Boy’s Basketball: CHS vs. Clay

                                                              

     The Minutemen basketball team was defeated 78–65 Tuesday night by South Bend clay.  Their current record is now 2-8.

           

     Until the last few minutes, CHS had been in the lead most of the game and were looking at a win.  The Clay Colonials took over the last few minutes, though, and managed to overcome Concord’s lead.  Although they lost, some people consider it to be their best game thus far.

 

     “I think we played the best game yet this season,” Ryan Culp (coach) said.  “We played hard, played together, made shots, and were in a position to win.  Unfortunately, there were a lot of turnovers which took us out of the win.  I was pleased with our performance.  The highlight is looking at our first game then our game last night.  You can see the growth and development.”

A glimpse behind the scenes

“Folks, unless someone saved you a seat, the main floor’s pretty full. You might want to just go upstairs,” Scott Preheim (PAC technician) tells latecomers as they file into the BPAC lobby for West Side Elementary’s annual Christmas show.

Leaving the PAC tech students in the Lobby to continue passing out programs, Preheim enters the tech room to turn up Christmas music for the audience to listen to while they wait.

As Preheim’s 52nd Elementary show, he knows exactly how to work the hundreds of knobs on switchboards of various sizes to make a performance run smoothly.

“It’s the same for every performance,” Preheim said. “The tech crew comes in really early to make sure the lights and the sound system are working and the stage is set. We hurry to wait. I sit in the same place every show, so I’m close to the soundboard. With the soundboard, more things can go wrong. The lights are all pre-programmed, so it’s just a matter of pushing ‘go’ every time. If something goes wrong with the sound, though, things can really get out of hand.”

After making the general announcements to the audience, such as turning off cell phones and setting a good exaple to the children by practicing respectful behavior, Preheim directs a tech student, Chris Miller (9), with the soundboard. Except for a near-mishap with a piñata almost knocking a microphone off the stage, the rest of the performance goes smoothly.

When the audience has left the BPAC, Preheim directs the student tech crew in “striking”, or taking down the stage props.

“The tech crew usually does almost all of the work for the stage.” Preheim said.

 ”‘Strinking’ means tearing it down, ’set it’ means putting props up, and ’spiking’ means putting the tape marks down on the stage floor.”

Tech students are volunteers who join a club during the activity fair and stay after school some days to work in the BPAC.

“Word of mouth is how most of the kids hear about it. A friend saying ‘Hey, this is cool, you should try it!’ is a lot more effective than an adult saying ‘You should join this.’”

A graduate of Concord, Preheim was a tech student himself who worked in the BPAC during high school.

“I enjoyed [being a tech student], but I never thought of it as a career,” Preheim said. “During college, I took tech. ed. classes and theatre was always just a hobby. I ended up teaching tech. ed., then there was a job opening as a BPAC technician. I had taken almost no theatre classes, but I had practical training and spent a lot of time doing it. A lot of things from tech. ed. class helped.”

As the BPAC technician, Preheim provides all the support necessary to do BPAC lighting, sound, and set / stage construction.

“I oversee and provide work necessary while involving students,” Preheim said. “If I’m not able to do something, I contract people and do maintenance and repairs. I also do the equipment ordering and planning for set construction. If we need something that we don’t already have, I can’t just call in and order it. I have to fill out paperwork to be approved first, then I can oreder it.”

Having worked in CHS’s PAC for so long, Preheim knows how important his job is in order for all performances in the BPAC to go smoothly.

“What most people don’t realize is that this is not normal for a high school facility. Other than Penn, we are the only school in the area that has not only this kind of facility in the first place, but also a full-time position like mine. Most schools have a part-time job or the choir or band director does this, but I have a full-time job and no classes, so I have time to really work with this facility. At schools where the band or choir director does lighting and sound, they don’t know much about it. Sometimes I go to different schools when they need help or need something fixed. Usually, it’s a simple problem that I can fix pretty easily, but it could’ve been avoided if they had known much about it.”

“My first favourite thing is working with students,” Preheim said. “I also really like working with the lighting equipment. there are so many opportunities; We’re fortunate to have fixtures like that.”

Letters to Santa

Ms. Livrone’s creative writing class is currently helping Santa make his list and check it twice.  Mrs. Hart’s 2nd grade reading class wrote letters to Santa, and the Creative writing class is answering them.

 

Mr. Kirkpatrick’s English classes used to be the ones who wrote back to the students.  Several years ago, though, Kirkpatrick became ill and died of cancer.

 

Hart and Livrone had previously known each other, so she asked Livrone if she had a class that could answer the letters. 

 

“The creative writing class is second trimester, so it works out perfectly,” Livrone said. 

 

All of the 2nd grade students have Hart for reading, but they all have different home classes. 

 

“We write back to them,” Nikki Allison (10) said.  “We don’t promise them everything they ask for, we just contribute to the lies society makes about Santa Clause.”

Gun violence

The second amendment protects the right for citizens to “keep and bear arms”, but some say the accessibility of guns contributes to most of the U.S.’s gun violence. 

For Matthew Murray, though, protecting his deeply religious, Christian household was not the reason he obtained possession of three guns.  Murray killed five people, including himself, and wounded five others Sunday in two attacks at a mega church and a missionary training school which he had previously attended and been thrown out of a few years ago.

The school said Murray was dismissed because of health problems, but they did not elaborate.  Police stated in court papers that Murray had been sending the school hate mail.

In a similar case, 19-year-old Robert A. Hawkins killed eight people then himself Wednesday, December fifth in Omaha, Nebraska.  His suicide note was found, and it said that he loved his friends and family.  He explained that he felt worthless, and now he would be famous.  Police recovered an SKS assault rifle and Hawkins’s vehicle.

Another recent shooting in the U.S. was in Las Vegas, where gunmen wounded six people getting off a school bus.  Police said they believed the shooting was linked to a fight over a girl earlier in the day Tuesday. The brawl had been contained by school police, who arrested three male students, all about 16.

The easy accessibility of guns in the U.S. becomes apparent in these three cases.  Studies show that only 60% of guns are bought from a licensed firearm dealer, which means that 40% of firearms are bought without a background check, so anyone can get hold of them. 

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