in a nice environment, where they will dress accordingly and have pizza afterwards.

In the spring, likely in April, Pathways is work-ing in association with RBARI (Ramapo Bergen Animal Refuge) to host Paws in Hand. This pro-gram involves bringing dogs, trained to work well with young kids, and to teach the children how to have care for and have fun with animals as pets.

Kaitlin Stansel, a junior and lead mentor, planned the upcoming event and is still in the works of get-ting everything finalized.

“This should be big be-cause it’s new for Pathways, and we’re bringing animals to the school,” Stansel said.

The anticipated Path-ways for Exceptional Chil-dren trip to see the theatri-cal version of Frozen has been cancelled recently due to poor reception from the elementary students.

Karolina Callahan, se-nior student and lead mentor, was disappointed with the turnout, especial-ly since it involved such a blockbuster like Frozen.

“We just didn’t have a good turnout, not enough reception,” Callahan said.

Principal John Arlotta, who is also the Pathways adviser, said that the poor reception could be “be-cause it was on a Sunday.”

The Saddle River Youth Theatre in Allendale had planned to put on a spe-cial showing for the young kids on Sunday, Dec. 14, but this has been cancelled.

The reception was so low that the Saddle River The-atre felt it “wasn’t worth the theatre’s while,” according to Principal Arlotta. He understands the sentiment.

“They were put-ting on a special show-ing for us,” Arlotta said.

Despite the loss of the Frozen screening, the men-tors and lead mentors are still doing their best to make sure the young ele-mentary students have a

Plans to see Frozen melt down

John FiorinoStaff Writer

News The Glen Echo 11The Glen Echo’s Staff Picks for the Top Five Albums of the Year

Zach McCollum’s Top 51. Tigers Jaw – CharmerCharmer is a surprising masterpiece from the Scranton, PA emo/indie rock band Tigers Jaw. Since the departure of three of the band’s members, Tigers Jaw has struggled rebuilding the band. Tigers Jaw managed to complete a record with just two remaining members in the band and has still turned heads and attracted listeners with Charmer.

2. Royal Blood – Royal BloodThe highly anticipated debut from British hard rock duo Royal Blood is a heavy, creative, and dynamic piece of music. With just a bassist and a drummer, the band’s self-titled debut still manages to live up to its hype. Mostly rooted in traditional grunge and garage rock, Royal Blood shows off their influences, but it still manages to create a sonically original record.

3. Modern Baseball – You’re Gonna Miss It AllPhiladelphia indie/emo/punk outfit Modern Baseball once again drops a fantastic record with catchy hooks and relatable lyrics. You’re Gonna Miss It All shows more of an upbeat side of Modern Baseball along with the sound of the familiar anthems found on their debut Sports. The pop sensibility makes You’re Gonna Miss It All very accessible to any music fan looking to get into punk rock, emo, or indie rock.

4. Free Throw – Those Days Are GoneFree Throw’s first couple EPs displayed surprising originality compared to the slew of bands in the emo revival scene. On their debut Those Days Are Gone, they do this once again, dropping some of the catchiest and unique emo anthems. Songs containing choruses with yelled vocals, accessible enough that anyone can easily sing along.

5. Nothing - Guilty of EverythingThe beautiful and dynamic debut from shoegaze and post-rock outfit Nothing is a sonic masterpiece. The band’s roots can be traced back to some of the most influential shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, and Swervedriver. Guilty of Everything is easily one of the best records in the genre since Silversun Pickups’ Swoon and is perfect for any fan of shoegaze and post-rock, genres known for its hard to distinguish vocals and atmospheric guitars which blend together to create one whole sound.

John Fiorino’s Top 51. Schoolboy Q - OxymoronQuincy Hanley, more known as Schoolboy Q, delivered a “gangsta rap/hip hop album” exactly the way someone’s supposed to. In his major-label debut album, Oxymoron, he opens the disc with a very “gangsta” feel to it, properly named, Gangsta. Two tracks later, the catchy, heavy drum line song and lead single, Collard Greens, soared through the charts as it was released. The headline feature of Kendrick Lamar, in which Lamar switches back and forth between Spanish and English in his verse, only helped the song’s popularity. Schoolboy raps on beat, his voice fluctuating at the same time as the instrument, and includes a rapid beat of the kick drums. The conclusion to the regular version of the album, Man of the Year, has Schoolboy self-proclaim that he is the “man of the year” and that all of his fans will get behind him and love his music.

2. Iggy Azalea - The New ClassicIggy delivered a grand slam with her album The New Classic when she came over seas from Australia as a singer/rapper, landing hard in America with her well-known single Fancy. Though this song isn’t the only one in which she packs a punch. As the track list continues, track seven, Work, is the fan favorite that people go absolutely crazy for. Towards the end of the disc is the other high caliber song, Black Widow, in which the tune opens up with an identifiable heavy synth line and a catchy hook (chorus). The song shows just how powerful she really is with the dark hostile lyrics comparing herself to the venomous Black Widow spider where she’ll love you, literally, to death.

3. Sam Smith - In the Lonely HourSam Smith’s feature on Disclosure’s chart-topping hit Latch certainly helped him rise in popularity. His smooth, ear-piercing vocals flow flawlessly over the electric/dance song that gave Disclosure its notoriety. On Smith’s album, The Lonely Hour, along with his own works, he includes an acoustic version of Latch with a piano and strings section with his vocals being the main instrument to show just how powerful his voice really is. Sam Smith, however, does not need other features to succeed. His brilliant song writing with James Napier in I’m Not the Only One can bring a tear to the eye with the chords he presents with his lyric choice. In a com-pletely different song topic in Stay With Me he begs his counterpart to stay with him as it well be the best for the both of them. With the organ, strings, piano chords, and drum line, this is another powerful track that has people begging for more from the young artist.

4. Multiply - Ed Sheeran Ed Sheeran opened up his year with the huge single “Sing” that got reception from any Ed Sheeran fan at all and the radio stations throughout America. With the catchy and demanding hook that yells “Sing!.....Louder!” followed by a fast-talking (almost rapping) second verse, Ed shows off his hip hop side and these influences translate to the fast acoustic chords and snare hits of the drum for a fast-packed chart-topping lead single off of Multiply. Not many songs can follow up Sing’s caliber for a second single, but Don’t came very close. The Rick Rubin produced, bass drum kicking, acoustic hip-hop vibe Sheeran gives is one of his best works and shows that he can stray away from songs like The A Team from his previous album, Plus, and Thinking Out Loud, later on the Multiply track list.

5. Eminem - Shady XVMarshall Mathers has been in the music industry for a long time. Mainstream since 1999, the controversial and incredibly talented artist is celebrating the fifteen year anniversary of his label Shady Records. To promote this, he made a compilation album which included past and present members of Shady Records called Shady XV (fifteen). The lead single, Guts Over Fear, featuring Sia, gives people who are in a dark place in their lives, a beam of light. The album also gives the red carpet to the returns of other rappers such as Yelawolf, Slaughterhouse, D12, and Bad Meets Evil. Perhaps the biggest tracks of the album were the star studded Detroit vs. Everybody featuring five rappers from Detroit including Big Sean and Danny Brown; the other track is the demo version of Lose Yourself which is an early version of the Grammy award winning song from Eminem’s movie 8 Mile and the encore to all of his live concerts.

Dylan Kennedy’s Top 51. Frankie Cosmos - ZentropyFrankie Cosmos is the musical project of Greta Kline, who has released countless amounts of music online over the past few years. Zentropy is ten songs, less than twenty minutes long, and explores love, school, aging, and many other aspects of life. The album is simple and feels relatable in its vulnerability. Kline’s lyrics seem like diary entries, making the indie-pop album a much more intimate experience. The soft, simple, almost shy music makes Kline appear to have nothing to say, which is why it’s so captivating when she does. Though short, Zentropy communicates colossal ideas and achieves excellence in its 17 minutes.

2. Mozes & the Firstborn – Mozes & the FirstbornThe self-titled debut from the Netherlands’ Mozes & the Firstborn delivers a unique take on indie-rock. The album has plenty of variety throughout its twelve songs. The opening track, Bloodsucker, has an intro that immediately captivates and, along with the rest of the album, is incredibly catchy. The band has a laid back charm, and is witty without forcing laughs Most importantly, this album feels like something entirely original and modern. Mozes & The Firstborn entertains to the end as their debut album contains almost every quality that makes indie-rock enjoyable to listen to.

3. Together PANGEA - BadillacFollowing up on 2012’s Living Dummy, California garage punks Together Pangea leave their low-fi sound for a cleaner, heavier, and more aggressive album. Alive, the bands opening track, packs a punch and shows the heavier side of the band, while Offer is a much more acoustically driven song uses more folk elements, and it breaks up the pace of the first five songs. Badillac shows that the Los Angeles trio has plenty of variety, and can execute a near perfect sound while remaining a rough and rugged band.

4. Steve Jr. – Steve Jr.Steve Jr.’s four-track self-titled album may be short, but it is dynamic. The album is heavy and power driven, and encompasses a balance of noise, riffs, and harmonies. R.I.P. Earth displays the bands raw energy, traveling from long drawn out lyrics, to screaming and head banging guitar riffs. Steve Jr put simply is a powerful album that carries passion, energy, and capability with it.

5. Cherry Glazerr - Haxel PrincessIn their first full length album, frontwoman Clementine Creevy, bassist Sean Redman, and drummer Hannah Uribe deliver a youthful batch of songs like Grilled Cheese and Teenage Girl that embody the west coast slacker pop scene almost entirely. The band’s slow tempos, laid-back vocals, and snotty but smart lyrics makes for a unique approach to pop-rock that makes Haxel Princess a perfect start for Cherry Glazerr’s career.

12 The Glen Echo Feature Student Council helps make holiday wishes come true

Laura YuanStaff Writer

The Student Council spon-sored a two week fundraiser to fulfill the holiday wish lists of two teenage girls. The fund-raiser, run through the Social Service Association holiday program, ran for two weeks and ended on Monday, Dec. 8.

Flyers advertising the fund-raiser were posted around the school building right before Thanksgiving break, and a box was set up in the main office for donations. The goal was to raise money for two seven-teen and fifteen years old girls in need of clothing but who were unable to purchase the items they wanted themselves.

“The two teenagers give us wish lists of items that they would like, and Student Council purchases the items from money that they have raised,” said Sonia Bawa, first year Student Council co-ad-viser and science teacher.

The Student Council rais-es money throughout the year through Homecoming tick-et sales, apparel sales, bake sales, and other fundrais-

ers. This is not the first year that the Student Council has conducted this event. In the past, the officers were giv-en a fund of $200 from the treasury to purchase items requested by the teenagers.

“This year, we decided to try something different. We wanted to see if we could col-lect enough money through donations specifically for this fundraiser from our fac-ulty members, the parents, and students,” Bawa said.

Whatever is not raised will be supplemented by the Student Council fund and recouped at a later time through other sales.

The fundraiser started later this year than in the past, but the Student Council worked hard to organize everything on time. Since it was conduct-ed for only two weeks, a large component to its success was spreading the word. E-mails and fliers were sent out while the student officers talked to teachers, parents, and friends.

Since the holiday season is a popular time for various forms of fundraising, mak-ing sure the students and faculty were well-informed

was a big challenge. De-spite the time constraints, the fundraiser was well re-ceived and many were happy to pitch in for a good cause.

“We were really emphasiz-ing the joy they could bring to these students in need,” said Harrison Gale, the student representative to the Board of Education. “We needed to raise money from generous donations in order to buy these students what they needed.”

The fundraiser received positive feedback from stu-dents who were pleased with the Student Council’s work and happy to contribute.

“It’s a great idea to give clothes to the less fortunate to

help them out during the hol-iday season,” freshman Mark Vadeika said. “Everyone has clothes in their closet that they buy and don’t wear. You know how you feel bad for never wearing them. But now you have a chance to make some-one else feel better if they need something you have.”

The charitable time of year and requests for specific items, however, made gath-ering donations challeng-ing for the Student Council.

“There are so many fund-raisers and good organiza-tions to donate to and you can’t donate to every organi-zation. So you have to try to make your fundraiser stand

out somehow,” Bawa said.Ensuring that students who

were interested remembered to donate was also difficult.

“Getting people to donate was challenging. Either they think it’s not relevant to them or they simply forget,” Gale said.

Overall, the Student Coun-cil says they held a successful fundraiser. Both teenagers re-ceived all of the items on their wish lists. Many smaller items (such as socks, pajamas and shirts) were donated by stu-dents and teachers. Larger and more expensive purchases, such as jackets, were bought by the Student Council officers.

