The Eagle's Eye; Issue 3, Vol. 12; Akins High School

West Side Story Pg. 12

W. Charles Akins High School “Everything That Concerns You”

Eagle’s EyeThe

Follow the Eagle’s Eye on our new website www.AkinsEaglesPublications.comwww.AkinsEaglesPublications.comAustin, Texas

Publications win awards at national competition

Matthew Lopez

Publications excellence Juniors Aless Luna and Jackie Rodriguez pose with seniors John Hauser, Luisa Talamas, and Haleigh Wagner onstage holding their awards.

Dez MooreEditor-in-Chief

The journalism department traveled to San Antonio for the Journalism Educa-tors Association and National Scholastic Press Association National Convention.

“I was very unsure about how we would do at competition,” newspaper ad-viser Michael Reeves said. “I thought we might do well in photography but I knew that the write-off competitions would be very difficult.”

Even with expectations being low, competing against schools that regularly attend national competitions, the publica-tions department produced seven individ-ual winners in competitions that ranged from writing to photography to drawing.

Yearbook students, senior Luisa Ta-lamas and Junior Aless Luna received excellence ratings in their categories.

Newspaper student, junior Jacqueline Rodriguez received an Excellence award. Seniors Haleigh Wagner, John Hauser, Alex Herrera along with alumni David Valladolid all won honorable mentions in their competitions.

“It was a great way to end my last San Antonio trip. It makes me want to work hard for the rest of the year and get a Silver Star award from Interscholastic League Press Conference.” Wagner said.

The individual awards were not the only awards that the publications depart-ment won. The Eagle’s Eye newspaper entered the Best of Show competition where they placed seventh in the most competitive category, Broadsheet news-papers with 9-12 pages

“To come home with seven individual awards and to win seventh place in Best in Show is a major accomplishment,” Reeves said.

Publications Accomplishments

Girls do well at Frisco meet

Alex Herrera Photo Editor

Bodies smashing, buzzers ringing, and the echo of the coach yelling all ran through the heads of the Eagle wrestlers during the first half of the season.

The lady Eagles did better than ex-pected at the Frisco Tournament in Dal-las, Texas. None placed, but each wrestler brought back more wrestling knowledge and experience.

“Frisco went well, better than I expect-ed,” Tambunga said. “This tournament brought a good outlook on what to focus on during practice so we can do better at future matches and tournaments.”

The boys traveled to the Leander tour-nament and did well as senior Frank Cal-lahan placed first along with freshmen Diego Rivera and Nathan Carranza. Junior Austin Boles placed second and sopho-more Trey Aguirre placed third.

uSee “Wrestling” pg. 11

Wrestling New season

Band volunteers at Circuit of The Americas race

Andrea Barrera Staff Reporter

With speeds of up to 200 mph, Formula One cars are among the fastest circuit-rac-ing cars in the world.

And this year on November eighteenth, Circuit of the Americas hosted Austin’s first “Formula One United States Grand Prix”.

Out of the 120,000 people who went to Formula One, the Akins band had the op-portunity to be apart of such a large event, televised worldwide.

“We were able to attend Formula One to raise money for the trip to New Orleans during spring break by working at the con-cessions,” sophomore Kenny Painter said.

“We volunteered to work at the conces-sions and ended up selling food to hun-dreds of people who came to Austin from around the world,” senior Luis Hernandez said.

The event was an instant success with people visiting for this race, which was a headliner in the news worldwide.

“It was a great opportunity to meet people from all over the world,” junior Marquis Fisher said. “And it was cool to be apart of a first time thing.”

With the 154 million viewers and around 120,000 attendees, the members of the band couldn’t help but notice the di-versity of people who were able to attend.

“Hearing the different types of lan-guages spoken really caught my atten-tion,” Hernandez said. “And it was pretty cool just to know that people are coming to gather to memorialize such an awesome event.”

Band Off campus

uSee “Circuit” pg. 5

Elianne Candelario Staff Reporter

The Austin Corp kids on campus are doing big things this year. With the help of government teacher Lin-da O’Neal, students are able to work with the city and eventually intern as well.

This year the Austin Corp interns competed at a civics fair against 35 other teams and won first place. Some of the students involved were senior Kaitlyn Cortez, senior Jesus Saldana and many others.

To prepare for the civics fair, all students involved had to come up with a local issue they were truly pas-sionate about and also find a solution for it.

“First we did a lot of research on our issue,” Saldana said. “Once we had our facts straight we started com-ing up with different solutions.”

The issue presented was that col-lege is way too expensive and the so-lution would be to use the unclaimed prizes left over from the lottery to help students with tuition.

“We agreed on the tuition issue since we are all seniors and will soon be heading off to college,” Cortez said. “With tuition being so pricey it is important to voice our con-cerns about it.”

The issue and solution were presented to the rest of the teams at the fair; students started a petition at the fair to win over the rest of the teams and the judges.

“My job at the civics fair was to go around asking for signatures for the petition,” Sal-dana said. “I managed to get enough, seeing as we won.”

During the first semester of the class, stu-dents work on many different local projects.

“The first semester consists of hands on activities to prepare students for the intern-ships,” O’Neal said.

Some projects the students are participat-ing in are radio documentaries. One docu-mentary will be about geography teacher Greg Izor and the other is about Mardi Gras Indians.

“The class is divided into two groups,” Saldana said. “Each group will cover a dif-

ferent person on the radio documentary.” Once this year is over and the second se-

mester has begun student’s will be interning with the city and becoming knowledgeable in something that relates to the career of their choice.

“My goal is to get an internship from EMT and eventually become a nurse,” Cor-tez said. “Austin Corp can help me achieve this goal.”

With the help of the Austin Corp program students can accomplish many things in high school, which will ultimately build a better future for them.

“I hope to intern with the city next year,” Saldana said. “I would like to learn more about the 311 call center and become famil-iar with this field, so I can develop a career for myself.”

O’Neal believes that the Austin Corp pro-gram is beneficial for seniors and prepares them for life.

“Internships are a great way to get a taste of what a profession will be like,” O’Neal said. “They also look great on college appli-cations instead of an off period.”

“Speaking Up, Speaking Out”

Matthew Lopez

Sounds bitesSeniors Karis Wade, Jesus Saldana, and John Hauser speak on their radio documentary for Texas Folk Life. “We are super excited for our new radio documentary about Greg Izor,” Hauser said.

Austin Corps Preparing students

Courtesy of Linda O’Neal

First place winnersLinda O’Neal poses with seniors John Hauser, Erinn Muston, Kaitlyn Cortez, Ryan Haywood, Karis Wade, Daniel Acosta, and Jesus Saldana after winning first place in “Speak Up, Speak Out”

inside

the

insig

ht 5 things to know

Vol.12 No. 3 December 17, 2012

Morning intercom music... pg. 3

Akins Cares volunteers... pg. 5

Student starts clothing line... pg. 6

West Side Story musical... pg. 9

Basketball starts off hot... pg. 11

Opinions...pg 2, 3 News...pg 4-5 Student Life...pg 6-7 Entertainment...pg 8, 9 In-Depth...pg 10 Sports...pg 11 Photo Essay...pg 12

Popular retail company opens at The Domain

The wait is officially over, H&M has finally made their way to Austin, Texas.

There is a lot of hoopla about the Swedish-based clothing company. Apparently, they have trendy clothes at an affordable price and are found

all around the world.Find out

why so many t e e n a g e r s cannot wait to

splurge in the new store espe-cially with the

holidays com-ing up. Check out the story on Page 9.

Social networks clashIt was only a

matter of time that Twitter and Facebook would finally be com-pared and con-trasted against each other.

Which is bet-ter? Well, Twitter has hash tags and trending topics but Facebook has photo albums and “Like” pages. Deci-sions, decisions, decisions.

Check out which staff writers had something to say about the social net-work they think is the best and why on Page 2.

Luisa Veronica Talamas


In every English class, students are re-quired to take a Lexile Learning test to find their level of reading. Then, students read books on the correct level and receive points after taking quizzes on them through Reading Counts. We believe this system is flawed to due the fact that it is hard to find, completely read, and still have time to take a quiz in one six weeks grading period. The program is also flawed due to the fact that it is worth 20% to 30% of every student’s six weeks grade.

Reading counts requires students to read enough books to obtain a certain amount of points. The amount of points required in a grading period determines the amount of books to be read. Typically, this calls for many students to digest two books in six weeks. We believe this is too much. High school-level books have upwards of 200 pages and it can often take six weeks to read one book. Students have mountains of regu-lar homework and with the new “Flipped classroom” initiative students do not have time to be reading endless amounts of text as well.

Reading two books a six weeks means a student needs to finish as many as twelve books a school year. Finding that many books within a small range of points is very

difficult. Students with a Lexile above the average of 900 have trouble finding a book that they are willing and interested in read-ing. This is especially a problem when stu-dents must read two books per six weeks. It is hard to find a book you will enjoy and read quickly, in such a short amount of time. We believe that this is wrong: the amount that you have to read, and how fast you can read that amount should not count against you in the grade book.

But the major prob-lem with the Reading Counts system is the grading. The grading de-pends upon the grade that you get on a quiz that cor-responds with the book. The quizzes ask different questions about the books summary, plot, and characters and are often very specific to a minor detail on a particu-lar page or in a passage in the novel. Only scores of seven-out-of-ten or higher are recorded in the grade book.

