Accolades-Accomplishments-Awards

• Congratulations to the Grissom theatre, dance, and choral departments for their success at this weekend’s State Thespian Festival in Florence.  Grissom students took first place in Group Pantomime, Group Improvisation, Group Musical, and Group Dance.  Keegan Butler took first place in lighting design.  Company 2 Dancers took second place in Group Dance, and Keith Calderwood and Allyson Azar took second place in Duet Musical.  Tabitha LaCourse won second place in Solo Acting Female, and Delona Camp took second in Solo Dance.  Lindsey Franklin took third place in Solo Dance.  Congratulations to Grissom’s Fine Arts departments for this excellent showing!
  
• Congratulations to the Grissom Debate Team!  At the Smoky Mountain Forensics Tournament in Gatlinburg on Feb. 25-27, Grissom placed second in the debate sweepstakes.  Two Grissom teams advanced to semi-finals, placing them both in the top four out of the forty-two teams entered in the tournament.  The two teams advancing to semi-finals were Charles Duren & Brandon Wagner and AT Helix & Skye Robinson.  Finally, AT Helix won the Top Speaker Award for the entire debate tournament.
  
• Five students from the engineering class participated in and won the TEAMS competition at Calhoun Community College on Saturday.  The competition consists of a paper and pencil physics/ engineering test. Our scores will be evaluated for a place in the national rankings. Our team members included: Ethan Coggin, Jordan Hurt, Bryant Johnson, Tim McDonald, and David Wright. Margie Zoladz and I both served as coaches.
  
• Grissom’s Science Bowl team just won first place at the Regional Science Bowl competition at the Alabama School of Math and Science in Mobile on Saturday, January 30, 2010.  The five team members—Alan Chou (senior), Dave Praharaj (senior), Brian Reaves (senior), Chase Harrison (junior), and Sid Nanda (sophomore)—have won an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, DC, accompanied by team sponsor/chemistry teacher, Lady Emrich, to compete at the Department of Energy’s National Science Bowl competition from April 29-May 4, 2010!
  
• Grissom High School Places 8th in National Math Contest Seattle, WA – January 25, 2010 – Grissom High School has some of the best high-school mathematicians in the country, as demonstrated by their 8th-place finish in the 2009 Ciphering Time Trials, a national mathematics contest administered by National Assessment & Testing (http://www.natassessment.com). Coaches Cindy Rodgers and Michelle Rosson prepared students for the last major competition of 2009, consisting of ten rounds in which they had three minutes to solve three problems. Nick Sparkman placed 14th in the 9th-grade division, Sid Nanda placed 17th in the 10th-grade division, and Patrick Voytek was 24th in the 12th-grade division. In the middle school division, Animesh Mahapatra placed 2nd, Asutosh Nanda was 3rd, Bill Caraway placed 4th, and Kayvon Deldar placed 6th.

• GHS Geometry team sent three students to Muscle Shoals tournament on January 23rd. Our team placed 4th with only three members instead of four that are allowed. Nick Sparkman placed 1st in division I with Elbert Lin 27th and Kayvon Deldar 29th.

• Lauren Scheeler and Kirby Tucker won Honorable Mention at the 2010 Southeast Regional High School Artists Competition at Birmingham Southern on January 10. Ben Neergaard, Juliann Aune and Shannon Wrenn were also adjudicated into the show,which was limited to 100 works selected from the 7 state competition.

• The Jr. Civitan Club conducted a walk-a-thon on September 29, 2009 to raise money for the Children’s Hospital of Alabama for their $100K for Kids Day campaign.  The members raised $5400 and were the top fundraisers for the entire state.