“We collected much more than we had expected. We have other teachers to thank because there are so many teachers that spread the word in their classes,” Bawa said.

Yet even with another suc-cessful fundraiser accom-plished, the Student Council is still looking to improve upon its achievements.

-“We did not have a lot of time to organize, so I’d hope that with more time we could or-ganize an event that would en-courage donations,” Gale said.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LAUREN YUANStudent Council officers and advisers hand the donations over to the Social Service Association representative Judy Saydah (pictured third from the right). (Left to right) John Arlotta, Sonia Bawa, Kevin Besser, Mark Casella, McGara DeWan, T.J Begg, Caitlyn Callahan, Harrison Gale, Judy Saydah, Tom Lyon, and Katherine Bennin.

Aggy BlevinStaff Writer

Artist Profile: Quinn McHughQuinn McHugh is

an aspiring mechan-ical engineer in the Art Major program.

McHugh has had his work selected to be in-cluded in the Art Edu-cators of New Jersey’s 2014 Fall Art Exhibit at the New Jersey Perform-ing Arts Center (NJPAC) and the Teen Arts Fes-tival hosted by Bergen Community College.

He finds much of his initial inspiration from researching various topics and images on-line-- this method used in the composition of the Abstract Falcon.

Quinn, like most art-ists, has also found much of his influence from those who came before him. Namely, the work of Henri Matisse has led him to the Fauvist move-ment, a style in which he enjoys working and crafting his pieces.

A still life reflecting Quinn’s perspective on vari-ous, everyday objects.

Inspired by the asymmetry of hands, Quinn com-posed this piece with the focus moving towards the center.

Quinn took the infamous portrait of the Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, and painted it in the Fauvist Style- characterized by its decorative composition and vivid palette.

Again, inspired by hands and the entwining of branches, this work features a falcon in flight with wings composed of twigs.

Features The Glen Echo 13Wrestling coach tags in as replacement

Physical Education teacherBeth Keefe and Lauren Hanfield

Managing Editor and Staff Writer

As a first time educator, Co-rey Fitzpatrick has taken over for former Glen Rock teach-er Joseph Sutera in his role as a Physical Education teacher.

Sutera left the district to become the Athletic Direc-tor and an Assistant Principal at Woodridge High School.

“This is actually my first teaching job. I started off the year as a teacher’s assistant, and then the job just opened up,” Fitzpatrick said. “How it happened was I got the wres-tling job, and then the op-portunity just arose really.”

Prior to working at Glen Rock, Fitzpatrick substitut-ed in different schools and was coaching at Pascack Hills for three years. Fitz-patrick, however, is not new to the Glen Rock District.

py to be part of the team.“The district has really

great people around, great peo-ple to work with, it’s a place that any teacher would want to work,” Fitzpatrick said.

Fitzpatrick enjoys see-ing kids improve in phys-ical activity and having an impact on students’ lives.

“Certain students look up to you and sometimes you give them advice whether it’s a life-style kind of thing,” Fitzpatrick said. “You’re able to impact people’s lives in a positive way.”

Being the head wres-tling coach, Fitzpatrick is excited about the new sea-son and any experiences that will come along with it.

“I’m looking forward to it. Every year brings a new challenge,” Fitzpatrick said. “There’s always something different coaching every year, so it’s always a fun time.”

“Last year I was the wrestling coach here. This is technically my second year here,” he said.Fitzpatrick started wrestling when he was very young and continued to wrestle up un-til college. Once he entered college, he knew right away that teaching Physical Educa-tion along with being a wres-tling coach was something he wanted to further pursue.

“I knew I wanted to stay in athletics, specifically wres-tling and I wanted to coach later on and it’s something I’ve had a knack for,” Fitz-patick said. “I just can’t get away from the sport really.”

As a former wrestler at Hackensack High School, tak-ing on the challenge of teach-ing Physical Education was the next step in his career.

“I had an idea that I wanted to do something hands-on,” Fitz-patrick said. “A lot of the better teachers I had growing up were Phys. Ed teachers. It’s definitely gotten me on the right track.”

Fitzpatrick values fitness and working out, so Physical Edu-cation seemed like a perfect fit.

“I enjoy fitness and liv-ing a healthy lifestyle; it’s just something that’s a part of my life,” he said.

Although Fitzpatrick is fair-ly new with the Glen Rock School District, he is hap-

PHOTO COURTESY OF LAUREN HANFIELDWrestling coach, Mr. Fitzpatrick , is the newest member of the faculty and teaches physicla education.

Killeen McDonaldStaff Writer

From the rows of Udelco to the rows of the classroom

As the holidays near, so do the winter wardrobes. For junior Steven Schwartz that means one thing, long pants and beanies.

When thinking of a fashion icon in the junior grade, the name Steven Schwartz comes to mind. Schwartz is often recog-nized for his eye for style and memorable ensembles.

When Schwartz is not run-ning the track or expressing himself through music, he is searching through the racks at Udelco. This used clothing store is where Schwartz dis-covers clothing and accesso-ries that help shape his style.

Schwartz defines his style as “hipster or skater,” as one might assume due to his knack for skateboarding.

Defining style can be difficult to do, but Steven Schwartz’s stand-out style appears effortless while still catching the eyes of others.

“His style stands out be-cause he wears patterns and articles of clothing that differ from the pop-ular trends of his peers,” said Ari Berke, a junior.

Along with sculpting his own style, Schwartz also enjoys pulling inspi-ration from other people and sources. “I see things on social media that spark creativity,” Schwartz told The Glen Echo.

For Schwartz, style is a way to show the world who he is.

“Style defines who you are,” he said. “One’s style says a lot about them; it allows you to stand out and express yourself.”

Personal style can re-lay a message to the world about an individual’s gen-uine character. Schwartz’s individualistic fashion sense portrays a message of confidence and creativity.

Even without speak-ing to him, one can see from his sense of style that he is not your typi-cal high school student.

“It shows that he is not a follower because he does not wear the same types of clothes as the other guys,” said Max Egermayer (’16). “He rarely wears the same thing and you never know what he’s going to wear.”

Student poets get into DodgeJack WhyteStaff Writer

On a chilly October morn-ing, the halls of Glen Rock High School were abuzz with school spirit and antic-ipation. The annual Home-coming pep rally was hours away. Faces were p a i n t e d , colors were d o n n e d , and the h a l l w a y s were jun-gles of s t r eamers and pictures of Ewoks.

Y e t amidst all this, in the early hours of the day, eight s t u d e n t s and two teachers boarded a school bus.

Their destination, how-ever, had little to do with the traditions of Homecom-ing week. These students had other interests that day.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival is a biennial poetry event, drawing a to-tal of 155,000 teachers and students to the Downtown Arts district of Newark, NJ throughout its existence. Dozens of internationally

credited poets come to share both their work and advice in a variety of presentations on the subjects of poetry.

Teacher Patricia Ma-honey, the adviser of Mobi-us (the art and literary maga-

zine of Glen Rock High S c h o o l ) , brought a handful of editors and f r e q u e n t c o n t r i b u -tors of the m a g a z i n e to the festi-val to hear these po-ets speak.

“It’s not e v e r y d a y that you get to hear works from contempo-rary poets live, so the

Dodge Poetry Festival was a very unique experience,” said

Harrison Gale, a junior and an active member of Mobius. “All of the poets that we saw had an uncon-ventional and inventive perspective… I’d recom-mend a visit for anyone who has the opportunity to hear some of the most innova-tive contemporary poets.”

It was precisely this op-portunity, along with the proximity of Newark,

which drew Glen Rock students to the festival.

In NJPAC’s Victoria The-ater, the students joined rep-resentatives from across the country for the first session of the day: “Poetry and Con-versation: Reading, Q & A,” featuring Aja Monet, Alber-to Rios, and Brian Turner.

“I thought the festival was a really great opportunity to hear poetry from poets that I was vaguely familiar with but also to hear from poets that I had never heard of be-fore,” said Sarah D’Alessio, a senior and another frequent contributor to the art and lit-erary magazine. “It was re-ally interesting to hear them answer questions about the writing process. It was all very inspiring and I wish it happened every year.”

Aja Monet, one of the first poets the speakers saw, is a nationally acclaimed and ac-complished slam poet. Slam poetry is a unique form of writing that culminates in competitive performance. Monet has performed for Barack Obama and has tak-en her work to Broadway.Monet’s cogency and style left a particular im-pact on the students.

Perhaps the biggest star of the afternoon, however, was Manhattan-born poet Billy Collins. Collins is the recip-ient of numerous prestigious fellowships from the Nation-

Opinion

Glen Rock High School does not always contain the diversity of in-terest groups that is seen in everyday life. To say that sports is not the dominat-ing concern for the student body of Glen Rock High School is to kid oneself. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with this. The celebra-tion of athleticism is one of the biggest ways cultures are defined. But even if it’s just two teachers and half-dozen students taking a break from the routine of pedagogy to sit and listen to poetry for a few hours one afternoon, it’s nice to know that mem-bers of this institution have interests that lie elsewhere.

al Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim foundation.

Additionally, he served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2001-2003.

Collin’s star power, as well as his mastery of phras-ing, had the 3,400-seat con-cert hall in complete silence.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival has occurred every two years since 1986, with 15 festivals in total, all taking place in New Jer-sey. The festival is widely considered the largest of its kind in North America.

PHOTO CREDIT WIKIMEDIA COMMONSFormer US Poet Laureate Billy Collins, one of the dozens of poets in attendance at the festival

14 The Glen Echo Opinion

take away time from educatio

n?Should being active

SHOULD ATHLETES BE ABLE TO OPT-OUT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION?

Students in the state of New Jersey, many of whom attend schools with compulsory physical education classes, could benefit greatly from taking more academic courses. The problem, however - finding time to take these courses."If I had more time, then I would definitely be able to do more," Erica Jones, a student athlete, said.

As it is now, Glen Rock High School dismisses at 2:54; an additional class would delay that dismissal time to 3:56 – a time when interscholastic sports would be nearly impossible to begin. This is not to mention the additional course load that more academic courses would create. Glen Rock High School students must take a physical education class for three of the four quarters throughout each school year.

New Jersey remains one of few states that require students to take four years of physical education in order to graduate from high school. Other states with this requirement include Illinois, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, and Vermont.The state of New Jersey calls for only 150 minutes per week spent on physical education.

Yet with the new drop schedule, graduation requirements have increased from 180 minutesof physical education time to 240 weekly minutes – a very significant difference. The 150 minute weekly graduation requirement must be met within a student’s high school career for that student to graduate. Nevertheless, Glen Rock can use better methods to still achieve these graduation goals, similar to the majority of high schools in New Jersey. It’s important to remember that the entire point of physical education classes is to maintain physical activity – but that activity does not necessarily need to occur within the structured confines of a physical education period.

if i had more time then i would definitely

There is a program that many schools offer as a solution: it's called the “Opt-Out” program. This policy allows students who participate in after-school sports to have more time to either sign up for a study hall, giving the student more time to finish their work for their classes, or enter into another academic course, giving the student a new opportunity to gain more college credits for their future. Students who are not participating in an after school sport, or if the sport that they participate in is not in session, are required to take a physical education class.

Nicola Fornino and Eric CosgriffStaff Writer and Illustrator

CONTINUED ON PAGE 19

Student Life The Glen Echo 15

In light of the controversy surrounding the newly-ad-opted PARCC standardized test, you’ve likely heard all the arguments from each perspective; Though on this issue, it seems like the general consensus is that the test is just a bad idea.

PARCC, the name of both the organization and test, which stands for Partnership for Assessment of Readi-ness for College and Ca-reers, is made up of 12 US states, including Ark., Colo., Ill., La., Md., Mass., Miss., N.M., N.Y., Ohio, R.I., and, of course, N.J. Washington DC is also on board, and Pennsylvania is considered a “participating state,” mean-ing that it will employ the test but is not a part of the PARCC’s governing body.

The states that have signed on with the PARCC are re-quired to give the exam to all of their students, grades K-11, beginning in the spring of the 2014-2015 school year. It will replace New Jersey’s ASK Test and HSPA Exam.

No students in the Glen Rock Public School Dis-trict are exempt from tak-ing the exam, except for the current seniors, who fulfilled their graduation re-quirement by completing the HSPA exam last year.

According to the bylaws of PARCC, the organization identifies itself as “a part-nership of states committed to building a next-genera-tion assessment system for elementary and secondary schools that is based upon adoption of the Common Core State Standards.”