Students who mark less than seven

correct are awarded a zero in the grade book. Students get three chances to retake the quiz, and have to wait 24 hours to do so. The ques-tions change for each attempt.

We think that this is absurd. If a student receives a fifty on a math test, it is a fifty in

the grade book and not a zero. Students should get proper credit for the ques-tion they answer correctly even if that is not a pass-ing grade.

Some in favor of the system say that the Lexile pro-gram has helped reading scores on

standardized test. Although scores

did rise in read-ing, writing scores

dropped. This is ob-viously due to the major focus on reading, and not writing. A big problem with this is that many

teachers on campus are not certified reading

teachers. Most of the English

teachers on campus are on certified to teach English, and not reading in particular. Teach-ers are also left scrambling to give students time at the end of the six weeks during class time to read, just so that they do not fail the grading period.

Others proponents say that students have more than enough time to read two books in a grading period. Students may not have time to read due to a job, and others may have to take care of family. Another reason students may not be able to complete this task is that they simply do not have a quiet place at home to read.

A solution could be to have students read one book a six weeks and take a quiz on that book, for a grade. Another solution would to be more lenient with the reading options. A third option for grading would be to let stu-dents get the grade they make on the quiz, if they fail them give them that grade and not a zero. If this were to happen, students would most likely have higher grades and time could be equally spent on reading and writing in English classes.

We believe as a staff that as a staff this system is flawed due to the system’s grading, the rules about book selection, and the quiz process. We urge the administration to reas-sess this program and revamp the policies in a way that will improve student grades while still requiring a modest level of reading each six weeks.

The Eagle’s Eye Monday, 12.17.12 page 2

Opinions

Editor-in-ChiefDez Moore

Managing & In-Depth EditorHaleigh Wagner

Opinions EditorMarissa Sosa

Student Life EditorJacqueline Rodriquez

Entertainment EditorSavannah Garza

Sports EditorBen Livingston

Photo EditorAlex Herrera

On-line EditorMatthew Lopez

AdvisorMichael Reeves

Editorial Policy

The Eagle’s Eye is the official student newspaper of Akins High School. It is published six times a year, generally once per six weeks for the school’s students, staff and community.

The Eagle’s Eye is an open forum for student expression. The Eagle’s Eye is not reviewed by school administration prior to distribution, and the advisor will not act as a censor. Content represents the views of the student staff and not school officials.

The Eagle’s Eye will work to avoid bias and/or favoritism. We will strive to make our coverage and content meaningful, timely and interesting to our readers. Our articles will reflect our genuine objective of reporting news and will be held to a high standard of quality.

We will make every effort to avoid printing libel, obscenities, innuendo and material that threatens to disrupt the learning process or is an invasion of privacy. We will avoid electronic manipulation that alters the truth of a photograph.

Staff editorials represent the opinion of the editorial board arrived at by discussion and will not be bylined. Bylined articles are the opinion of the individual writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Eagle’s Eye staff or administration as a whole.

The Eagle’s Eye welcomes reader input. Please send any letters, articles, comments or corrections to [email protected] or mail them to 10701 South First Street Austin, Texas 78748 or drop them off in room 223 with advisor Michael Reeves or an editor. Letters must be signed, and emailed letters will require verification before publication. We will not necessarily publish all letters received and reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

The Eagle’s Eye does not necessarily endorse the products or services found in advertisements from local businesses.

Andrea Barrera-RodriguezElianne Candelario

Harley CruzFrancisco De La Rosa

Tyler DericksonCristina Gonzalez

John HauserElizabeth Hernandez

Hannah KernsMax KosusnikSonny Molina

Maria Moreno-GonzalesCaitlin Starks

Luisa Veronica TalamasMark Vallejo

Christopher YanezStephanie Zuniga

Eagle’s Eye Staff

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20052008

CSPA ILPC/UIL TAJE NSPA

2007 - H.M. Sweepstakes2010 - 2nd Sweepstakes

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Organizations

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All-American2012

Best in Show 7th place - 2012

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EDITOrIAL

Reading counts causes stress in English classes

Harley CruzStaff Reporter

With over one billion active users as of this year, Facebook is clearly the winner when it comes to social media sites. People all over the world are constantly updating, sharing, liking, and interacting with each other on a

daily basis. Sure you can do

that on Twitter, but with limited 140 character “tweets” and fewer abilities to interest everyone.

F a c e b o o k is much more

interesting simply because you’re given a

wider selection on how you can keep yourself

in the loop of things. You can join various groups

and organizations or play on apps like Farmville and

Words With Friends. You can chat, add statuses, make friends, market businesses and create all sorts of events to get people involved. No wonder Facebook has become the “one-stop shop” for communicating, sharing, and entertaining.

One thing I like is that it’s easier to find people and stay in contact with while being able to communicate on a less complicated level. With Twitter you send a direct message to only one other user at a time.

On Facebook you’re able to create a profile with any information that you feel comfortable sharing and choose who is able to see it while viewing your page. With Twitter just about anyone can go ahead and “follow” you with the need for more followers people will approve various people, even when their profile is set to private.

Twitter is less interesting to me because it’s all based on impersonal relationships where it’s mostly about how many “followers” you’re able to achieve. If you’re about seeking simple information, sharing events, expressing thoughts and revisiting old friends or family, I suggest staying with Facebook.

Social media change brings rivalry between social media outlets

Elianne CandelarioStaff Reporter

Tweenagers tweeting tweets on Twitter. You probably have it open on your phone as you read this. A blue square, with a small bird on it. Yes, I am talking about the one, the only, Twitter.

Twitter allows you to follow your favorite artist, and actors. You can read their tweets and see what they are doing, when their next album will drop, where they are touring to next. If you want to stay in constant contact with your friends, classmates, and even some teachers you can, just by following them.

The great thing about twitter is the freedom of saying anything you want, to whomever you want. You can tweet Barack Obama if you wanted to, of course that doesn’t guarantee he’ll tweet back or even

see it, but he just might. There are many ways

you can go about acknowledging a tweet. The best way is to retweet a tweet you relate to, like, or just want to share.

When you retweet something you pretty much just repost it on your twitter profile, which will show up on your followers timeline. A timeline is like news feed, where every tweet or retweet from your followers ends up. Twitter gives you access to anyone’s profile unless they are private but either way all you have to do is follow them and you can read all their tweets.

Bottom line is, having a twitter you can express yourself freely, let people know what your opinions are and twatch whoever you want. Twatching is a term used to describe watching someone on twitter or, its great, I highly recommend it.

Opinions Social networks

Marissa Sosa

Elianne Candelario Staff Reporter

We are the millennials, the Y genera-tion, and the 90’s kids. Being a teenager in this day and age is not a piece of cake, with school, friendships, heartaches, and so much more, it’s no wonder half of us need Proactive.

Going through physical and emotional distress is an every day thing for most of us. I say this as one of you, the last thing I want to worry about while cramming for a pre-cal test is every inch of my face break-ing out.

Grown-ups look down on us for crack-ing under pressure, being eas-

ily influenced and sometimes being the influencer. As if they weren’t teenagers once, as if they didn’t try new things

and as if they didn’t live a little, or a lot.

I am so

over being judged for what my classmates are and do, just because he does this and she does that does not mean we all do it. It’s like the ones above us are expecting us to mess up every step of the way.

People automatically assume that since you hang out with a certain group of people then you must be involved in the same type of activities as them. Friends do not define who you are, or at least they shouldn’t.

It sucks going to a restaurant with some friends and getting the worse service ever, and why?

Do you ask, because we’re just a “bunch of teenager’s.” If you go with your parents, or any adult for that matter it’s a whole dif-ferent story.

As if being judged by everyone who surrounds you isn’t enough, the stress of fitting in does not help much. You’ve got confused teens that have to deal with con-stant stereotypical comments, insecure and low self-esteemed ones that will do any-thing to be accepted, and the ones who have made one too many mistakes wishing for a new beginning.

This isn’t a cry for help, or a pity fest, no. This is a reminder for anyone who has ever doubted the teenagers in this genera-tion that we are teenagers for crying out loud, we will make mistakes and we will mess up. Although some won’t learn and grow from their mistakes, many will and that is life.

Everyone says these are the best years of our lives so let us live it. Let us laugh extremely loud, let us make fun of each other and let us have fun while doing it.

Sonny Molina

Marissa Sosa

Marissa Sosa

Monday, 12.17.12 Opinions The Eagle’s Eye page 3

TOPIC 2: whAT ArE yOur ChrISTMAS brEAk PLAnS?

TOPIC 4: whAT IS yOur fAvOrITE hOLIDAy bEvErAgE?

TOPIC 5: whAT IS yOur fAvOrITE SEASOn, AnD why?

TOPIC 3: whAT ArE yOu hOPIng TO gET fOr ChrISTMAS?

Marinna Garcia

12th

AndrewFisher11th

Ruby Herrera

10th

Dion Ramirez

9th

Susan GielowTeacher

MAn On ThE STrEET

TOPIC 1: fAvOrITE fAST fOOD Or rESTAurAnT?

Thunder Cloud or Whataburger. Olive Garden because Italian is my favorite food to eat.

Chuy’s, it has my favorite; the “boom boom” enchiladas.

Pluckers, because the wings are really good.

I have a bad Taco Cabana craving for their queso and tortillas.

Spend time with family and go to my basketball tournament.

Hit the weights, work out and spend time with my family.

Get all our family together andcelebrate Christmas.