The test is comprised of two sections: Mathematics and Language Arts/Literacy, and it is entirely computerized.

This is a clear attempt at education reform, but will it be effective?

“Tests don’t teach,” said senior Dylan Kenne-

No walk in the PARCCdy, reiterating a philos-ophy of the New Jersey Education Association.

Visual Art teacher, Nicole Rusin offered her perspec-tive. “I think that when we look at the PARCC test, it’s really hard to gauge how hard it’s going to measure knowledge without first giving the test,” she said. “I think it’s impossible to say that something is ineffec-tive without trying it first.”

She did mention, howev-er, that because she is an art teacher, testing is not part of her discipline. “I think that it must be an incredible amount of pressure on both students, teachers, and parents, or all of the above, to have stu-dents perform well on [the tests], that’s got to be a lot of pressure, so I can’t imag-ine being a math teacher.”

But a few students have “tried it first” last year, when English teachers Pa-tricia Mahoney and Jason Toncic had some sopho-more classes pilot the test.

Tim Fink, a junior, was one of these students, and had a tough time with the program that ran the test. “Some peo-ple were having issues, like the computer would shut off, and the program would just stop working,” he com-mented. He believes that using this program to test the whole school could be a big problem. “It would be a big issue,” he said, “just too many people taking the test at the same time.”

Liliana Hendrickx, a se-nior whose sister also pi-loted the test last year, said taking the PARCC was “an-noying,” and concurs that she doesn’t think teach-ers should teach to a test.

We can only hope that whatever problems were met last year with the PARCC test have been smoothed over, and that the test will run suc-cessfully when Glen Rock Middle and High School students take it this spring.

F. Timothy MountainCopy Editor

The path to Latin mas-tery came with a significant amount of work, however.

“I had a range of exposure from Vergil to Caesar, and Livy to Plautus. It is also recommend-ed to supplement the language course with culture courses, like I did by taking classes such as Roman and Greek religion and the Age of Augustus,” he ex-plained. “There were certainly some tribulations as I worked towards mastery of the subject, but I welcomed such challenges.”

DaGiau, who was previous-ly the head of the World Lan-guage department, had held the Latin position at Glen Rock for many years. She shaped the pro-gram to her standards, so, when leaving it behind, she made sure that it was left in good hands.

“I am confident that he will keep the study of Latin moving forward. His knowledge of clas-sics, his expertise with technolo-

gy, and his enthusiasm for Latin will serve Glen Rock students of Latin very well,” DaGiau said.

“In some regards, it is tough to take over a program from such a distinguished faculty member; her expertise, dedication and passion for the program is some-thing that has resonated through Glen Rock for many years,” Montalbano said. “The time I spent with Mrs. DaGiau before I took over has made me confi-dent about the task ahead of me.”

As a new addition to the Glen Rock faculty, Montal-bano feels that he can con-tinue to learn from students and other faculty members.

“I expect to learn a lot from my students,” he said. “Especial-ly in regard to different meth-ods to approach the language.”

Thus far, the transition has been smooth and stu-dents are enjoying the change.

“I like his teaching method. It makes learning the material a lot easier,” Elizabeth Alba (’17) said.

“I think it’s going to be a differ-

ent take on Latin,” Meaghan Tren-tham (’16) said. “I’m excited!”

Not only is Montalba-no interested in Latin, but he also enjoys baseball.

“I have played it, coached it, umpired it and watch it whenever I can,” he said. “I hope at some point in my career that I can find a way to become involved in the Glen Rock baseball program.”

As for classroom goals, Mon-talbano hopes to show students that Latin is not a dead lan-guage and is around us everyday.

“I never understood how peo-ple could view Latin as a ‘dead’ language when it is literally all around us. So much of the En-glish language is derived from Latin, grammatical concepts align across languages, and un-derstanding how to use Latin can absolutely improve one’s mastery over English,” he said. “I am in-trigued to see what connections my students can find, so, togeth-er, we can identify even more relationships that the ancient world has with the modern age.”

Classic language gets new teacher(continued from page 6)

Christina HowieStaff Writer

On Dec. 9, students and faculty members of Glen Rock Middle School and High School partook in a “Shelter-In-Place” under the guidance of High School Principal John Arlotta.

The response plan, which is typically imple-mented due to dangerous environmental conditions, was initiated as a result of a scheduled Bergen Coun-ty Canine visit. Officers of the Bergen County Sher-iff’s Department pilot-ed a sweep of the Middle

School and High School with the assistance of the Glen Rock Police Depart-ment with the purpose of ensuring the safety of both students and administrators.

“The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office is ac-tively working with pub-lic agencies and public schools to reduce the num-ber of drug induced deaths across our county and in our state,” said Dr. Paula Valenti, Superintendent of Glen Rock Public Schools.

Once the drill was initiat-ed, students were instructed to place their backpacks out-side of their classroom and

proceed with educational instruction. Any substance of concern that was detected in either the lockers or back-packs of students was sub-ject to further investigation.

The canine drill func-tions primarily to enhance security protocols pro-moted by both the Glen Rock Board of Educa-tion and Bergen Coun-ty’s sheriff department.

“The use of the coun-ty canine unit is just one of several pro-active mea-sures implemented by the office to assist public schools to deter drugs in schools,” Dr. Valenti said.

Who let the dogs in?Kaitlin Stansel

Social Media Editor

The Glen Echo is on Twitter! Follow us @TheGlenEchoGRHS for updates, student profiles, and links to news posts

on our website:

theglenecho.com.

You can also follow Principal Arlotta @PrincipalGRHS!

Features The Glen Echo 16New science teacher engineers engaging classes

Although Brian Lucken-bill, one of Glen Rock’s new staff members, is new to Glen Rock, he is excited to be teach-ing here. He kindly sat down for an interview so our school could get to know him better.

Luckenbill is teaching both physics and pre-engineering to students of all grades this year. This is his first year of teaching, but he is already experienced.

“I did spend a full year in an internship program for my student teaching in a high school,” he said. “I also tutored physics throughout college.”

He has always enjoyed tu-toring and helping out other students, which is how he first knew he wanted to be a teacher.

“I would say I first wanted to be a teacher probably my ju-nior year of high school. It was something I always considered, but prior to that for some reason I was thinking pharmaceuticals,” Luckenbill said. “I initially wanted to be a chemistry teacher. Then my senior year I took phys-ics and loved it. I’ve always been good with math and science.”

Luckenbill majored in Phys-ics, which was his main academ-ic interest. Nevertheless, he is also teaching engineering which is a new experience for him.

“I did not major in engineer-ing, though engineering is highly related to physics,” he said. “You use a lot of the physics concepts,

in Philadelphia was set back by an injury, he is planning on running a half-marathon.

“Two years ago I ran my first marathon, haven’t ran one since,” he said. “It went well. It was a big accomplishment.”

He also enjoys rock climbing and scuba diving.

“I have done a couple out-door climbs, but nothing too

a lot of similar calculations.”Yet from his perspec-

tive as a teacher, the class-es are still quite distinct.

“They are two very differ-ent classes,” he said. “Engi-neering -- it’s a little more of a laid back class, with a proj-ect based design. It kind of gives me more freedom to get to know the students while we

are also doing these projects.”On the other hand, he ex-

plained that Physics was dif-ferent and that he kept “more of a strict schedule there.”

He is enjoying his first teaching job, and says he likes it here in Glen Rock.

“It’s a really good high school, and I’m glad to be here. I really like the colleagues that I work with,” he said. “I like the students that I have.”

With his new job, Lucken-bill has been busy lately, but in his free time he enjoys going outdoors and staying active.

Although his training for a marathon this November

extreme that requires extra equipment,” he said. “I became certified (in scuba diving) in North Carolina where I went on two dives to old shipwrecks which was a cool experience.”

Luckenbill grew up and went to high school in a small town outside of Reading, Pa. He was a captain of the track team and did well in academics. He went to the University of Millersville on a partial scholarship with hopes of becoming a teacher.

“It’s always been a no-brain-er for me, I just really enjoy it, and I think teaching is a good way to make a differ-ence in people’s lives,” he said.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHARLIE CAMPBELLLuckenbill, dressed with other faculty members as medical staff for Halloween, teaches a lesson.

Number Two’s number one fan

Millions of Derek Jeter fans were devastated after his retire-ment from baseball, but no one seems as upset as physical edu-cation teacher Christopher Fox.

Anne VandervalkStaff Writer

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRIS FOXFox and his son Brendan admire Jeter and all of his accomplishments. Brendan is now also a big fan.

Fox has been a Derek Jeter and Yankee fan since he can re-member. He even recalls watch-ing Yankee games as a young kid. Since then, he has “always stayed loyal to his Yankees.”

Fox teaches Physical Edu-cation and Health, and, along with teaching, he coaches the Girls varsity and JV soccer teams and is a site manag-er for athletics. He has been teaching and coaching for thirteen years in Glen Rock.

But today, Fox isn’t his normal upbeat self.

“Sad. Honest-ly I feel sad,” Fox said.

Since Jeter was Fox’s childhood idol, he is up-set that he won’t be able to watch his favorite player out on the baseball field again.

“I will always be a Yan-kee fan,” he said. “Howev-er, not watching Jeter play is definitely sad for me.”

Sisters on his soccer team, Bridget and Mary Kate Horton, both explained how Fox once spoke about Jeter for almost

a half hour during practice.“One time at practice we

just sat in a circle and talk-ed about everything Jeter, including Fox’s’ obsession with him,” Mary Kate Hor-ton said. “He even told us

about how he sits next to him in church during midnight mass during Christmas time!”

Fox’s favorite memory of Jeter was his 3,000th hit, which happened to be a home run.

As a dedicated fan, Fox has gone to about 300 Yan-kee games. 90-95% of them at Yankee Stadium.

Fox also showed his dedica-tion by driving three hours to Boston to witness Jeter playing his last game for the Yankees.

During this game, Jeter did not play on the field in his usual short stop position: he only contributed by batting. He removed himself from the game in the third inning af-ter hitting a single. This was his 3,465th hit of his career.

The Yankees won the game, which many thought was truly a great way for Jeter to end his baseball career after playing 20 seasons of professional baseball.

Fox refers to Jeter as “the man” because “he is somebody that I would want my kids to learn from and grow up watching.”

Charlie CampbellStaff Writer

THANK YOU

The Glen Echo would like to give a special thanks to the staff members and contributing edi-tors involved in the production of this print edition.

• Mr. Jason Toncic, Faculty Adviser• Dr. Paula Valenti, Superintendent• Mr. John Arlotta, Principal• Mr. Steve Purciello, Vice Principal• Lilia Wood, Print Editor-in-Chief• Trevor LaVine, Web Editor-in-Chief• Richard Gueren, Editor-in-Chief• All staff members from Period 7 Journalism• All staff members from Period 9 Journalism

We would like to extend a great deal of gratitude to the above named individuals for their invaluable service and contributions toward our continued excellence.

For the full staff listing of The Glen Echo student news-paper, see our staff profile page at www.theglenecho.com

Vice principal retires after a decade of discipline(continued from the front page)

Before the 2014-15 school year, the high school ran a sched-ule with a consistent nine period daily schedule, and there was always a lot of tension through the hallway with the stressed stu-dents. Currently, the school has a rotating-block schedule with six periods that change each day with a full hour for lunch that the whole school has together.

“It’s like the air out of the bal-loon. It is a lot calmer, and I do not see the tension for you guys that I saw before,” Purciello ex-plained. “And then in lunch, you have a nice time and talk and meet up with your friends. In the old days, you weren’t always in the same period as your friends.”

Another benefit to the rotating schedule is less homework. Pur-ciello said that student-athletes previously got home around 6:30 each night and, after they ate dinner, it was already late into the night. With the new sched-ule, these same student-athletes have an extra day to do their homework for a class per day.

“When I was a kid, we had a lot more time to do things we enjoyed. My mind right now, if I were a kid in school, if I wasn’t playing basketball, I would be thinking, ‘What am I going to play today?’ after school,” he said.

Purciello’s experience in Glen Rock has been a positive one, and he has enjoyed com-ing into work and interacting

with the students. Yet within all of these good experiences, the two painful moments he will never forget are the two suicides that occurred during his ten-ure at Glen Rock High School.

“Those were the worst days that I ever have had here. They were difficult. They still stick in my mind. They always will. To understand you guys and to understand kids and to un-derstand the whole thing, I just cannot do,” Purciello said.

Purciello’s official day of retirement is Dec. 23, which is also the last day of school before winter break.

“What’s great about my job is you are always young,” Purciello said. “I am always young because I am always dealing with people your age. That’s the best part about it.”