To go to San Antonio to see my family and to get my presents.

Going to Missouri to visit family and then to Florida for new years

and my birthday.

Just to spend time with my family in Corpus.

I really want to get a Macbook. I honestly just want money so I can go get myself things.

The summer because that’s when I can really go out and workout and

play sports.

Clothes and hopefully get my new phone.

I like egg nog and hot cocoa. I can’t pick between the two.

Hot chocolate, with whip cream.Egg nog, I like the spice of it. Hot cocoa for sure. Don’t forget the marshmallows.

A bike so I can ride it around down town.

Homemade hot cocoa.

Winter because we get a break and I get to see my family and I love

Christmas lights.

Winter, because I like the cold and I like when people dress nicer in

winter clothes.

Summer, because its hot and that’s the best time to go swimming.

Winter, because it gets cold which means most girls want to cuddle.

Maria MorenoStaff Reporter

I get livid when I hear the announcements and they continually ignore the or-ganizations around campus that are doing well. Students are led to believe that the sports teams are the epitome of a “teachers pet” and they are more important than oth-er “students” on campus.

“I think the school likes sports more than music be-cause when we have a per-formance they do not men-tion our performances,” sophomore orchestra student Cynthia Arellano said. “But when a sports event happens the staff goes crazy.”

Favoritism among or-ganizations is obviously a problem that happens. Whether it involves physi-cal talent or musical talent, the administration does not recognize all of the school’s organizations equally.

Guitar students are an-gered by the fact that an old classmate was not recog-nized for his achievements.

“Javier Saucedo, a se-nior last year, was a renown guitar player who made first division in UIL last year and nothing was ever mentioned about him,” sophomore Kyle Bowen said. “He even got a scholarship from a uni-versity.”

The journalism program won eight national awards at the JEA/NSPA Fall Na-tional High School Journal-ism Convention held during November and it was not acknowledged on the inter-com or in a campus-wide congratulatory e-mail. It is important to note there was a mention of the journalism program’s achievements on the school website, but not every group makes the cut there either.

“By the looks of it, the school staff only cares about organizations that involve physical talent,” Arellano said.

Sophomore Katherine Delph, a member of band,

has a theory on why the school staff does not an-nounce anything on the in-tercom other than sports.

“When we perform at football games most of the audience goes to the rest room. We are like the pre-

views when you get to the movie theater early,” Delph said.

These organizations are not the only ones going through this unrecognized dilemma. Some do not want themselves to be recognized,

but their program as a whole.“I, along with other stu-

dents won first division at the art UIL and nothing was announced,” sophomore Jo-hanna Dakay said. “I just want them to recognize the art program.”

Students want their achievements to be known and not be ignored by ad-ministration and the campus.

“Success is the only thing most people strive for and to not be acknowledged for it is a waste,” Dakay said.

Caitlin Starks Staff Reporter

Honestly, 10 minutes is more than enough time to get from the bus loop, the library, the cafeteria, the fine arts building, the FFA barn, etc., to class on time.

You can even stop by and talk to your friend about the new crush you have or the new shirt you got over the weekend.

It’s 10 minutes people. The majority of you manage to get from place to place in six minutes every day. Why is getting to class in 10 min-utes in the morning so hard to accomplish?

I mean I get it, you just woke up or just got to school, but you need to man up, grab a cup of coffee and get to class.

I’m a junior and I haven’t been late to a class, morn-ing or otherwise, since the beginning of freshman year when I was still getting used to high school. If I can do it why can’t you?

And really what is there to talk about at 9:00 am in the morning? Don’t say dreams because I’m pretty sure about 96% of people don’t remember what they dream about. I know half the time I don’t.

I imagine all of the con-versations going something like this:

“Ohmygosh I’m so tired I got ____ hours of sleep.”

“Cool story bro.”

“Yeah.” Now does that really take

up 10 minutes of time? I didn’t think so.

I’ll admit, on occasion, I am guilty of said conversa-tions. But the secret to suc-cess is talking while you walk, not stopping in the middle of the hall.

When you stop in the middle of the hall, it stops you from getting to where you need to be on time.

Plus now in the morning if your tardy you get caught in the sweep and are more then likely to end up spend-ing all day in ISS so being late isn’t worth it.

Announcements lack appropriate recognition Students believe some less popular clubs and organizations are not equally acknowledge

Personal Views Publicity

Morning bell has students struggling to get to class

Campus issues School policies

Girls “gang wear” is looked down upon as disrespectful

Personal views School apparel

Marissa Sosa

John Hauser

Harley Cruz Staff Reporter

Bandanas can be simple, stylish, cute and vintage. Using a bandana as a hair accessory is used by many girls and has become a trend that is convenient and fash-ionable. But what’s sup-posed to be only a headband is now labeled prohibited as being tied with gang affilia-tion.

When we see differ-ent colored bandanas the shelves of Wal-Mart or Tar-get most of us automatically deem them to be undesir-able. Over the years they’ve gained a reputation that has little to do with their actual purposes.

We all know what they’ve been used for and what they’re associated with. Of

course no one wants to be associated with “gang af-filiation”, especially if it’s a risk for possible danger.

Sure you could accept it as gangs using a simple square of cloth to easily identify each other. What I want to know is why others must be refused the right to wear something when obvi-ously the items has nothing to do with any sort of gangs at all?

Throughout middle school to high school to-day we’ve been told that anything to do with gangs is prohibited. Obviously its understandable, no one wants violence and gang wars in a “healthy learning environment”. We get it, but do members of gangs really use bandanas for a quick and easy hairstyle?

It may seem ridiculous since most of us don’t think twice about what someone would like to wear as a hair accessory. Who cares right? What I’m asking here is for

a glimpse of the bigger pic-ture. We’re not asking for any trouble, we’ve just dis-covered a new way to hold our hair, and technically we are not violating rules.

“Clothing may not ad-vertise, condone, depict, or promote the use of alco-hol, tobacco, or drugs; also prohibited is clothing with vulgar or obscene language, or with images or writings that promote disruption of the educational setting.” Ac-cording to the AISD student dress code.

Bandanas don’t associate with any of those things, and to permanently brand them as affiliated with gang ac-tivity is unfair to everyone. The way I see it is just cause a person has a bandana it doesn’t mean their associ-ated with gangs. If they’re obviously not a gang mem-ber or has no record of ever being involved with such ac-tions, they shouldn’t be pro-hibited to wear a bandana as a simple hair band.


NewsAcademies Career choices

Criminal Justice begins new internship

Courtesy of David Lopez

First-hand look at their future careersThe Correctional Service students prepare to enter the jail. Before they go in, they are prepped with what they will see inside and the rules they must follow when they enter.

Forensic students compete in worldwide science fair

Matthew Lopez

Analyzing dataSenior Yasmeen Alvarez, analyzes hair strands from students in her class. Alvarez is trying to match different hair strands to the same hair strand as their pretend murderer.

Science students preparing for Intel ISEF

Academics Science fair

Francisco De La RosaStaff Reporter

Cold weather and strug-gling times, many young children and their families will suffer, will not have a decent meal these holidays and will be without protection from the constantly changing Texas weather.

As a community many in Austin have put up charities to support those in need. Akins High School was one of the biggest contributors in dona-tions in 2010. Akins had collected 2,000 cans and 600 coats in the 2010 drive. Sadly, the amazing result in 2010 was not repeated for the drive in 2011, when Akins only took in 300 cans and 75 coats.

There is speculation that the prize for donation may have been a main contributor for the large donation number. Two JetBlue airline tickets were offered as prize during the do-nation drives. After 2010, the tickets were not offered as a prize any longer, possibly explaining the low turnout during last year’s drive.

This year’s numbers speak words of hope, Akins collected 93 coats and 75 cans, although this may not beat

the results of 2010, it may increase greatly. The

ROTC has joined their food drive with this cur-

rent food drive in an effort to increase the donations. Many believe that the biggest reason in the reduction of students donating could be linked to the loss of prizes.

“I would hate to think that the prizes were the only reason students cared to donate,” Erica San Miguel said. “I do believe that there is a great representation of students who do care on our campus, and those students are still donating to the drive.”

The food drive is held to pro-vide students and families, who struggle with providing enough for their family, through the holi-days and throughout the year. Some students do not need a prize to motivate them to donate to the drive.

“I have always donated for the reason of helping people that are in need,” Nestor Aquino said.

The food drive is held to provide students and families, who struggle with providing enough for their fam-ily, through the holidays and through-out the year.

Campus hopes to return to past

donating results


Tuesday, December 18th

2st Period EXAM 9:00am-11:00am

6th Period EXAM 11:10am-1:10pm

Finals Bell ScheduleMonday, December 17th

1st Period EXAM 9:00am-11:00am


Wednesday, December 19th

3rd Period EXAM 9:00am-11:00am


Thursday, December 20th

4th Period EXAM 9:00am-11:00am


The above schedule must be followed for final exams. Exams must be two hours long. Students are NOT allowed to take final exams early unless approved by Mr. Garcia

Lunch will NOT be served on these days.Students NOT taking an exam for any specific period will be required to remain in

the cafeteria if they are on campus.

For more information on the Intel ISEF science fair, visit:

www.societyforscience.org/intelisef2012

Andrea BarreraStaff Reporter

As of next year, the Crim-inal Justice department will have a second internship program called “ECOM” or the “Emergency Communi-cations” internship certifica-tion.

“It is a certification that will get students ready to work as 911 dispatchers,” ABL2E teacher David Lo-pez said.

The Criminal Justice department in the ABL2E academy has a lot to offer. The different courses stu-dents can major in provide a future for all who would like to continue in the same de-partment after high school.

“The Criminal Justice department is where we are able to study the many struc-tures that law enforcement has,” senior Gabriella Sis-barro said.

Criminal Justice is cur-rently running their “Texas Law, Public Safety, Correc-tions and Security” intern-ship which has been very successful so far, according

to Lopez.“Right now we are cur-

rently learning the basics of working in a Travis County jail,” Sisbarro said. “This internship is not only letting me study Criminal Justice right now, but also allowing me to study what I would like to do in the future.”

The ECOM program has almost the same require-ments that their current in-ternship course offers.

“It is a year long course that will involve an intern-ship, and community ser-vice,” Lopez said. “And students will get CPR certi-fied.”

The ECOM internship was brought to Lopez’s at-tention by another school that was struggling to better the internship and build a successful program.

“There was another school who had this program and it wasn’t doing well,” Lopez said. “I offered to take it and build it up.”

Besides taking on the in-ternship Lopez had to con-sider the setbacks that came along with the certification program for next year.

“The equipment is very expensive and the program is intense,” Lopez said. “But I know Akins students are up to the challenge and will make this program a suc-cess.”

The Criminal Justice de-partment decided that for this internship, they would need another teacher to teach the new class required for the internship program.

“Our Criminal Justice teacher Erica Williamson will teach the class,” Lopez said.

The internship has cer-tain qualifications in order to qualify to be accepted into the ECOM internship pro-gram for next year.

“It will only be offered to seniors who have taken/met the required classes,” Lopez said.

Even with these qualifi-cations, the process for be-ing accepted as part of the internship program is not finalized until after the inter-view with a review board.

“There will be an appli-cation process before getting accepted into the class,” Lo-pez said.

Dez MooreEditor-in-Chief

Forensic Science and Toxicology students will be participating in the Intel In-ternational Science and En-gineering Fair science fair this year. This is the first year Akins has participated in the worldwide science fair. The Intel ISEF is the world’s largest international pre-college science competi-tion.

“In May, I was invited to go to the Intel ISEF science fair in Pittsburgh,” Principal Daniel Girard said. “Look-ing at all of the projects, I thought of all the work we do here and that it would be a great opportunity for stu-dents to gain exposure to the competition.”

Millions of students worldwide compete each year in local, school-spon-sored science fairs; the win-ners of these events go on to participate in Intel ISEF-affiliated regional and state fairs from which the best win the opportunity to attend the Intel ISEF.

“Our goal is to get all of the students participating to showcase their work in a science fair setting,” science teacher Christina Jenschke

said. “ We hope that our stu-dents will earn scholarships at the Austin Energy Re-gional Science Fair.”

One group participating in the science fair is test-ing the connection between muscle memory and the hu-man senses.

“We are trying to see which distraction to my senses is the most vulnerable while I shoot free throws,” senior Courtlan Ross said. “We are only testing sound, sight, taste, and smell since you cannot touch someone at the free throw line.”

“We had Courtlan shoot 25 free throws in a row and he made them all,” senior David Garza said. “Then he shot another 25 free throws but with a distraction to his senses.”

The group used ammonia to distract his smell, a jolly-rancher as the taste distrac-tion, the buzzer on the shot clock to distract his hearing, and Pedro (Petey) Casiano on a ladder with his shirt off

as the visual distraction.“Courtlan did a good job

of making the free throws but he missed the most while the buzzer was going off,” Garza said.

“I felt like I should have made all of my free throws but the buzzer was just too distracting,” Ross said.

Another group is testing if music notes can change the pattern of a heartbeat.

“I am going to take my heart rate for 30 seconds with an instrument playing,” senior Adam Capetillo said. “Then I will take my heart rate for 30 seconds without the instrument playing to see if it my heart rate increases.”

The science students are preparing their projects in time for the February sci-ence fair. Hopes are high for good reviews.

“I really hope my group presents well at the science fair and we can possibly get some sort of award or schol-arship for college,” Capetil-lo said.

Monday, 12.17.12 News The Eagle’s Eye page 5

Dez Moore

Making a differenceSophomore Alyssa Garcia poses with her sketch of what she thinks should be the new shirt of Akins Cares. Akins Cares is currently planning a Holiday Celebration in Dove Springs.

Clubs Volunteer work

Akins Cares helps families over the holidaysHannah KernsStaff Reporter

Smiling faces and hearts filled with hope, Akins has yet again made a difference in someone’s life.

Akins Cares is a group that helps students earn community service hours and help families all around Austin.

“I love helping other people,” sophomore Johnette Williams said. “It helps me get community service hours but its also exciting to make people happy.”

Every Tuesday the club meets to discuss what they will be doing next to help the community out.

Akins Cares has done things like help organize activities for elementa-ry school carnivals at Rodriguez and Blazier, litter pick-ups and serving food for the needy.

“I really like having fun with the little kids, and helping people out at the same time,” freshman Jerry Cas-tro said.

English teacher Erika San Miguel created the group to help students spread the passion of volunteering across the campus.

“When I became a teacher it seemed like a perfect platform to ig-nite a passion for helping others in my students, to really carry the effort forward to the next generation,” San Miguel said

The students are doing a Holiday Celebration at Dove Springs, which

includes a lake clean-up and also par-ticipating in coats for kids.

“Everyone should volunteer and help change the world one step at a time,” Williams said.

These students donate their time to help the needy and it’s more than just earning community service hours, it’s seeing the looks on people’s faces when they receive food, or something to keep them warm in the winter.

“Every person, every hour makes a difference to those in need,” San Miguel said. “It may not seem like you’re doing much to solve world hunger, but to the child who gets to eat a meal, who hadn’t eaten for days, that can of food makes a world of dif-ference.”

Helping out people who need it more than they do is their main goal.

“It is amazing to help out people less fortunate then me,” Castro said. “I really enjoy it.”

From people who are homeless to people who just show up because there is food, these students make a difference in each person’s life.

“It helps and reminds me to be a better person,” sophomore Alyssa Garcia said. “Seeing people who have a terrible life and getting some-thing that will really help them is amazing.”

Akins Cares enjoys helping people but also takes pride in the fact that they do not need anything in return.

“I don’t expect anything in return, just a thank you and a smile makes it all worth it.” Garcia said.

Mixed feelings over reading counts quizzes

Cristina Gonzalez Staff Reporter

This year students are taking an online quiz that tests their read-ing level. The program is called Reading Counts and the reception among teachers and students has been mixed, at best.

Every six-week cycle students are required, in their English classes, to pick and read books equal to their lexile level. That lexile level was determined at the beginning of the year via yet another online test. Students are then given a percentage-score based on their reading level. The average is around 900 at Akins.

Once a lexile level has been determined, students are allowed to choose books to read that are scored on a point system. Each student then has to earn enough points in a six-week cycle to meet the programs requirements. For students who scored 900 or high-er, it generally means they have to complete two books in six weeks.

Once they have finished the book, students are tested online with a 10-question exam. Cur-rently, if the student scores seven or higher they receive credit, but if they score lower, the grade is entered as a zero in the grade book. Students then have three chances to pass the quiz from a bank of 30 questions, which means the test changes each time. If they fail to pass it in three tries, they do not receive credit for that book.

The test covers a number of topics including plot, charac-ters, theme, summary, and criti-cal thinking but on occasion the questions are very specific and

relate to single passages or mo-ments in the text.

Last year principal Daniel Gi-rard established Reading Counts in English classes.

“It is a systematical way to track students reading level and ultimately improve their reading level,” Girard said.

Last year when Reading Counts was introduced it was not a major portion of a student’s grade. This year it is as much as 30% of a six weeks grade.

“With end of course exams we needed students to be at a higher reading level,” Girard said.

According to teachers last year reading scores went dra-matically up on the TAKS: Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Students are reading more and scores are going up. But ac-cording to the TEA, the English scores were the lowest of all the core subjects on the STAAR test-ing last year state-wide.

“Reading on their level and higher is helping them improve their skills not only for TAKS or STAAR but for SAT and col-lege,” English teacher Christine Kesling said.

Although many teachers and Girard are in favor of Reading Counts, there are students that do not like it because they claim the questions asked are very specific and the grading policy is unfair.

“I hate it and I think the quiz-zes are unfair because we do the effort to read the book and we clearly got some of the answers right,” Pedraza said. “How am I supposed to remember the details I read 400 pages ago?”

Pedraza claims that the pro-gram hasn’t improved her skills.

Staff and Faculty Teacher resigns Local news acknowledges campusMark VallejoStaff Reporter

On KEYE TV, the school of the week went to none other than Akins High School. Akins grabbed the attention of the news station by the amount of choices the students can make in academies while also getting prepared for their future.

At the assembly in the gym Principal Daniel Girard introduced the academies, some of the majors inside the academies, the choir, and the orchestra. The students got to perform and show off their tal-ents in front of the cameras.

Sophomore Macy Whiting played the cello in the orchestra while the students were being tele-vised.

“It was exciting,” said Whiting said. “ But it was nerve-wracking and I was so scared that I looked ugly on live TV.”

The students and teachers felt happy that they got to experience the attention of a news station to show what Akins has to offer.

“It was exciting that they show-cased all the good work students are doing,” Girard said. “I was proud that the students showed up. To see the video on the KEYE TV

website felt great.”One student was glad that their

program was getting recognized on local television.