The vice principal has been contemplating retirement for a few years; it is a process that has a lot of components, in-cluding financial ones. He also had to do a lot of research.

“For me, if I still wanted to live here, I would continue to work, but I really have a love for certain parts of Florida,” he said.

During his time in Glen Rock, Purciello did much to make his office resem-ble the climate down south.

Crowley, one of Purciello’s administrative assistants, ex-plained that “he always has the

maintenance people close all the vents to overheat” his office.

Purciello and his wife already own a place in Key West, and he predicts that he will be living there in a couple of months. His family has been vacationing in the Keys for roughly fifteen years, and they’ve always planned retiring there because of its re-laxing and warm environment.

He plans to still be there in ten years, “with a lot less hair and more grey,” according to Purciello.

When the students return from winter break, there will be a new administrator sitting in the vice principal’s office. This process is undertaken by the ad-ministration that will be work-ing with the new vice principal.

“It’s a process that usually when you let them know you’re leaving, it is under their con-trol,” Purciello explained. “I won’t be working with the per-son, so it is ultimately their call.”

His advice for his replace-ment is to enjoy working with the students. He also wants his replacement to know that it is not important if an accom-plishment has their name on it; it does not matter who gets the credit as long as it gets done.

Purciello would like to wish all the students good luck on the rest of their high school careers.

“It has been fun for me, so I hope you have enjoyed it,” he said.

17 The Glen Echo A&EMusician Profile: Sam Halpert Rodis

Zach McCollumStaff Writer

The Glen Echo: What in-strument do you play?

Sam Halpert Rodis: I pri-marily play alto saxophone.

GE: How did you become in-volved in the high school band?

HR: Well, I’ve been doing mu-sic since elementary school, the program that they start there, and over time I’ve come up through middle school. In eighth grade, by Mr. Kurland, I was brought up into the high school band, so I’ve actually been in the high school band for 5 years.

GE: What inspired you to play the saxophone?

HR: My parents said I should play an instrument, and my dad and my grandfather both played the saxophone in high school, so that’s what inspired me.

GE: Who are some of your big-gest influences as a musician?

HR: As a musician I would say I have a couple, so I’ll just list them off. I would say John Col-trane and Stan Getz for jazz, and then I like a lot of music, so I’ll just leave it at that for right now.

GE: If you were stranded on a deserted island with noth-ing but a record player what record would you carry?

HR: I would probably have to debate between Freedom in the Groove by Joshua Redman and any album by Grouplove.

GE: How did you obtain the drum major position?

HR: I wasn’t explicitly told how it works, but I was told that the seniors were asked who they thought should lead. It’s real-ly Mr. Kurland’s decision in the end, so he asked me at the end of last year if I wanted to do this.

GE: Out of any profession-al musician, which would you like to perform with the most?

HR: Well with my upcoming rap, I’d probably have to say Danny Brown. I’d love to perform with him on stage. That’s my dream! But if it had to be for saxophone I would have to say Charlie Parker.

GE: On the topic of your rap album, what is the name of it?

HR: The working title was Mon-ey Like Ten Million, but right now I’ve been concepting it and I think it might be Versashi, spelled incorrectly with an s-h. As of right now, it’s not quite done yet.

GE: Are there any up-coming shows that you are planning on attending?

HR: No, especially with the upcoming football games hap-pening on Fridays and Satur-days. It kind of restricts me a

bit, so I guess you would say those are the shows I’m looking forward to the most right now!

GE: So, do you prefer playing the football games and the basketball games, or are you more a fan of playing concerts like the Winter Concert and the Spring Concert?

HR: Well, I really enjoy leading the band. Everybody is working really hard and it’s a great group. Seeing all of their hard work come through, and just knowing I’m a part of that in some way is en-joyable. But as a player, I would have to say obviously the con-certs. I don’t play in the march-ing band anymore, so as a player

the concerts are more exciting.

GE: Would you say you have a love for food, or just music?

HR: I definitely have a love for a lot of things besides music, and food is definitely one of them.

GE: So, do you see a connec-tion between your love for mu-sic and your love for food?

HR: Yeah. Often times after a football game, I’ll take some of the band members that I’m friends with out for breakfast or lunch. So, yeah, I guess food brings us a little closer together.

GE: That’s great!

GE: Which shirt do you feel best fits on your body when play-ing a concert or football game?

HR: For a football game, I’d defi-nitely say my “We Love Spandex” custom band shirt fits me best. For a concert I would have to say a white collared shirt and a tie.

GE: Who other than your self do you consider to be one of the best musicians in the Glen Rock High School band?

HR: I would have to say ev-erybody has varying levels of ability when it comes to instru-ments and music, but I’d have to say everybody participates to the best of their ability, and I can’t just single some peo-ple out to be better than others. Everybody is working hard.

GE: Are there any albums, EPs, or songs that you would recommend to the readers of the Glen Echo or the students of Glen Rock High School?

HR: Gossamer by Passion Pit would be one. Old by Danny Brown is one of my absolute fa-vorites. My friend Andrew Peis-er just recently introduced me to Run the Jewels. Their new album is dope. There is a lot of stuff out there. Experiment; find new stuff, and everything like that.

GE: Thanks a lot, Sam!

HR: Of course!

PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFF BUCKWALTERSam Halpert Rodis is an aspiring musician and the drum major of the Glen Rock High

School Marching Band.

Three student musicians to form ‘screamo’ band

Zach McCollumStaff Writer

Glen Rock High School musicians Mike Zilvetti, Jus-tin McCollum, and Adam Do-natuccio have been inv0lved in on-going discusses regard-ing the formation of a screamo project, a style of music that is generally a rarity in the school.

The band will be called Pastels and will consist of three different musicians, all of whom are juniors in high school. McCollum will play guitar, Donatuccio will play drums, and Zilvetti will pro-vide the screaming vocals. The band plans on writing and recording its own mu-sic and playing shows with-in the New Jersey scene.

The idea for the project was brought up by McCollum when he was listening to a screamo song by The Hotelier, and he brought it to the atten-tion of Zilvetti, who has both screaming and lyrical abili-ties. Donatuccio was not asked to join until a few days later.

“Mike’s a good lyricist, so

we don’t have to worry about that,” said McCollum. “We got Adam because we knew he’d be into it and was good at drums.”

The band’s influences range

from more contemporary emo, such as Brand New, Modern Baseball, Tigers Jaw, Tiny Moving Parts, and La Dispute to classic screamo, such as Thurs-day, Finch, and United Nations, and modern screamo, such as Touché Amore, Old Gray, and Pianos Become the Teeth.

“I’m a huge Thursday

fan,” said Donatuccio, “but Touché Amore and Pianos Become the Teeth are great bands, so I think they’ll in-fluence our music a lot.”

Screamo is a genre of music that contains emotional lyrics, twinkling guitars, and screamed vocals. Though the band en-joys the genre very much, they claim that the genre is incredi-bly misunderstood and listeners often mistake it for other styles.

“I think it is a big prob-lem because when people hear the word screamo, they often relate it to heavy met-al or death metal,” said Mike Zilvetti. “It’s actually a sub-genre of emo, which is also a genre that’s misunderstood.”

Zilvetti and the rest of the band also believe that students of the school will be turned off by their sound because they relate the screamo genre with styles that have a bad reputation, even after listening to them.

“I can appreciate the genre,” said Jack Jensen, a junior, “but I also know a lot of people that think it is just screaming.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF ZACH MCCOLLUM Pastels is a screamo band comprised of Justin Mc-Collum (left), Adam Donatuccio (center), and Mike Zilvetti (right)

Glen Rock honors student releases debut rap album

Zach McCollumStaff Writer

Tony $aprano, better known as Sam Halpert Rodis or Sam HR for short, is a local rapper. $aprano is known for rapping with several other groups, using the same alias, and showing off his bouncy, ener-getic style and hilarious lyricism.

On Versake, $aprano manages to do just the same while also incorpo-rating creative beats and humorous samples. The lyrics on Versake still contain the same great humor $apra-no is known for, comprising refer-ences to things in his hometown of Glen Rock and lampooning drug use.

The sampling on Versake is ab-solute perfection. There is a sam-ple on almost every track, and the majority of them will have any lis-tener laughing to the point of tears. The best examples of sampling are found on tracks “Arizona Green Tea Dreams,” “Fake Song About Pre-tend Girl,” “Drowning in Adderall,” and especially on “Chrome Bugat-ti,” where the sample is also used as the beat for the entirety of the track.

There is no doubt that the beats on Versake are heavily influenced by beats that have appeared on songs by Yung Lean, Danny Brown, and Chance, The Rappers’. The beats are creative, interesting, fun, and even comical at some points. The beat on “Kill Yo Self” is easily the most fun and energetic, and it features an up-

beat piano riff layered on the track.$aprano also decided to feature

a handful of other local performing artists on Versake, all of them hailing from Glen Rock. Making appear-ances are Oedipus, the King (David Merkle), Tito the Wonder (Tyler “Tog” Hirschfeld), Rex Lucra (Mike Zilvetti), and B-Pack (Liliana Hen-drix). Every single feature performs a hilarious verse that fits the tone of this record perfectly, especially the verse from B-Pack on “Money Like Ten Million,” which closes the album in the best possible way.

$aprano’s performance on Versake is near perfect, saying his alias at the beginning of al-most every song on the record. His bounce and exuberance is still very much present and his flow and lyrical delivery is impeccable.

Overall, Versake is a fantastic de-but and is perfect for any fan of hip-hop.

Overall Rating: 9

PHOTO COURTESY OF KYRA GILBREATHVersake album cover for the digital release.

A&E The Glen Echo 18Theatre Company lives up to great expectations

Mia Ramdayal and Nicola Fornino Staff Writers

The Glen Rock High School Theatre Company presented Great Expecta-tions on Nov. 20, 21, and 22.

The play is an adaptation of a novel that was originally written by Charles Dickens, one of the most influential English-language writers. Dickens’ works contain mem-orable characters that portray great messages for the audi-ence. Great Expectations, the novel, was then adapted by Neil Bartlett, a playwright.

Pip, an orphan, struggles through life with many obsta-cles, feeling as though he is not important. Although Pip has a tough life, he still has great expectations of his own.

This character, played by Jack Whyte, has to live without any true knowl-

edge of his parents; the only details that he learns are from the words inscribed in his parents’ tombstones.

He lives with his sister and brother-in-law until adopted by an anonymous donor. Pip grows to have feelings for a girl named Estella, played by Maddie Basirico. Along the way, Pip meets a few people that inspire and make great impressions on his life. Per-haps the most important les-son of the play comes from the line: “Be forever grateful.”

Juliet McKinley, the advis-er of the Theatre Company, is especially grateful for the work of the cast and crew.

She specifically admired the amount of enthusiasm its members had and was very impressed with each performer’s individual per-formance and the amount of

time they dedicated outside of school to perfect their roles in time for the performance.

“It was demanding, but they rose to the chal-lenge,” McKinley said.

Bridget Darcy, a sophomore crew member, stayed during rehearsals to help the play come together. During the last four weeks before the play, Darcy and other members stayed until 9:30 to makes sure that the lighting, props, and sound effects were set in place and transitioned smoothly.

“I love doing the show. It’s always so much fun, and, even though it was really rough during tech week and there were a couple days that were really exhausting, the shows looked so good and it’s defi-nitely worth it,” Darcy said.

This is Darcy’s second year participating in the Theatre

Company’s production, and she hopes to help with more plays and musicals in the future.

Jack Whyte, the lead-ing man, strongly ad-mires the great amount of time that was contribut-ed toward this production.

Yet Whyte himself also commited a tremendous amount of time to prepare for his lead role in Great Expec-tations. He began by reading the book over the summer and watching the movie versions to really understand the character that he was going to portray.

Since his character began as a young boy, then ages throughout the play, “I thought about what it was like to be younger,” Whyte explained.

Whyte thinks that the Theatre Company can im-prove on garnering “sup-port throughout the school.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONEJack Whyte and Tyler Joachim enacting the closing scenes of Neil Bartlett’s stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations.”

PHOTO COURTESTY OF JOHN SCIALDONEPip and Herbert rowing Magwitch (Tyler Joachim.)

PHOTO COURTESTY OF JOHN SCIALDONEPip (Jack Whyte) and Estella (Maddie Basirico) meeting again after years of separation.

PHOTO COURTESTY OF JOHN SCIALDONEPip and Herbert reunite in a musty London inn.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONEPip (Jack Whyte) and Herbert Pocket (David Merkle) in a violent confrontation in the halls of Satis House.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONEUncle Pumblechook (Tim Mountain) and Pip (Jack Whyte) in a coach on the way to Satis House.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONEThe Royal Guard sweeping the marshes in search of escaped convicts.

PHOTO COURTEST OF JOHN SCIALDONEJack Whyte as Pip opening the play with a soliloquy.

Actor leaps into lead performance

Katilin StanselSocial Media Editor

Moments before the play, the lead of the school play could be found in a silent room, analyzing the notes that he had rehearsed many times before. This quiet ritual calmed his nerves and prepared him for the upcoming performance.

Senior Jack Whyte chan-neled his inner Englishman as he hypnotized the audience during his opening night per-formance in Glen Rock High School’s rendition of Great Expectations on Nov. 20. “Pip was an incredible char-acter to take on,” Whyte said. “There are so many layers to him as a person, and it was a lot of fun exploring the different elements of Pip.”

Throughout the play, Whyte transitioned from the ear-ly stages of Pip’s life to his mid-thirties. Possessing the capability to effectively manip-ulate his character served as a vital technique in the adapta-tion of Charles Dickens’s 19th century literary masterpiece.

“I had to adopt two different variations of an English accent for different chapters of Pip’s life,” Whyte said. “That was one of the more challenging aspects of the performance.”

“I try to think of a character’s entire life story, rather than just what is on the page,” Whyte explained. “Depending on how much information the source material may give, an actor can, to a certain degree, fill in the blanks of a character’s life with whatever they want. This helps with the motivation behind a choice or the delivery of a line.”

Yet Whyte admits that his seemingly unflappa-ble performance is deceiv-ing. Like many notable ac-tors and actresses, Whyte is afflicted by stage fright.

“I get very nervous before I go onstage,” Whyte said. “For most people, nervous-ness builds gradually. Ner-vousness tends to hit me all at once. I deal with this the same way someone who is nervous about swimming dives into a pool. I just jump in before I can convince myself not to.”

As for the future, we can anticipate the small town star to make headlines.

“I would characterize my-self as someone who gravitates towards roles that challenge me,” said Whyte. “I think that a ‘comfort zone’ is a danger-ous thing to have as an actor, and I try to make choices in rehearsal that wouldn’t nec-essarily be the most obvious or straightforward. Early on I was taught the value of try-ing as many things as possi-ble to see what ‘sticks,’ and I do that as much as possible.”

19 The Glen Echo ContinuedIt was game time. Herren

played one of the best games of his career that night.

A few years later, he was found slumped over, unconscious, in his car with traces of heroin on the seat next to him.

Now six years sober and the face of The Herren Project and Project Pur-ple Initiative, Christopher Herren uses his tribulations with substance abuse and the impact it had on his life to educate thousands of students, professional athletes and military per-sonnel across the country.

“You know it was a per-fectly normal thing to do in the world I was living in,” Herren told The Glen Echo. “Looking back now, it’s to-tally insane and farfetched and desperate. But how I was living back then, it was a total normal thing to do.”

As a naïve eighteen year old, Herren was flung into a foreign world of narcotics.

“The depths of my sub-stance abuse were extreme-ly,” he said, “deep from the beginning in a sense. At 18 years old anytime you’re doing cocaine it’s a major is-sue, so I knew at a relatively young age that I was in deep.”

Between 1994 and 2006, Herren wore jerseys from countless teams in several countries. Herren’s closet grew as he was quickly pro-pelled into a professional world that was alien to him.

Yet, despite his success, as Herren succumbed to drugs it began to become clear that he was then un-able to cope with the re-sponsibilities of adulthood.

“Gosh I was a child in a sense; you know, I mean I jumped into drug addiction when I was 18 years old, so I was basically six months out of high school,” he said.

Herren, in a short matter of time, transitioned from wearing the jerseys of ath-letes that were his role mod-els to having his own name become the stitched block letters on those jerseys.

In June of 2008, Herren reached the rock bottom of his unruly addiction. He overdosed from heroin.

This life-threatening calamity catalyzed a life-style change for Herren.

After months of intense substance abuse treatment, Herren founded The Her-ren Project in 2011, a pro-gram that promotes sobriety

and aids individuals in their road to recovery. A year lat-er, Project Purple Initiative was launched in hopes of encouraging individuality amongst teenagers with-out the influence of drugs.

“The Herren project is all about helping families and helping people who strug-gle with substance abuse,” Herren said. “Project Pur-ple is all about the kids. It’s about prevention, aware-ness, education. It’s about creating an identity, a sober culture within our schools and being okay with that and not being afraid of it.”

On Oct. 22, the Massa-chusetts local traveled to Glen Rock High School to speak in front of an au-ditorium packed full of students, administrators, and teachers. Some stu-dents were sitting on the floor in between the rows. During his talk, Herren fore-warned students about the seemingly trivial beginnings of substance abuse in a nine-ty-minute program preceded by a film summarizing the ups-and-downs of his career.

The relevance of the as-sembly is clear: the prom-inence of underage use of illegal substances in New Jersey alone is striking.

As of 2011, in a survey administered by the office of adolescent health, 43% of New Jersey high school students said that they had consumed an alcoholic bev-erage in the 30 days before the survey was administered and 37% of the same stu-dents had used marijuana at least once in their life.

According to the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the number of drug overdose deaths in New Jersey, the majority of which were from prescrip-tion drugs, increased by 51% since 1999 when the rate was approximately 7 deaths per 100,000 people.

Herren warned the au-dience against a common misconception to which many fall victim: the as-sumption that drugs are more prevalent in impov-erished areas as opposed to wealthier communities.

“I would say that kids in the middle class to upper middle class to wealthy, I think they’re doing a wid-er range of drugs. I think they’re experimenting with drugs that inner city kids or poor kids don’t have the

money to buy,” Herren said. “The difference between the two is that when the kid who comes from a financially sta-ble background is in trouble, his parents have the resourc-es to help him or her. Where kids who don’t have that luxury they fall down and no one is there to pick them up. And so I think if you’re gon-na be honest about substance abuse – it’s everywhere and amongst all of us.”

Before each event that Herren holds, he considers the importance of keep-ing the conversation alive among teens. When walking into a school, Herren under-stands that not every student is going to listen to him: it’s impossible. However, he still continues to speak.

“I go into a school and I know everyone is not gonna turn into me. You know, but someone will, and there’s a big price to pay for that,” Herren said. “There’s also something to be said about the kids who never turned into me but never reached their poten-tial and looked back and wished they did it different, and there’ll be a lot of kids that look at it that way.”

For the first time in his life, Herren now watch-es from the sidelines as his teenage son faces the pressures of high school, a game that Herren will nev-er be fully prepared for.

“It’s scary. I mean, it’s something I pray he nev-er has to go through, all my children,” Herren said. “I just want him to be equipped with the right tools to say ‘I’m okay,’ and you know those kids to me are extremely courageous and hopefully my chil-dren can be the same way.”

Although Herren suffered through years of addiction, disappointment, and down-fall, if he were given the chance to rub the genie’s lamp and tamper with his past, Herren remains ada-mant that he would want things to remain the same.

“I wouldn’t change,” Her-ren said. “It’s been such an amazing journey for me to see the amount of people that we’ve been able to help over the last five years. I could never go back and say I wan-na erase it. This has given me my purpose and passion and something that I truly care about that I lost back then.”

“There’s really nothing social about doing drugs that kill people”(continued from page 9)

Should athletes be able to Opt-Out of Physical Education?(Continued from page 14)

If Glen Rock offered this program to high school ath-letes, students would then have to log how much time they participate in their sport each week, making sure that state requirement of 150 minutes of activity per week is maintained.

Erica Jones, an athlete, said that she “would rather take other classes” than Physical Education.

She elaborated on her re-sponse: “Well, there are a lot of great academics that are offered at this school, and there’s not quite enough time to do them all, and so if I had more time, then I would definitely be able to do more. We have a lot of pressure and work in school.”

If a study hall or option period were offered, then, as Jones said, the workload could be somewhat mitigated.

A theoryThe main theory behind this

program pertains to encour-aging student athletes to fo-cus more on their academics while progressing in the sport that they enjoy participating in.

Although this is the main the-ory, another possible theory be-hind this program for the Glen Rock High School is that more students may choose to sign up for sports that are permissible within the parameters of this “Opt-Out” plan, using the time to take part in other academic courses that will allow students to supplement their college credits.

Other pupils could opt to take a study hall peri-od to ensure that they finish their work for other classes.

If this occurs, then students will be more interested in their physical education time, choos-ing which activity they personal-ly want to engage in, making stu-dents happier and increasing the efficacy of their physical activity.

Another issueAn issue that many read-

ers may think about remains: what about the Physical Ed-ucation and Health teachers?

Since six of the seven Phys-ical Education and Health teachers employed by Glen Rock coach or assist in coach-ing, there might be a need for more coaches if this new pro-gram encouraged more stu-dents to participate in sports.

Mitigating the number of students in a gym class could also allow for more targeted fit-ness programs, individualized exercise plans, and more flex-ibility in the class’s activities.

According to Christopher Fox, high school physical ed-ucation teacher and coach, this program is a “good thought because of the academic part of it.” Nevertheless, Fox finds a few flaws with the idea.

“I think a kid just needs to want to play sports after school, because some kids aren’t as competitive as others and they

may not like that competitive atmosphere,” said Fox, ad-dressing whether more students would sign up for athletic teams.

“A lot of kids do like Phys. Ed. So I’m not sure that the ‘Opt-Out’ thing would get them to sign up more for sports,” he said. “I don’t think it’s go-ing to be a good idea because I think Phys. Ed.’s important.”

According to Fox, the Physi-cal Education class is extremely important “to get in shape, and to release some energy through-out the school day and not just after school during a sport.”

Under the Opt-Out pro-gram, students could still elect to take Physical Education even if they were participat-ing in an after-school sport.

For now, though, both sides of the argument may be moot.

John Arlotta, high school principal, said, “Our board policy doesn’t allow for that as of right now. It has a lot more complexities.”

Referring to the newly adapt-ed drop schedule, Arlotta said “that maybe it will alleviate some of those pressures” on student athletes, lessening the crunch some athletes currently feel.

Arlotta also said that, with the new drop schedule, “we are really trying to make an in-creased emphasis on fitness.”

Is It Worth It?If this policy was used,

would many athletes use it?Frank Violante, Glen Rock

High School’s Athletic Direc-tor, is familiar with this program and stated that, in other schools, “very few students did it.”

“They enjoyed being in P.E., and getting involved, be-ing around their friends and all,” he said. “I think the ma-jority would like to stay in it.”

Violante added, “I also think when the good athletes partici-pate in Physical Education, it lends itself to a better class.”

If student athletes took the opportunity with the “Opt-Out” program to drop out of their phys-ical education classes, would gym class become less produc-tive? This is a real possibility.

If this new policy were to be used, then it may seem that ath-letes are receiving special treat-ment by having the option to drop out of a class that is a major requirement for other students.

What do you think? The Opt-Out policy, le-

gal under New Jersey law, is growing in popularity among high schools. Although it has some concerning aspects, the “Opt-Out” program still has many helpful aspects, too.

What are your thoughts about the Opt-Out program? Join the conversation at www.theglenecho.com to weigh in on whether or not you think the Opt-Out policy could be a fit for Glen Rock High School.

20 The Glen Echo SportsSenior takes strides into college lacrosse

Erin JonesStaff Writer

Colby College will soon be adding a talented mem-ber to its girls’ lacrosse Team.

McGara DeWan, a senior at Glen Rock High School, committed to Colby Col-lege during her junior year.

“I committed my junior year and I was really excited and it felt great because I accomplished my goal,” Dewan recalls. The young athlete has always seen her-self playing lacrosse in college.

“I always knew I wanted to play in college,” DeWan says.

DeWan has been play-ing lacrosse since the second grade, but it was not until lat-er on in her lacrosse career that she knew that she had a tre-mendous talent for the sport.

“I probably knew I had a talent

for the sport when I was in middle school,” DeWan says. She also has been the Glen Rock Girl’s La-crosse team captain for two years.

DeWan is not the only per-son excited about her commit-ment. Her teammates on the Glen Rock High School girls’ lacrosse team share in her excitement.

“Colby’s a really good school and they have a really good la-crosse program, so I think it will be good for McGara. It is a small school, so it will be easy for her to stand out and show everyone how good she really is,” says Maddy Doubet (’16), a teammate. “I think she is going to do real-ly well there. I think it is going to be really easy for everyone to recognize the talent that she has because she is really talented.”