“I felt proud that we were be-ing recognized,” junior Iris Umana said. “It was pretty exciting being on TV and I am really glad Akins has the nursing program.”

On the KEYE TV website, it says, “Akins is not a magnet school, but it offers students in the attendance zone a choice of six ca-reer academies. The goal at Akins is for students to graduate with a High School degree AND a certifi-cation in a career field.”

When the band members arrived at Formula One, two hundred and thirty feet above them towered an observation platform, which was apart of the ‘Observation Tower’.

“The first thing we saw when we arrived at five in the morning was the observation tower,” sopho-more Samantha Madison said. “It was pretty hard not to miss it.”

Throughout the entire race, the band members had to deal with lines that seemed to be never-end-ing.

“Between races so many people were at the concessions,” Hernan-dez said. “It came to a point where we couldn’t even see the end of the lines.”

For first time attendees, noise was on another level, with the announcer trying to talk over the races, and people yelling just to be heard, the band members found it difficult to communicate with each other behind the concessions.

“Once the races started it was extremely loud,” Madison said. “We had to scream just to be heard and eventually we just got good at

reading each others lips.”While other boosters go out and

sell chocolates or popcorn to raise money, band members can say that they had the great opportunity to raise money by experiencing and working an unforgettable day at

Formula One.“It was really fun and it felt

great to be apart of something so monumental and worldwide,” Madison said. “I cannot thank Mr. Fincher enough for making this all come together.”

Fabian Losolla

The quiet before the stormThe Formula One racetrack stretches over 3.4 miles and has an eleva-tion change of 133 feet. The racetrack is situated on a 1000-acre site in southeast Austin.

Band gets a look at new racetrack uuCont. “Circuit” pg. 1

brie

fs

Getting youth closer together and finding God is two of the main goals for the non-denominational Chris-tian group, Akins Young Life.

Akins Young Life is a group that lets someone ex-press their own religion freely without being judged.

“Most Austin high schools had a group like it, and our school was in need of the pro-gram,” sophomore Alyssa Conception

said.The program will start having meet-

ings around March.“Young Life is supposed

to be the group of people you come to when you are struggling with something or you just want someone to listen to you,” sopho-

more Valentina Tovar said.Akins Young Life is

open to anyone and ev-eryone on campus who is

looking for God or just a friend.

Students in the ABLE academy were treated with a field trip to a San Antonio Spurs basketball game to learn about professional business and marketing.

The students were able to learn all about the be-hind-the-scenes look of professional marketing and the business sys-tems of the Spurs.

“The students visited with the professionals who work for the Spurs organization,” ABLE acad-emy coordinator Mark Martinez said.

“Students were also able to go into the team’s locker and weight rooms.”

The cherry on top was the exciting game they were able to watch

between the Spurs and the New York

Knicks.“The Spurs

game was the first time I have ever at-

tended an NBA bas-ketball game,” senior Adam Capetillo said. “The game was fun and I even got on the fan cam.”

brie

fs Christian group established

on campus next semesterABL2E learns about business while attending Spurs game

Dez Moore


Ben LivingstonSports Editor

It’s not every day a high school student gets fit and loses weight. Most students don’t take initiative to at-tempt such a large undertak-ing, but seniors Leif Mont-gomery and Damian Hogan broke conventions and took on that daunting task.

With a journey that be-gan in Health class their ju-nior year, Montgomery and Hogan took their prelimi-nary steps forward in getting fit and losing weight.

“The key is to get educat-ed,” Montgomery said. “You have to know what you shop for, how many calories you safely need to eat, and diet-ing tips.”

A lesson involving choosing breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals shed some light on healthier eating and was a spark for their aspira-tions.

“We had to pick what we would usually eat from some fast food restaurants for three meals,” Hogan said. “When we had done that, we counted up the calories.”

Counting calories is a big part of getting fit.

“If you like math, this is a fun part to it,” Hogan said. “Simply track what you eat and make sure it’s not more than what you should eat for the day.”

Diet can mean everything and is a great start to reach-

ing a fitness goal. For Mont-gomery, just the food he ate provided a great advantage by just cutting out unhealthy foods.

“I had to convince my grandma to cook healthy,” Montgomery said. “Once that happened, I dropped from 340 pounds to 300 pounds fast.”

Another part to getting fit is exercise. In order to burn more calories, getting active is crucial to losing weight.

“I jog whenever I can,” Hogan said. “Cardio is re-ally important and a big part to the whole process.”

It is important to set goals. Goal setting is an ef-fective way to keep up per-sonal morale and spirits.

“Set small and frequent goals when you first start out,” Hogan said. “Eventu-ally, you can set bigger goals as you start to lose more.”

Some people have differ-ent reasons for losing weight than others. Most people realize something about themselves that they want to change.

“I wanted to figure out why I didn’t like myself.” Montgomery said. “I wanted to fit into my ROTC uni-form.”

An important thing to keep in mind is that there is nothing wrong with getting some help from someone, according to Montgomery.

“Without the Health class, I wouldn’t have been

able to get the start that I did,” Montgomery said.

After losing more than 145 pounds, it can be tough to keep up with being fit.

“Right now I’m waver-ing between 195 pounds and 225 pounds. After 145 pounds it gets tough to lose more weight,” Montgomery said. “Now its time I start trying to gain muscle as op-posed to weight loss.”

Keeping up the pace and resisting to slow down is a tough aspect. There are dif-ferent ways in which people can continue keep them-selves motivated.

“Check your progress. Take pictures, record num-bers, or even find a reason-able example of what you would like to reach,” Hogan said. “Do it safely of course, and don’t go too crazy.”

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Student Life

Young entrepreneurs start clothing lineApparel Student designers

Students transform creative ideas into popular shirts among students on campus

Savannah Garza

A glance at the futureSeniors Alberto Suarez and Sterling Johnson check their social networking sites to help promote their recent clothing line. Their fashion inspiration are Louis Vutton, Diamond Supply Company, Givenchy, and Comme Des Garcons.

Student’s take on the journey to lose weight and get fit

Photo courtesy of Damian Hogan

Great lengthsSenior Damian Hogan poses for a picture while climbing up a rock wall. Hogan has lost a total of 70 pounds. He jogs whenever he can and does lots of cardio to help stay fit and counts calories to help keep track of his weight.

Lifestyle Self improvement

Photo courtesy of Leif Montgomery

Ready to fight the weightSenior Leif Montgomery poses for a photo during his Mixed Martial Arts class. Montgomery has lost a total of 145 pounds. He has been working to lose weight since tak-ing health class during his junior year. Montgomery works out daily.

Photo courtesy of Damian Hogan

Finally fitSeniors Leif Montgomery and Damian Hogan pose for a picture during lunch. This was one of the first photos both took after losing weight and getting fit.

Substitute foods don’t eliminate them

Try to get at least 30 minutes of exercise

Eat smaller portions

Drink water

Weight Loss Tips

Savannah GarzaEntertainment Editor

Everybody has a dream, and that is why seniors Al-berto Suarez and Sterling Perdomo named their cloth-ing line “DREAMS.”

Suarez and Perdomo started their clothing line in the summer of 2012 and their shirts have become a trend among high school students.

“We have two collections and together we have sold about 90 shirts so far,” Su-arez said. “I’m really proud of how our clothing line has done so far. I never thought that I could make this hap-pen.”

“I’ve seen kids from Aus-tin and Crockett with our shirts,” Perdomo said. “It feels awesome.”

Junior Heitzel Alva-renga was one of the first “DREAMS” fan to purchase one of their shirts.

“I thought the design was pretty dope,” Alvarenga said. “The whole concept is pretty cool how they’re try-ing to do their own thing.”

“DREAMS” has two shirts for sale right now; their signature one has the title of the clothing line and behind it has a NASA-inspired pattern. This notori-ous design came from their graphic designer, Crockett student, Jonathan Diaz. Rap-per ASAP Rocky inspired the other shirt, the shirt dis-plays a women’s mouth with the American flag pattern on it and her bottom teeth are gold.

“Various types of music influences us,” Suarez said. “Rappers like Danny Brown and many Detroit rappers. Designers like Nicky Dia-

mond from Diamond Supply influence us too.”

A clothing line is some-thing Suarez and Perdomo have thought about doing for a while.

“We always look at shirts and think what if we did this to it,” Perdomo said.

“I just wanted to do some-thing people will be proud of wearing.” Suarez said. “I was sitting down at my desk and listening to music, and something just came up in my head so I went to Jona-than about what I was think-ing and then I told him about the idea. He was feeling it, we made it happen and it turned out to be a success.”

According to Suarez and Perdomo, the process of trying to have a successful clothing line requires hard work. Over the summer they all had summer jobs so they could pay for the expenses of having the shirts made.

“Money is the hardest thing to get, we are still in high school and still only 17 years old. I think people forget that. We actually have to work hard really hard and people do not really see that,” Suarez said. “We all had summer jobs like work-ing at Bill Millers, cleaning houses, and being soccer refs.”

Suarez plans to go to Houston Baptist University or Southwestern University.

“I am going for soccer. I am thinking about maybe graphic design or maybe even fashion design,” Su-arez said. “My mother is giving me lessons on how to use a sewing machine. Right now, other than graphic tees I want to make button-up shirts.”