DeWan found that one of the biggest obstacles she was faced with when committing to col-

lege was choosing one of the four that she was looking at -- which one was the right choice in both academics and sports?

“Choosing between four schools was so difficult, so it took me a while but I eventually picked one,” DeWan explains.

DeWan not only chose this school for her lacrosse career but also for her academics in-terests as well. Colby College, located in Maine, is a con-sistently high-ranked school.

“I chose this school because I wanted to study environmen-tal science and they have a great program,” she says. “I also real-ly like the New England schools and the coach is real good and they’re ranked #8 in the nation for lacrosse so they’re both re-ally good programs. It has really good academics and athletics, and I’m really excited to go.”

New man on the moundMax Felsenstein

Sports Editor

“Now entering the game, number sixteen, Zach Waller,” said the announcer aloud over Breslin Field in Lyndhurst on April 5, 2014. For current ju-nior Zach Waller, this was his first pitching appearance for the Glen Rock Panthers, and he sure made the most of it.

In an 11-3 game in the sixth inning against the top-seeded Bergen Catholic Crusaders, Coach Joe Sutera called upon Waller to stop the bleeding.

“He worked hard to get to that point, all winter, he was throwing, working to get bet-ter, and I knew when he got the opportunity, he wouldn’t let it pass by,” current junior catcher John Scandale said.

The Panthers went on to lose the game, 11-4, but what they took from that game is that Waller solidified his spot in the pitching rotation, toss-ing 1.1 innings of scoreless baseball, striking out two bat-ters in his short relief outing.

From that point on, Waller knew his role on the team. It was simple: win big games.

Former Head Baseball Coach Joe Sutera said of Zach, “He has a bright fu-ture ahead of himself on the mound. He doesn’t rest on the fact that he is talented, doesn’t take anything for granted.”

His next appearance went just as planned, but the outcome wasn’t what the Panthers expected.

Current freshman at Syr-

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARY LANGEJunior right-hander, Zach Waller during his 6 innings of work against West-wood, in which Glen Rock went on to win, 8-3.acuse University, Matt Neu-mann, started the game against Hawthorne, giving up three runs in the third in-ning, and in came Waller.

Waller held the Hawthorne Bears in check, inheriting two runners of Neumann’s and shut the Bears down for the next two innings. As the game was cut short by rain, the sun was shining bright for Waller’s pitching future.

Waller’s quality out-ings wouldn’t stop there as he started his next game at home against long-time rival, Pompton Lakes.

Unfortunately, the Panthers ran into left-handed pitcher and current St. John’s Uni-versity player, Kevin Magee. Waller held Pompton Lakes to a 2-0 lead into the fifth inning, but Magee matched Waller pitch for pitch and the Pan-thers unfortunately dropped that game as well, 7-1.

“John [Scandale] was call-ing the pitches, I was hitting my spots, but you have to give credit to Magee, he was a bull-dog out there that day, and un-

fortunately the outcome didn’t fall in our favor,” Waller said.

Waller’s misfortunes would end there, winning his next two starts against Westwood and league rival, Rutherford.

“The game against Ruth-erford was a statement game for Zach,” senior Parker Chan said. “He threw a complete game and made his presence felt throughout the league.”

In his final appearance of the season, Waller threw 5.2 innings of shutout base-ball in the first round of the state game, but the Panthers couldn’t get the bats going and lost 3-1 to Mountain Lakes.

As the season came to an end, Waller amassed a 5-2 re-cord and a 2.70 ERA in eight appearances on the mound, eventually leading to a selec-tion as a 2nd team All-League player in the Colonial Division.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be named to such a pres-tigious list and I’m going to keep working to make myself better every day,” Waller said.

“He’s a true competitor with a great work ethic,” Sutera said.

Homecoming 2014John ScialdonePhoto Editor

The Glen Rock Marching Band playing before the game.

Sean McInerney leading the team as they break through the Glen Rock banner.

Sean McInerney leading the team as they break through the Glen Rock banner.

Brady Miller turns on the jets to dart past the Harrison defense.

For more sports news and photo updates throughout the year, go to www.theglenecho.com

Sports The Glen Echo 21Girls’ tennis team places second in the state

Killeen McDonaldStaff Writer

The Glen Rock High School tennis team defeated Leonia in the state sectional fi-nal on Oct. 14, leading them to the state group championship.

Before the game, varsity tennis coach Bonnie Zim-mermann said, “We are 15-1 right now, which I’d say is very good. It’s important to stay focused and, especial-ly playing strong teams like Leonia, every point counts. We have to reduce our un-forced errors -- if you’re con-sistent and don’t make mis-

takes, a win is much easier.”This strategy proved cor-

rect. The team’s success re-flects the work the team put in.

“The team has worked re-ally hard this year and it is exemplified in our stats,” said varsity player Kaitlin Stan-sel (‘16), “This year, we’ve created and designed a line-up that is really thorough. It’s taken a lot of hard work from every member of the team, but it’s 100% worth it.”

On Friday, Oct. 17, the team traveled to Mer-cer County Park. The bus ride was filled with ex-citement and anticipation.

The team defeated Shore Re-

in counties and now are onto state sectionals,” said senior co-captain Karolina Callahan.

The final match came down to Glen Rock versus New Providence. Despite Glen Rock’s best efforts, New Providence prevailed.

The tennis team came out with an impressive 18-2 re-cord and the North Jersey Section-1 Group-1 State Championship title. They were second in the state.

“I am very proud of how I ended my last season. The entire team really pulled it out and did incredible. This is a season I will nev-er forget,” Callahan said.

gional to lead them to the finals.“This has been a really

strong season. Each girl has come on the team with the goal

of winning and improving each day and it has definitely showed. We are undefeated in our league and we were third

PHOTO COURTESY OF KILLEEN MCDONALDMembers of the Varsity Tennis Team warm up before they start practicing for states. (Left to right: Kaitlin Stansel, Karolina Callahan, Janet Downing, Michela Mountain, Meghan O’Neill, Celia Hans

Athlete bumps her way into LafayetteChristina Howie

Staff Writer

Glen Rock High School senior Meghan Donohue dug her way through the competition, landing herself a spot on the Lafayette College volleyball roster next fall.

Donohue has been play-ing volleyball for almost five years. She currently ranks in the top ten hitters in New Jersey.

Yet although Donohue is an important asset to the Glen Rock varsity volleyball team, she al-ways imagined herself playing lacrosse throughout high school and pursuing that sport in college.

“I had played lacrosse since sixth grade and played club [for two years],” Donohue said. “I made varsity freshman year and saw some of the great schools these girls were going to, but I knew I liked volleyball more.”

After graduating from Glen Rock Middle School, Meghan attended the Immaculate Heart Academy (IHA) in Washington Township, New Jersey for her freshman year of high school, but she transferred back to Glen Rock

High School for her sophomore year. Although she wasn’t there for long, IHA volleyball signifi-cantly impacted Donohue’s career.

“At IHA they introduced me to competitiveness and com-mitment,” Donohue explained. “The way the seniors and ju-niors played made me want to be like them in three years, but I knew it didn’t come easy.”

After hard work and dedica-tion, Donohue committed to La-fayette College in Easton, PA. She will be playing as a defensive

specialist and hopes to become a libero eventually. These positions only play in the back row to pass and dig balls and lead the defense. Lafayette will play in the Division I Patriot League against schools such as Lehigh University, Buck-nell University, Colgate Universi-ty and College of the Holy Cross.

Matthew Kingsley, the varsi-ty volleyball coach at Glen Rock High School, mentored Donohue as she made her decision. “We had talked about some schools that she was interested in and I

contacted those head coaches,” he said. “We then got her up to those schools so the coach-es were able to see her play.”

Coaches then followed Donohue throughout her club season and made their offers.

Donohue has played club vol-leyball for four years. Club vol-leyball is a select team in which players try out for and play during the off-season. Each year, she increased the level of the team, culminating in this past season when she played for a national team, the Atlantic Valley Volley-ball Club. “I would not have even talked to many college coach-es because that’s all they do, scout at tournaments,” she said.

Donohue is currently captain of the Glen Rock volleyball team along with Lee Maitner (’15) and Rebecca Nathanson (’15).

“It has been awesome be-ing captains with my two best friends,” Maitner said. “We al-ways thought we would nev-er be about to play again when [Meghan] went to IHA, but Meghan coming back is the best thing that has ever happened to

the program and to our team.”Coach Kingsley classifies a

good captain as someone who is looked up to by other players. “When things get tough, they want the ball,” he explained. “Off the court, they lead by ex-ample and bring the team to-gether by doing team activities.”

Paige Lemieux, a sophomore on the varsity team, feels Dono-hue exemplifies those qualities as captain. “She encourages all the players on the team and gives the best feedback she can,” Lemieux said. “She is a great role model and always has the best things to say.”

Although Donohue has reached her goal of playing at the collegiate level, she still fo-cused on ending her last high school season on a winning note.

“We have the opportunity this year to win it all and everyone on our team recognizes our goal and we believe it is a possible to get the job done,” Donohue said.

Despite its best efforts, the volleyball team fell to Bogota 2-0 on Nov. 13 to end the sea-son. Meghan Donohue had a team leading 9 kills in the match.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MEGHAN DONOHUEDonohue ended with a total of 815 kills in her high school volleyball career.

Boys’ varsity soccer looks to bright futureCharles Campbell

Staff Writer

The boys’ varsity soccer team has a bright future with a freshman attacker tying senior co-captain Bren-dan Geen as the team’s lead scor-er, tallying five goals this season.

Justin Kochman is the first freshman to play varsi-ty for Glen Rock since 2008.

Being the most recent freshman to play on varsity meant a lot to Koch-man, and senior co-captain Garret Rosen was impressed by his numbers.

“He really stepped up this year,” Rosen said. “We need-ed him out there and he provid-ed clutch goals in big situations.”

All five of Kochman’s goals came in huge spots for the Panthers this season, but his favorite moment was his first goal. With less than five minutes left, down 1-0 at East-ern Christian, Kochman ripped a left-footed volley into the back of the net to send the game into overtime.

The buzz about Kochman’s play this season spread through the

school. Senior Zatch Radin, a sup-porter of Kochman, praised his work.

“He was the spark on the team this year,” Radin said. “He’s a good fit for the squad.”

This proved true especially true in the Panther’s Bergen Cup cam-paign, during which Kochman fur-ther improved his game. In the first round of the tournament, Kochman scored two left- footed goals both assisted by junior teammate Ea-mon Morley. These goals led Glen Rock to its first ever Bergen Cup victory, 3-0, over Dwight Morrow.

Kochman enjoyed the sea-son despite a league record that didn’t match his hopes.

“I loved hanging out with every-body on the team,” Kochman said. He easily fit-in with the team, comprised of mostly upperclassmen, off the field and had a lot of on-field chemistry with his teammates, specifically Ea-mon Morley and Matt Zakowski, both of whom assisted some of his goals.

“Justin is a great teammate because he works really hard and even though he’s the youngest one out there, he’s not afraid of anyone in the league,”

senior co-captain Matt Zakowski said.The varsity coach Paul Cusack

made the decision to pull Kochman up to the varsity team early in the season.

“He was willing to learn from the upper classmen and contributed to the success we had this year,” he said.

This sentiment was echoed by Kochman’s other teammates.

“Overall good character, great spir-it, positive attitude, great looks, he’s got it all!” said Rosen, the only four year varsity player in the program.

Rosen, who played in Maine his freshman year, was one of three cap-tains this year for Glen Rock, and he

believes that, with time, Kochman will develop into a leader for the Panthers. Rosen joked that Koch-man will be fine as long as he “grows a couple of inches” by next year.

“It was a great year; we had a great run in the Bergen Cup,” Koch-man said and then added, “Next year we’re winning counties.” Cusack told The Glen Echo that the “boys played hard in every game, competed at a high lev-el, and developed as a team.”

“The run the team had to the Bergen Cup semi-finals exempli-fies the effort the boys put in to the

season and the quality of the soccer we were able to play,” Cusack said.

The Panthers are not the only soc-cer team Kochman plays for, though. He is also a member of the New Jersey Stallions, a club team. He plays main-ly as an attacker and center midfielder.

Last year, his team won the coveted State Cup, a statewide tournament in which the top club teams in New Jersey compete.

Kochman’s attention has shifted gears as the season has changed, and he is now focusing on the basketball sea-son. He hopes to make the varsity team.

Despite his success on the soccer field, he says that bas-ketball is his “main sport.”

PHOTO COURTESTY OF PATRICK CARLINKochman (17) prepares to take a free kick in Glen Rock’s Bergen Cup Semifinal match

at Old Tappan.

“Kid hasn’t stopped smil-ing since he first walked across the field from the JV to varsity practice.” --Garrett Rosen

22 The Glen Echo SportsWinter Track looks to place among top three

Alex HayStaff Writer

After a successful season last year, Glen Rock Winter Track is looking to do even better.

After finishing fifth in the league last year, head coach Joseph McCarten said, “We could have defi-nitely done a little better.”

One of the most significant and noticeable outcomes of last year was Dan Dooner’s entry into the New Jersey State Meet of Champions, in which he competed in the 55 meter hurdles. Although he didn’t win the event, Coach Mc-Carten said, “He ran against the best runners all over the state and ran very well.”

Even though Glen Rock will once again face tough teams, such as Hasbrouck Heights, they believe that the team will improve its performance from last year.

With the coaches look-ing forward to the upcoming

season and plenty of athletes returning from the previous year (including juniors Owen Davitt and Juila Kelly, and seniors Kelsey Bergamini and Ryan Vandervalk), the team believes that they will have a very successful season.

The league meet, an event held on Feb. 21 this year, is a competition held among the best athletes from each team. Although in previous year’s the league meet has been earli-er, it is now later in the season.

This date change will only improve Glen Rock’s chanc-es, as it allows the coaches to develop their athletes more.

The time change also allows runners to participate in more competitions. When it was held earlier in the year, runners would have to miss the event because of SAT and ACT tests.

Coach McCarten said that placing among the top three in the league “is defi-nitely a feasible goal.”

Girls’ basketball team strives for perfectionAnne Vandervalk

Staff WriterThe girls’ basketball

team is looking to make a deeper run this year.

The team is coached by Da-vid Mosconi, who has been the coach for over a decade. He is assisted by JV and offen-sive coach, Steven Grenz, as well as the freshman and de-fensive coach, Dan Brodhead.

Sara Wolman, an alumna from Glen Rock, also volun-teers her time to help the girls train hard. She has played bas-ketball almost all of her life, including playing for Glen Rock from 2002-2006 and during college. Wolman dedi-cates her time helping younger girls who play travel basket-ball. She knows how to work and train the girls because she was once in this position as well, and she still contin-ues to play in her free time.

“I love coaching because I loved playing basketball as a kid, in high school, and in college and I want to pass some of my passion on to

not be able to play this winter.Maitner, the starting

point guard for the second year in a row, is nonethe-less excited for this season.

“Basketball is definitely my favorite,” Maitner said. “I’ve played with all my friends for so long, so they make it that much more fun. It’s the best!”

The team seems to be on the younger side this year with only three seniors, four juniors, and the rest underclassmen.

Sophomores Kelly Lohr and Lizzie Alba played var-sity last year as freshmen,

ing them bagels or cronuts (a combination of croissants and donuts) after an early morning weekend practice.

Basketball is a very time consuming sport and most of the girls train year-round. Al-most all of the girls have been playing since they were very young, and have maintained their passion towards the game.

Julia Gaffey, a junior, said that she plays basket-ball because she loves “be-ing on a team with such a good group of girls.”

Last year, the girl’s sea-son ended after a heartbreak-ing loss against Pascack Hills in the second round of the state tournament. They had beaten North Warren in the previous round, a tight game that ended in a fi-nal winning score of 35-31.

The girls hope to build off of that momentum this year.

“I am very excited for this season, and I think we have po-tential to do great,” Alba said. “It is going to be a lot of fun.”

and they are met with height-ened expectations this year.

“It was intimidating at first, knowing that I was going to be playing with all upper-classmen for the first time, but as the games went on I slowly eased into playing with and against older people and became slightly more confi-dent every game,” Lohr said. “Once we got used to playing

the girls in Glen Rock. There is so much one can learn and achieve from playing sports, especially basketball, and I love having the opportunity to pass that along in a coach-ing position,” Wolman said.

The senior captains, Lee Maitner, Lauren Jones, and McGara DeWan, are predicted to lead their team this season. However, DeWan is recovering from an ACL injury and may

with each other as a team, be-ing on varsity felt a lot more comforting and less stress-ful as the season went on.”

Coach Mosconi makes the girls work hard and stay in shape by having practice six or seven times a week. How-ever, he also tries to reward the girls for all their hard work by occasionally bring-

PHOTO COURTESY OF LEE MAITNERSenior Lee Maitner dives on the floor in the attempt to keep the possession of the ball. This will be her fourth year on varsity.

PHOTO COURTESY OF KELLY LOHR Constantly driving to the hoop, Kelly Lohr was one of the lead scorers last year.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JULIA GAFFEYThe girls talk strategy and encourage each other before every game.

Junior girl takes the iceErin Jones

Staff Writer

With the stress of junior year, homework, SATs, and prepara-tion for college, it’s hard to be-lieve that anything else could fit into her schedule. For junior student Julia Gaffey, however, she not only manages to fit one sport into her schedule but three.

Most student-athletes know what kind of stress and pressure they can be exposed to. For Ju-lia Gaffey, the stress is way too real. What sets her apart from other student-athletes is that she plays sports during every season.

But that’s not the only difference.

Gaffey plays ice hockey, which is primarily known in Glen Rock as a boy’s sport.

“When I was in kindergar-ten I quit ballet and followed in my brother and dad’s lead and started playing hockey with the boys,” Gaffey said.

The then little girl threw away her ballet slippers, tore off her tutu, and grabbed ice skates and a stick.

Gaffey is a member of the Montclair Blues U16 girls team. The team’s home games and practices are at Floyd Hall Are-na in Montclair. She is current-ly a captain of the team along with two other co-captains.

“I play center which in-volves a lot of strategy and an-ticipation about where the puck is going to be,” Gaffey said.

The season is seven months. From tournaments to prac-tices and games, Gaffey said that the season seems to be never ending. The team com-petes from September to March.

Yet hockey is not the only sport that Gaffey shines in.

“I started playing basket-

ball and lacrosse when I was in second grade and got in-volved in rec teams and clin-ics,” she told The Glen Echo.

Gaffey does have a fa-vorite when it comes to the three sports she plays.

“My favorite sport is hockey because I’ve been playing it for a long time, and I’m really com-fortable with the sport,” she said. “I enjoy playing it the most.”

Having to play one sport in a season is difficult enough, but Gaffey plays two differ-ent sports in one season. She is a member of the Glen Rock girls’ basketball team and an ice hockey team at a local rink.

“Playing basketball and hock-ey during the same season is hard,” Gaffey said. “Considering I’m a junior now, and I have a lot more work, I have to manage my time better. But I think that’s the key -- knowing how to manage your time and doing your homework in and out of school and bring-ing work with you to practice.”

With this much going on some questions may pop up “How do you have time for any-thing?,” one may ask. Some-how Gaffey makes it work.

“I like to be busy. That’s why I don’t mind running from sport to sport. I do my school work in and out of school and I make friends on the team I play for as well as the friends I make in school,” Gaffey said.

Jordan McMahon, a ju-nior and a friend of Gaffey thinks that being able to play three sports is amazing.

“I think that it is really great to have girls who are playing more sports because some-times guys stereotype them-selves to be sporty, but I think it’s good that girls can also be sporty,” McMahon said.

Freshmen basketball season cancelledAnne Vandervalk

Staff Writer

For the first year in almost ten years, our high school is lacking a girls’ freshmen basketball team.

Yet it’s not because too few freshmen have gone out for the team -- no, the future looks bright.

Instead, the lack of a freshmen team is due to the absence of upper-classmen. Eight freshmen athletes tried out, which is generally enough girls for a team, but, since there are not enough sophomores, juniors or seniors, the freshmen will have to play for the JV and varsity teams.

Many people are upset over this, although nobody seems as upset as Coach Dan Brodhead.

Brodhead, a guidance counsel-or and football coach, has been the coach of the freshmen team for the past several years. He also coached

the JV team for 7-8 years prior. This will be his first year in a while away from the girls’ basketball program.

In addition to coaching the freshmen team, Brodhead was also the defensive coach. In the past, the Glen Rock girls’ basket-ball team has been known by other schools for having a phenomenal defense. Without Brodhead on the coaching staff this year, the whole program is at a disadvantage.

“I miss coaching basketball. Been with Mosc (the head coach) a long time and all four of us coach-es get along so well,” Brodhead said. “It was always so much fun.”

Although he will not have a formal position, Brodhead will still try to be active with the team and continue to scout the girls’ future competitors.

Some sophomores who were on the freshman team last year thoroughly enjoyed their bas-

ketball experience with Brod-head. They bonded as a team and learned how to play the sport.

Katie Byrd, Sophie Bella, and Hannah VanderWall were all mem-bers of the freshman basketball team.

“It was fun to be able to play basketball without any pressure to be really good,” Byrd said. “I got to meet a bunch of new people.”

Most of the girls on the team were new to playing the sport, but they ended up having a lot of fun and got progressively bet-ter over the course of the season.

“I loved how since we were a smaller team we got really close and were able to help each other and play together well,” Bella said.

The program hopes to bring back the freshmen team next year.

“It is an experience I will cherish in my heart forever,” VanderWall said. “Peace, love, Mr. Brodhead.”

Sports The Glen Echo 23College Football playoffs set

Max FelsensteinSports Editor

eran Rooney (’16) said. “They had the head-to-head win against TCU earlier in the sea-son and Ohio State lost terribly to a mere average Virginia Tech squad, and they play in the Big 10, a terrible conference.”

“Ohio State got in for their name, not their ré-sumé,” Rooney concluded.

As ESPN analyst, Rece Davis, said at the begin-ning of the selection show, “It’s not a math test, there isn’t one correct answer.”

“Ohio State dominated Wis-consin in the final game which was extremely impressive, which I think lead the commit-tee to forget about their second week loss to Virginia Tech because this is now a stron-ger team since that week,” Nick Kaukonen (’16) said.

Junior Jack Jensen agreed with Kaukonen, saying, “It’s reasonable to assume that Ohio State would struggle under 3rd string quarterback, Cardale Jones, that shows you how strong the rest of the team is even after losing Brax-ton Miller and J.T. Barrett.”

Despite differing opinions, the Committee has made its decision and will see 1 Ala-bama take on 4 Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl and 2 Oregon battle 3 Florida State in the Rose Bowl, both games tak-ing place on New Year’s Day.

The National Champi-onship will played on Janu-ary 12, 2015 at AT&T Sta-dium in Arlington, Texas.

and 4 Florida State barely pulled out a 37-35 thrilling win against 11 Georgia Tech.

After Alabama, Oregon, and Florida State won their respective conferences with the previously mentioned wins, the Committee had a difficult decision on its hands, which team it should give the nod to and, thus, the 4th seed.

Earlier in the day, 3 TCU beat unranked Iowa State, 55-3, seemingly clinching for them a definite college playoff berth… not so fast.

Later in the evening, into the home stretch of the reg-ular season, 5 Ohio State demolished 13 Wisconsin, 59-0, and 6 Baylor outlast-ed 9 Kansas State, 38-27.

When all was said and done, TCU was out and Ohio State was in.

“Last week, TCU was ranked 3rd and won by 52 points, there is absolutely no way that they should drop to 6th. That’s where they messed up,” Ryan Stolz (’16), an avid college football fan, said. “Although they ultimate-ly made the right decision, they messed up, based on last week’s rankings. You just can’t leave TCU out after pre-viously ranking them ahead of Florida State and Ohio State.”

While some think TCU should’ve been “in,” oth-ers think that Baylor should have made the final cut.

“I think that Baylor should have been in, no doubt.” Ki-

In determining which teams will play in College Foot-ball’s inaugural playoff, the selection committee ultimate-ly made the right call, putting Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, and Ohio State into the “semifinal,” giving each team an opportunity to play for the CFB National Champion-ship, but they came to their decision in an unusual way.

Deciding the top four teams was no easy task and the se-lection committee needs to take note of several factors, such as strength of sched-ule, win-loss records, quality of their wins, head-to-head results, and results against common opponents, as well as passing the “eye test.”

At approximately 12:45 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014, the College Football Playoff Committee announced its de-cision to put those four teams into the playoff, leaving Baylor and TCU on the outside look-ing in and those schools won-dering how this could happen.

Was this the correct decision?Going into the final week of

the regular season, the Commit-tee had ranked Alabama, Ore-gon, TCU, and Florida State as the top four teams in the nation.