Perdomo plans to go to the University of Arkansas

or St. Edwards University.“I want to do graphic de-

signing and business man-agement, we are both trying to look towards the things we want to do in our future,”

Perdomo said.Alvarenga hopes the

clothing line continues after Suarez and Perdomo gradu-ate this year.

“So far a lot of people

have bought their shirts, I believe that they should keep going on with what they are doing,” Alvarenga said. “They just want to be someone in life, they want

to get far, they do not want a nine to five job, they want to actually be someone and be known. Honestly, I think that is what their real dream is and they can achieve it.”

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Haleigh WagnerManaging Editor

In portable 310, French

teacher Rachel Tennen shares her love of French with her students.

In October, Tennen re-

ceived an award for New Foreign Language Teacher of The Year for 2012 from the Texas Foreign Language

Association. “I was really flattered

when I was nominated,” Tennen said. “The whole

thing was a great experience and was overall really excit-ing.”

Tennen was nominated by AISD foreign language coordinated, Tina Dong.

“She is a hard-working and dedicated teacher who puts a lot of time and effort into her lesson planning,” Dong said.

Tennen received the award at a luncheon during the TFLA conference and was accompanied by her mom.

“Even though I knew that I got the award beforehand I was still really excited when they called my name,” Ten-nen said. “It was really nice because they read excerpts from the recommendation letters, so it was awesome to hear all of the things that people said about me.”

Tennen hasn’t always been interested in French.

“My adviser really pushed me to persue my studies in French when I was

in college,” Tennen said.Tennen was always inter-

ested in education.“My mom was always in

education so I knew that I wanted to do something with education,” Tennen said. “When I started getting into French I knew that was what I wanted to teach. I was re-ally happy that I got the abil-ity to combine the two in my job.”

Her favorite part of teach-ing is getting to share things with her students. “I love having the ability to share what I love and know about French with my students,” Tennen said.

Dong sees promise in Tennen.

“We are very lucky to have such an incredible edu-cator who shows so much passion and enthusiasm from the start,” Dong said. “I know she will continue to work at this level of commit-ment as she moves forward in her career.”

Monday, 12.17.12 Student Life The Eagle’s Eye page 7

Teachers Recognition

French teacher receives state level honor Rachel Tennen awarded New Teacher of The Year award at TFLA conference

Photo courtesy of Reevesworks Photography

Award winning smileFrench teacher, Rachel Tennen smiles as she hears letters of recommendations read about her at the Texas Foreign Lan-guage Association luncheon. Tennen recieved New Foreign Language Teacher of the Year award from TFLA.

Alumni Life after high school

Lasonde partakes in many after school activitiesSavannah Garza

Entertainment Editor

Acting, singing, debat-ing, speaking and advanced placement classes; welcome to the daily life of junior Elana Lasonde.

Lasonde is a first year speech and debate member and has already won awards, and is the only student in speech and debate to win this year.

She was first awarded in October at a competition at Anderson high school for seventh place in a solo de-bate.

“I was nervous but re-ally excited though, because I made it to the final round,” Lasonde said.

Communication applica-tions teacher, Jesus Valles, is

the debate and speech coach for the club at school.

“Elana is the competitor who’s done the best so far. She took seventh place out of 45 students at the sea-son opener, which is pretty great,” Valles said. “It’s been a long time since Akins had anyone any one in the fi-nals.”

Lasonde has also been in-corporating her acting skills in to debate and speech. “Debate has been very influ-ential in my acting, it’s put me in places I haven’t been before,” she said.

Another reason Lasonde has joined speech and debate is because of her unique passion for English.

“There are so many things about debate that is so philosophical and deep in to

literature, and I’m a litera-ture person,” Lasonde said. “I love writing, I’ve done it longer than I’ve acted.”

Lasonde and Valles are concerned that there aren’t enough people in speech and debate to compete fully as teams, and both hope more people will get involved with the two activities.

“There’s a multitude of reasons why you should join debate, it builds up your in-dependence,” Lasonde said. “It’s realistic, it’s good and helps you for a career. It’s a fun club to go to.”

“It’s one of the few times where you get 10 minutes to have an entire room full of people listen to whatever you have to say,” Valles said.

Along with acting, debate and speech on Lasonde’s

plate, she also sings, and it is one of her biggest passions.

“Singing is my life, it’s who I am,” Lasonde said. “I’ve done a lot of singing, this spring I’m doing a solo ensemble, I’m performing an Italian song that I’ve been working on for a long time.”

Lasonde is also consider-ing doing debate in college and planning to go to school to major in singing and mi-nor in acting.

“She’s a really talent-ed performer and actress, there’s this force about her. There’s this crazy commit-ment to her, when she de-cides she want’s to do some-thing she goes out and does it,” Valles said. “She’s very enthusiastic, and in a lot of ways she’s always hungry to be a leader.”

Alumni Cruz wins All-American

Spotlight Talent

Savannah Garza

Practice makes perfectJunior Elana Lasonde practices the Christmas song “Jingle Bells.” Lasonde is in the vocal ensemble in the choir, on the speech and debate and participates in theatre.

Please S’il vous plait Yes Oui Goodnight Bonne nuitGoodbye Au revoir

French Phases

Christian Yanez

Staff Reporter

Former Akins soccer star Chuy Cruz has been named into the NCAA college di-vision Scholar All-South Region Team. Growing up in East Austin and attend-ing Ortega Elementary, Cruz discovered the game of soc-cer at the early age of 10.

Since then Cruz has de-veloped a passion for the sport which has given him multiple opportunities for the future ahead in his life, such as the ability to attend High Point University in North Carolina and Francis Marion University in South Carolina. When attending high school as a junior, Cruz played mid fielder for the varsity soccer team in 2008 that made it to the 1st play-off games of the school’s history.

The team qualified for the post season again in 2010,

Cruz’s senior year. Cruz’s former high school varsity coach Bob Williams who re-mains the Akins varsity soc-cer coach, considers Cruz an intense and emotional player on the field, as well as one of his top players that he has coached in his entire high school coaching career.

“He was an intense and emotional player, and was a team leader and led the team on the field,” Williams said.

Cruz’s soccer stats weren’t his only impressive talents’ considering that he was in the top 10 percent of his high school class which was also looked up in the eyes of his coach. Williams also considers Cruz’s tal-ent of being a good student another one of the traits that define him as a true player.

“He had a high GPA and was a good student. He was in the top 10 percent of his class and stayed out of trou-ble,” said Coach Williams.

Although Cruz is playing

soccer for Francis Marion University he does not plan on pursuing his love of the sport later on in his life. Cruz is currently majoring in ac-counting at Francis Marion University, and plans on en-tering the work force after college rather than of play-ing soccer professionally.

“I don’t really plan on pursuing soccer profession-ally. Right now I’m going to focus on my degree in ac-counting and hopefully go to grad school,” Cruz said.

One of Cruz’s biggest in-spirations for playing soccer was his tax accounting pro-fessor, due to the fact that his professor had also played in numerous sports when in college.

Even though Cruz won’t be pursuing his soccer ca-reer, he is thankful for where the sport has gotten him in life.

“My college education wouldn’t be possible today if not for soccer,” Cruz said.

Stephanie ZunigaStaff Reporter

It’s been around for so long with its cap-tivating story of a girl who falls in love with a vampire, but what’s been put on the big screen wasn’t exactly what was in the book but still caught everyone’s attention.

I read Twilight in fifth grade and was addicted to reading it, I would

stay up nights, read all the time in class just whenever I could fit in the time to read it, and as soon as I finished the first book I jumped straight onto the second book New Moon, and by that point I read the rest of the series which was then the movies started coming out and everyone was a “Twihard”

Due to Robert Patterson, Kristen Stew-art, and Taylor Lautner where the world-known phenomenon started with Team Edward and Team Jacob, the movies kept around so many people waiting to see what would happen next, keeping them coming for each movie release.

Hunger Games in a way is like Twilight because both main characters are fighting to stay alive but in very different ways but the one thing that unites them is that they’re fighting for the ones that they love.

Twilight to me has a more interesting plot to it because you don’t exactly know where they’re headed but the clues keep you reading on.

What’s impressive is that even though the Twilight series consists of four long books, and five long movies stuck all these years, and grabbed even more fans when the movies released, and for people to wait a year, each year for each of these movies and to stick by them and never lose fans is unbelievable.

Mark VallejoStaff Reporter

“Its just the new Twilight,” say people that just don’t know the difference. When people say that about Hunger Games it ag-gravates me because if the people read the books, they would see a huge difference. The two things Hunger Games and Twilight have in common are the narrators, Katniss and Bella, who fight for the ones they love and that they have to make difficult decisions.

The Hunger Games is about surviving in a very twisted world with a sick government, while Twilight is about love between a hu-man and a vampire. I think that The Hunger Games is more admirable because it has something you’ve probably never read about

before. In The Hunger Games series, there are

some scenes that can get dull but for the first movie they added some scenes to catch the attention of the viewer and keep it exciting movie. In the next two books, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, you will be hooked with shocking moments and some twists that you never expected.

I’m not saying that the Twilight series’ books and movies are horrible, but The Hun-ger Games is sharper and of higher quality. I’ve read Twilight before and watched the movies. They weren’t amazing, in fact they’re a little dull and felt like any other fictional tale I’ve read.

While Bella tries to figure out whom she loves, Katniss is out there fighting for her life. Although the Twilight series has made more money in the box office, The Hunger Games story will progress in the future and will be one great series.

#TeamHungerGames

Francisco De La RosaStaff Reporter

Jonathan Hodges, a violinist in the

Akins orchestra, competed in Region 18, which is the orchestra high school ensemble for central Texas. Hodges competed with 122 other violinists from across the state and received 16th chair in the ensemble that performed in mid-November at Westlake high school

“I am very honored to receive 16th chair out of all 122 other violinist that competed,” Hodges said. “I feel like I could have done better though.”

“I am so proud of Jonathan’s accom-plishment.” orchestra director Cath-erine Bennett said. “Its very tough for a string player to get to the Area level.”

Hodges is in the Akins guitar en-semble as well and participated in a performance the guitar class did at a school board meeting in November.

The guitar ensemble and orchestra are in preparation for University In-terscholastic League (UIL), which is a competition that is made to test skills of musicians across the nation.

Hodges hopes he can do as well in UIL for guitar as he did in Region 18 for violin.

“I would really like to do my best in UIL” Hodges said “however my main priority is improving my musicianship with violin.”

Hodges participates in the champs program along with the normal orches-tra program and is kept busy in his ad-venture to become a great musician.

“I think that in order for students to get to this level as a musician you have to be 100% dedicated to your in-strument. That means endless hours of practice and endless hours of private lessons with a professional violinist, violist, cellist or bassist,” Bennett said. “Students have a lot going on at Akins High School and I think they should be successful at whatever they are pas-sionate about.”


Arts & Entertainment

Dedicated student’s talent recognizedMusician plays for room filled with faculty at AISD school board meeting

Fine Arts Show stopper

Opinions Movies

Savannah Garza

Sounds of the stringsSophomore Jonathan Hodges tunes his guitar before practice for the school board meeting. Hodges also plays violin in the Orchestra where he competed in Region 18, receiving 16th chair.

Savannah Garza

Post-war setting game released as sequel to Black OpsReview Video games

Tyler DericksonStaff Reporter

Closing out the year of 2012 many gamers patiently waited for some of the most anticipated releases of games in gaming history.

Black Ops 2 was considered one of the most pre-ordered games in history when it was released on November 13th, 2012.

This game was the sequel to Call Of Duty Black Ops. It is connected with two story lines the first being set

from 1986 to 1989 after the Cold War where you play as the character in the first Black Ops Alex Mason.

The second story line takes place in the year 2025 where you take place as Alex Mason’s son, David Mason.

The main antagonist in the game is a man named Raul Menendez.

He was a drug cartel leader in Nicaragua during the first

Cold War where he encounters Alex Mason for the first time. Later on in David Mason’s time he becomes the leader

of a group called “Cordis Die” they are a massive populist

movement with more than a million followers. He sets an attack of futuristic drones across the Unit-

ed States sending the United States military into a national panic.

Menendez is linked with both time frames in the story because he fights both Alex and David Mason in their re-spected eras.

New to the Call Of Duty series was the option of how the game ends.

During the story mode there are certain decisions that can be made that affect the outcomes for the ending of the game.

There are four endings. “ It gives the game more replay value when you add four

different endings,” sophomore Chris Remington said. I thought that this game was the best one to date on the

Call Of Duty series. With the additions and the plot to the game I thought the

Call Of Duty organization went over the top. I give it a 9 out of 10 because there are a few flaws in

multi-player, but I feel it is an all around great buy.

Hunger Games, Twilight fans choose sides on sagas

New AISD Board Members

Gina HinojosaJayme Mathias

Ann TeichAmber Elenz

John Hauser

Haleigh WagnerIn-Depth Editor

The cold, chilly winter air brings warmer fashions to campus.

Around school, girls have been wearing scarves and cardigans to keep warm.

Some trends for scarves are bright color, animal print and infinity scarves.

A big trend for girls in cardigans is the “Boyfriend” cardigan; it is oversized and typically detailed on the elbows, or around the edges.

Shoe trends include riding boots, combat boots and UGG boots.

Boys on campus have been sporting leath-er and denim jackets along with dark washed jeans. Other big trends for boys are beanies, camouflage pants, long sleeve crew necks.

Big brands are Crooks and Castles with

long sleeves and Nike’s new shoes the Pink Foams and Lebron X’s.

Colors like tans and beiges, deep browns, along with jewel tones were very popular on the runway. Many popular trends like ponchos and colors like deep oranges and yellow. Oversized or very fitted; nothing in between, are very popular styles.

Bubbly, sweet with an immaculate sense of style is senior Luisa Veronica Talamas.

From her designer sunglasses, to her extrav-agant jewelry; her style is one of a kind. Talamas

spends most of her time working on the yearbook, ap-plying for colleges, creating art and interning with a local

jewelry designer.Talamas’ fashion icons include Oscar de la Renta,

Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.“I like the designers because most of their collections

are very classy and delicate,” Talamas said. “They don’t

need extravagant designs to show their skills.”Talamas doesn’t have a favorite store to shop at.“I just like to shop where ever,” Talamas said. “I just go

into stores, and wait for something to catch my eye.”Her advice fashion advice for everyone would be to just

be yourself.“Don’t buy something just because of the brand and,

don’t buy it because of the designer,” Talamas said.

Monday, 12.17.12 Arts & Entertainment The Eagle’s Eye page 9

Hannah KernsStaff Reporter

From dancing to singing that vibrates throughout the the-ater, the characters take their place and the musical starts.

As the end to another calendar year comes yet again the Akins theater department worked hard in preparation for the musical West Side Story.

West Side Story is a modern version of Romeo and Juliet, which is about forbidden love and the depths the lovers will go to stay together.

“Rehearsals have been a roller coaster ride,” musical di-rector Maureen Siegel said. “The crew has been working in-credibly hard.”

This year the crew had a lot to do in preparation for the musical. There were dance scenes and high musical notes to tackle.

“Rehearsals were stressful but a lot of fun,” senior Gabri-ela De La Rosa said. “It’s finally starting to look good and come together.”

Maria and Tony, the protagonists, fall in love at a school dance where they meet for the first time. The magic hap-pened once their eyes locked and eventually, so did their lips.

The love stricken couple secretly goes against everything they were ever taught to be together. Racial tension brings huge drama and a disaster of an end.

“She falls madly in love with Tony and nothing can stop their love,” De La Rosa said.

Maria’s older brother, Bernardo, is the Puerto Rican lead-er of the Sharks and Maria’s white lover, Tony, is one of the leaders of the Jets, two rival gangs that will stop at nothing to end the other.

Throughout the play the two gangs bump heads and de-cide to rumble it out. As decided the fight starts out clean but soon enough Tony’s brother, Riff, and Bernardo are killed.

“He doubts everything he grew up with just to be with Maria, a girl of the opposition,” senior Jackson King said.

Maria and Tony are left with nothing but to run away, they separate and plan to meet each other but Maria runs into issues and leaves her sister, Anita, to go tell the news. Anita eventually lies to protect her sister but causes more problems

then she knows. Maria is left without a brother and a lover. The terrible, inevitable death of Tony leaves the story at

a sad goodbye. “I’m glad everyone kept their energy high,” King said. “I

felt that the show went very well.”

Fine Arts Musical

Play highlights 1950’s racial tensionsTwist on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” brings enemies together for love

Savannah Garza

The show must go onSenior Jackson King stabs senior Daniel Maya in a gang fight between the Jets and the Sharks. King’s character Tony was the protagonist alongside senior Gabriella De La Rosa’s character, Maria; the two fell in love in the beginning of the play.

Fashion For Thought

Social Fashion forward Soundgarden makes a comeback

Jacqueline RodriguezStudent-Life Editor

Doors fling open with crowds of people rushing in to grab the fresh new clothes placed on tables and racks, the new H&M store is here and open for business.

H&M, which held its grand opening on No-vember 17th, accompanied with the first 500 shoppers anxiously waiting outside, was the first ever H&M built in Austin.

“When I saw the line the day of the opening I was very overwhelmed because there were so many people waiting to go in and shop, includ-ing me,” senior Arisbeth Garcia said.

The new store, which has multiple locations in multiple cities and countries, has recently become popular with many students.

“I heard really great things about the store and I really like that is affordable and has amazing clothing,” Garcia said. “H&M is very different than other stores because the clothes look high end but they are in fact very afford-able.”

H&M is a widely known retail-clothing company, which brought much anticipation to its fellow shoppers.

“I was really ecstatic to find out they were opening one in Austin,” senior Danielle Molina said. “I had been to the one in Dallas so I was excited to have one closer to home now.”

With many different qualities, H&M has fully gotten the attention it deserves by fellow shoppers.

“To me it is more of they call fashion for-ward than the popular stores today,” Molina said.

With the affordable clothing, unique fashion sense, and overall newness, H&M is a store many hope to visit and help update the fashion world today.

“I think many people will start shopping there and it will be really big,” Garcia said. “I am glad H&M is here in town now because now there is much more variety clothing wise.”

With the opening of H&M, there is much joy to go around.

Savannah Garza

Simple styleSenior Luisa Talamas wears her signature Prada glasses. One of her favorite designers is Yves Saint Laurent.

Sava

nnah

Gar

za

Ben LivingstonSports Editor

After thirteen years of hiatus, Soundgarden has returned with a brand new thirteen-song record of new content, titled King Animal.

This album is a power-house of sound. It reaches across the full spectrum of Soundgarden’s various musical attributes that they have gathered over their time together. This was a very strong come-back set of songs, and each song has a unique turn, with the work as a whole progressing and changing. King Animal has found a place in my albums to keep and re-visit time and time again.