In an action packed fi-nal week, 1 Alabama beat 16 Missouri 42-13, 2 Ore-gon beat 7 Arizona 51-13,

Winter runners get on track

Alex HayStaff Writer

When Ryan Vandervalk started running at eight years old, even competing in a 5K, he knew it was some-thing that he loved to do.

Three years ago, Vander-valk started running on the high school team as a freshman. He ran winter and spring track as well as cross-country and even picked up golf in his free time.

Now a senior, after serv-ing as a captain in his Ju-nior year, Vandervalk has high hopes for the upcom-ing Winter Track season.

“We want at least five top three performances in the county, for both girls and guys combined,” said teacher Joseph McCarten, the winter track head coach.

Many experienced mem-bers graduated from the team this past year: including Dan Dooner, a state meet champi-on in the 55m hurdles, Carina Pelipe a short sprinter, Susan-na Tracy, a distance runner, and Nile Slater, who was the county champ in the long jump.

“I’m looking forward to our league championship. We placed sixth last year and I re-ally think we will be able to do better this year,” Vander-valk said. “We have a lot of new talent which will defi-nitely make big contributions to our team.” Some of the senior athletes include Jere-

my Packer(sprinter), Parker Chan(sprinter/hurdler), Kelsey Bergamini(sprinter/hurdler), and Molly Smith(distance), all of whom have been on the team since their freshman year.

Although many experienced runners have graduated, there is still a lot of potential for the win-ter track team with its upcom-ing talent ,and with this infu-sion of young athletes, the team expects to accomplish its team goal of reaching at least third in the league championship.

For Vandervalk, he person-ally hopes to see the 4x400m relay team qualify for the state group championship.

That may not be such an easy task. Glen Rock has al-ways had a very strong 4x400m relay team, but the entire relay team graduated this past spring.

“We are trying to rebuild the relay team this winter,” Vandervalk said. “Making it to the state group championship would be a great accomplish-ment considering the relay will consist entirely of runners who were not on the team last year.”

Although Vandervalk does not run on the relay team, he is making a big impact on the dis-tance part of the team. He runs the 800m(half mile), 1600m(mile) and 3200m(two mile) events.

His main event is the 3200m with a personal best time of 10:18. With this time, he placed as first team all-league last year for the 3200m. This award is only given to the fastest runner in the league for each event.

Expecations high for HigginsJulia RooneyStaff Writer

“She’s a natural born leader showing leadership qualities, dedication and responsibility in the classroom, and I can see how that’s easily translated on the court,” Zach Mulcahy, a junior, said of classmate Fiona Higgins.

For Fiona Higgins, this upcoming bas-ketball season will be her fifth varsity letter, previously re-ceiving two for lacrosse, and two more for basketball.

For soph-omore bas-ketball play-er Samantha Dawli, an older role mod-el is just what she needed to feel comfortable on the high school basketball team.

“She’s a real mentor and a true leader,” Dawli said.

“Being an underclassman, I thought high school bas-ketball was going to be a difficult transition, but Fio-na really helped me learn and become a better player.”

Higgins attributes her knowledge of mentoring and

leadership to Morgan Foley, center from the Senior Class of 2014, the team that won the North Jersey Inter-scholastic title.

“This year I have very big shoes to fill be-cause Morgan was an amaz-ing player. I have to step up my game,” Higgins said.

Since she has been

playing since third grade, she is already very familiar with the game. Her team-mates are not shy about ac-knowledging her talent.

“She is awesome at offen-sive and defensive rebounds. She uses her height to her advantage, which helps a lot down by the basket,” said Hig-gins’ teammate, Julia Gaffey (‘16). “She gives great con-structive criticism and never fails to make people smile.”

As the center, there is a lot of pressure put on Hig-gins to get rebounds, and she really steps up to the plate.

“Fiona is very optimistic and always encourages ev-eryone. She is very respon-sible but also doesn’t take it too seriously,” Dawli said.

Part of that responsibil-ity plays a role when Hig-gins owns her mistakes and focuses on fixing them to become a better player.

“It’s challenging be-cause I’m put in a hard po-sition where girls are a lot bigger than me,” Higgins said. “I have to be tough.”

She will need that tough-ness when the team plays Rutherford and Pasca-ck Valley, two games that she says she’s excited for.

“This year I have very big shoes to fill because Morgan was an amazing player. I have to step up my game,” Higgins said.

Bowling strikesRyan Stolz

Sports Editor

When many people hear the word “bowling,” they imme-diately think of birthday par-ties or a night out with friends. But for 12 high school stu-dents this winter, bowling will be their sport -- yes, sport.

“It’s on ESPN, which is the sports network,” Max Cahn said, a senior and the Varsity bowl-ing captain. “You can check it out. It’s pretty serious stuff.”

As captain, Cahn will have some big shoes to fill. The team lost some prime talent to gradu-ation, and it will have to replace the likes of Dan Dooner and Jake Rollins, who earned the Star-Led-ger bowler of the year award for his performance last season and bowled a perfect game in the finals.

Cahn sees a few of the ju-niors and sophomores stepping up and having a bigger role this year to help him in his en-deavor to lead the team to suc-cess. He named juniors Itay Kazaz and Ryan Haggerty and sophomore Jonathon Lulkin.

Cahn elaborated, noting,“Ka-zaz is doing pretty well, Haggerty has quite the arm, and Lulkin

just needs to get some more con-trol but he’s doing pretty good.”

After a successful season last year, Cahn also noted how ex-pectations may need to be dialed down for this years’ squad. “[We are] definitely going to have a tough time after losing a lot of talent from last year,” he said.

The bowling team became tight-knit last year, and Cahn hopes that the bond can make up for some of the lost talent.

“By the end, everyone was pretty close,” Cahn said.

Yet there will be a new fac-tor added into the mix this year: for the first time since 2011, the team will feature a female bowl-er: junior girl, Greta Kovacs.

“It will add a new factor and add more diversity,” Cahn said.

On Monday, Dec, 15, 2014, Glen Rock defeated Saint Mary’s and were aided by the strong per-formance from Jonathan Kane.

“Kane had a great game and he just knocked down the pins,” Jack Jensen, a junior bowler, said. “It’s important to get marks because it improves your score and the whole team really excelled in that field.”

Glen Rock’s next match is Monday, Jan. 5, 2015, against Manchester Regional.

24 The Glen Echo SportsFootball season ends with heartbreak, future looks bright

Jeff BuckwalterStaff Writer

The Glen Rock Panthers Football team had a breakout season this past year. With a record of seven wins and two losses in the regular season, the Panthers have something to be proud of and use as mo-mentum for years to come.

After a successful 7-2 re-cord, the Glen Rock football team’s coaches and play-ers look back on their play-off loss, which Glen Rock lost 40-35 to Lenape Valley, and ahead to next season.

For special teams coach William Crispino, much of that success is thanks to hard work.

“Last year we got into the playoffs and we got knocked out in the first round by Waldwick and it was a pretty tough loss,” he said. “I think the kids used that as motiva-tion in the offseason. Defi-nitely the weight room was much more successful this year in the offseason, getting more guys out, taking pride in the summer workouts.”

Yet despite playing into the cool days of Novem-ber, Crispino attributes much of the team’s a c c o m p l i s h -ments to its col-lective efforts before the first game was even played.

“It all started with the pre-season workouts, and it kind of lead to great things happening for us this year. Last year we were a younger team. This year we have all those guys who were sophomores last year who were playing varsity football, are now ju-niors and the senior class this year with great leadership. It starts with great leader-ship also with our captains, Brady Miller, Chris Amos, and Alex Evans was defi-nitely good role models for t h e t e a m , ”

Crispi-no said.

This year, the Panther coaching staff d e -cided to let athletes s e t their own goals, motivating them even more to succeed.

“One of the things that we do special teams wise, and I think as a staff, is we set goals for the kids. One of the things

I did this year in special teams was the kids picked out the goals they wanted to achieve so it holds them more account-able,” Crispino said. “They know what they are trying to reach, and as far as getting a successful program together it starts with the bottom, like getting the junior football pro-gram involved and then get-ting the freshman involved so that it leads all the way through and to establish some lega-cy and pride and tradition.”

Head coach Jim Kurz has always wanted a lot out of his players, expecting them to be ready to practice and perform at any time.

“We ask a lot of them,” Kurz said. “We bring them in ear-ly during the school year. We bring them in early in the morning during the summer h o u r s . W e ask a lot of

them. We take away

a lot of their time, but they

are dedicated to it and it’s really all the

dedication of them, mak-ing the efforts that they do.”

Coach Joseph McCarten, discussing the team’s suc-cess and leadership, said that they relied on “strong upper classmen l e a d e r s h i p . ”

“We’ve had some d o w n

years the past

c o u p l e years,” he explained.

“They’ve had that taste and

feel of what it’s like to lose, to have

their season pull up short, and this year they definite-

ly used that as motivation.”This year’s team,

though, had something spe-cial. McCarten said he knew this “from the start.”

Crispino shared similar sentiments.

“I realized in the summer how special this group was going to be by the hard work that they put in the weight

room. We had workouts in the mornings and afternoons and a lot of the guys were taking every opportunity to get in there and do a good thing,” Crispino said. “The thing that I noticed quickly about this team was how the camarade-rie was really good. I think the lineman, you see them walk-ing the halls, you see one line-man, you know the other four or five are r i g h t b e -hind

him. They all hang out together and they all really have each oth-er’s backs. Defi-nitely a lot of team chemistry this year. They joke around with each other but you know that they will do anything for each oth-er, especially on the field.”

Junior starting offensive tackle Jeremy Lipsky (’16) felt that the team’s chemistry played a big role in its 7-2 record. “Honestly just cama-raderie,” Lipsky said. “A lot of us hung out after games, before games, after practice sometimes, we just really got very close with everyone and

that’s a big part of football.”Lipsky has been play-

ing football since his fresh-man year at Glen Rock High School, and he has seen the team progress over time.

“It was a little bit slow my first year, had nothing to do with the kids, it just things didn’t seem to go our way. We got a little bit better my sophomore year because we learned from the year before and then this year everything really started to click and we really just came togeth-er as a team,” Lipsky said.

The Panthers were filled with talented juniors and

underclassmen, provid-ing depth to the roster.

“Definitely the ju-nior class is a very promising class, they’re deep and

they’re big. When we

warm up and we

see our line-

m a n warming

up and we realize that we have a lot of

juniors and how big they are now, it gets us excit-

ed about how big they’re going to be next year and

how they are going to be the new leaders,” Crispino said.

When asked about the ju-nior class and which juniors stepped up, Crispino said, “ O u r

o f f e n -sive line with Jer-

emy Lipsky, Timmy Fink in the junior class. Matt Lange, James Antolino, and Mike O’Hagan on the defensive line. Definitely the junior class has been stepping it up.”

Starting defensive end Mike O’Hagan (’16) has been playing football since first grade. He is looking forward to his senior year on the Glen Rock football team.

“Our offensive line was solid,” O’Hagan said. “We have Jeremy and Fink return-

ing and I don’t think either of them let up a sack this whole year. We have our best line-man Matt Lange returning and then we have Amos who left which is a big blow for us be-cause he was a good leader.”

Another returner is the start-ing running back, Ryan Dooner.

“He’s a sophomore run-ning back,” Crispino said regarding Dooner. “He gets all the carries that we have.”

Yet Crispino also said that if it wasn’t for the work of dedicated and talented se-niors, the future would not look as bright as it does today.

“Chris, Brady, and Alex provided that foundation for those guys and now they know what a true leader should look like. So I think they laid the groundwork and foundation for next year,” Crispino said. “As far as next year, having size and having Ryan Dooner back, we have this freshman class now that is a very big class, they’re going to pro-vide some support to the ju-nior class, so it’s going to be a very good year next year.”

“Alex Evans stepped in as one of our captains, was a very quiet type of kid and became a more vocal leader. Obviously a great kicker for us all year. Sean McInerney, who actually wasn’t even a captain, but probably was the heart and soul of the beat of the team,” McCarten said.

Looking ahead to next year’s season, we can ex-pect good things to come from the football team.

McCarten said, “We are l o o k - ing for a lot f r o m J a m e s

A n t o l i -no, Mike O’Hagan, Matt Lange, and Tommy Pulzello.”

“I think that our overall goal is to get back to where we once were in the late 90’s, early 2000’s winning consecutive state champi-onships, and I think we are very close to that. We are almost there, but it doesn’t just come by showing up. It comes with all the hard work involved,” McCarten said.PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN SCIALDONE

Quarterback Brady Miller runs with the football during the Homecoming Game against

Harrison. Glen Rock won 42-14.