Soundgarden’s pres-ence dates back to 1984, with their first major re-lease of Ultramega OK, a punk-driven set of songs with a dark theme. Their first release helped them earn a Grammy nomina-tion for Best Metal Per-

formance in 1990.Their most famous

and well-known album is Superunknown, with hits such as “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman” raiding the airwaves and domi-nating the market. Their last record, Down On The Upside, yielded “Burden In My Hand,” a song that continues to play on alter-native stations today.

Soundgarden had a lot of precedent to live up to on this newest album like strong percussive enforcement, driving and sonic guitar lines, and powerful dominant vo-cals.

In their first song of their new record, they immediately pull out all the stops. “Been Away Too Long” makes quite a punch.

The third track on the album rebels against con-vention. “By Crooked Steps” really adds an obscure lyrical pattern, which sometimes goes off the rhythmic form

set by the drums and the guitar. The whole song is a scrambled set of ele-ments.

One of my favorite songs on the album is “Taree.” A circling guitar riff and the signature am-bience from lead guitarist Kim Thayil really help define this middle point of the record.

By the end of the re-cord, it drops to a darker, bass-driven round. En-chanting beats and drawn out lyrics slow the album down again, leaving you with a heavy feeling by the end of the CD in tradi-tional Soundgarden style.

Though the album doesn’t have a single or even a couple of dominat-ing tracks that help define the band again, it does go through Soundgarden’s perspectives, except for maybe their punk, rebel-lious thrust that they had when they were younger. For Soundgarden and rock fans, this album is definitely a must listen.

Highly anticipated store opens


In-Depth - Holiday

Haleigh Wagner

Managing Editor

While many people have one holiday like

Christmas, Muslims celebrate two.

Freshman Maheem Anjum celebrates those

two holidays in the religion of Islam.

“I celebrate Eid al-Fitr and Eid ad-Adha,”

Anjum said. “Eid al-Fitr is about giving to oth-

ers and the community. Eid al-Adha is mostly

about having fun and getting together with your

family.”During Eid al-Fitr, the biggest part is to give

to others.“We cook food for other people who have no

homes,” Anjum said. “We also go to shelters and

help out animals. We just try to do as much as we

can for others.”Eid al-Adha is more about receiving than giv-

ing.“It’s basically exactly like Christmas because

you get things from others,” Anjum said. “The

only difference between Eid al-Adha is that you

get money and no physical objects. You also

don’t decorate like you do for Christmas or some

other holidays.”These holidays are celebrated after Ramadan.

“Ramadan is when we fast from sunrise to

sundown from about July to August,” Anjum

said. “The days that Ramadan is change from

year to year because it’s based on the Islamic

calendar. The Islamic calendar is set up accord-

ing to follow the moon.”

Anjum thinks these holidays are more then

just teaching you a life lesson.

“It’s important because it’s part of your reli-

gion,” Anjum said. “But, I think it’s really about

spending time with your family.”

Although Anjum really cares about her reli-

gion and holidays, there is one downfall.

“The only bad thing is that I don’t get to skip

school like everyone else does for Christmas,”

Anjum said. “I still have to make up everything

that I miss.”

The First Night: recite blessings one, two and three then light one candle in the menorah

The Second Night: recite blessings one and two then,

light two candles in the menorah

The Third Night: recite blessings one and two then light

three candles menorah

The Fourth Night: recite blessings one and two then,

light four candles

The Fifth Night: recite blessings one and two then,

light five candles

The Six Night: recite blessings one and two then,

light six candles

The Seven Night: recite blessings one and two then,

light seven candles

The Eighth Night: The menorah is lit after Shabbat ends and the

Havdalah is recited. Recite blessings one and two and kindle eight

lights in the menorah.

Christmas

Photo Courtesy of Sam Adami-Norgan

A Texas Christmas Senior Sam Adami-Norgan’s Christmas tree sparkles with Longhorn spirit. Adami-Nor-gan’s family has three other Christmas trees.

Photo Courtesy of Sam Adami-Norgan

“Go Cowboys!”Adami-Norgan’s Dallas Cow-boys tree sparkles with blue and silver. Adami-Norgan thinks Christmas is mostly about spending time with family.

Timeline of Hanukkah

Hanukkah

Eid al-Fitr & Eid al-Adha


During the first week of Decem-ber, senior Samantha Norgan starts decorating her house for Christmas.

The focus of all her decorations is the four Christmas trees that fill up her house.

“The four Christmas trees started with my aunt,” Norgan said. “She is a big Cowboys and a big Longhorns fan so we have a lot of those orna-ments. We ended up having so many that they we decided they needed separate trees. We also have one tree with regular ornaments. I also have a tree in my room that I decorated,” Norgan said.

Norgan’s family believes it’s worth the hard work, because the trees aren’t just decorations.

“It’s a labor of love because, in a way, it honors the traditions of our family.” Norgan’s aunt, Sylvia San-chez said. “My mom always had a Christmas tree, no matter how lean times were or however sick she was. That spirit really carried into our home.”

Although Norgan’s family seems to go all out, Christmas isn’t all about decorations.

“It’s a time to see family that you usually don’t get to see and spend time with them,” Norgan said. “It’s just a nice and relaxing day.”

Norgan really enjoy Christmas.

“It just really makes me feel hap-py and excited,” Norgan said. “It’s a great time of year.”

Norgan has many traditions with her family.

“We usually have a brunch and open presents on Christmas day,” Adami-Norgan said. “We go to the trail of Trail of Lights every year.”

She took a long time to realize how important Christmas is, but now she doesn’t take it for granted.

“Being a senior shows me that I shouldn’t take times like these for granted,” Adami-Norgan said. “It showed me how important things like this really are. I hope that they don’t change when I go to college, and things are still the same.”

What is Eid?Definition:

Eid is the conclusion of the 29 or 30 days of dawn-to-sunset fasting

during Ramadan. Eid al-Fitr is mostly to show community coming

together. Eid al-Adha is about giving and receiving money.

Sonn

y M

olin

aH

aleigh Wagner

Sonny Molina

Haleigh W

agner


Hanukkah is the festival of lights, a ceremony of dedication, and a time to bring family together in reminder of the taking back of the Holy Land in Israel.Sophomore Harold “Isaac” Rabi-nowitz celebrates this holiday.“Hanukkah is about lighting the menorah in remembrance,” Rabi-nowitz said. “1000’s of years ago, there was a fight for the promise land. The Jewish took back their land and lit an oil lamp. They believed that the lamp would only stay light for one night, but it ended up staying lit for eight nights: that is why there are eight nights of Hanukkah.”

During Hanukkah, there are many traditions.“We light the menorah every night,” Rabinowitz said. “We go to Synagogue, sing songs and say prayers. We also spend a lot of time with family.”

Some other traditions are the type of food they eat.“We eat Matzo,” Rabinowitz said. “Matzo is a type of bread that has no yeast in it. Matzo is really similar to crackers; it’s flat and kind of crunchy.”

Another popular food during Ha-nukkah is latkes.“Latkes are potato that a cut small, added to other ingredients and then fried in oil,” computer technol-ogy teacher Stewart Berkowitz said.

“Since I’m practically vegan now, and I still want to eat latkes so, we made them without eggs. They were almost the same, still good but just a twist on the original.” One tradition of Hanukkah is to give eight small gifts.“We usually get small presents that are like a couple dollars then one really big gift that’s more expensive at the end of Hanukkah,” Rabinowitz said. “It just really depends on your family though, some people I know just get one really big gift.”To Rabinowitz, the point of Ha-nukkah is remembrance.“Hanukkah is about remembering what people have been through and sacrificed for you,” Rabinowitz said. “You have to remember that.”

Information courtesy of: http://islam.about.com/od/hajj/a.htm


Sports

OKC-HOU trade proves to be a win for Thunder

Max Kosusnik Staff Reporter

Did Kevin Martin read my last column or some-thing?

It seems like ever since I wrote my column in the last issue, the momentum has flipped from James Harden being the potential MVP of the league, to be-ing an average starter for the Houston Rockets, and Kevin Martin being an average backup, to a near-better replica of Harden when he was the sixth man for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

As of the release of our last issue, Houston Rock-ets starting shooting guard Harden has averaged 24.1 PPG, 5.4 APG, .427 FG %, .341 3PT %, .834 FT %, and 4.1 RPG in 38.8 minutes per game.

His stats aren’t as they were projected to be when he started the season hot by putting up career highs like when he scored 45 against the Atlanta Hawks in early November.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma City Thunder sixth man Martin, is averaging 16.1 PPG, 1.7 APG, .462 FG %, .477 3PT %, .928 FT %, and 2.4 RPG in 19.7 minutes per game.

Harden tops Martin in points per game, assists per game, and rebounds, but that would be expect-ed, considering he plays almost 10 minutes more per game than Martin.

Another thing to con-sider is Martin is a sea-soned veteran (in his eighth year) who doesn’t need to be in the limelight to produce, unlike his counterpart Harden, be-cause he plays along side Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

Meanwhile, Harden is the main focus on a Hous-ton Rockets team that is in a rebuilding stage of their franchise.

The Thunder, without a star caliber player in Harden, can focus more on what Durant and West-brook do, which is put up league-high stats and win-ning games, while main-taining the same presence on the bench that is needed late in games when Okla-homa City’s stars rest.

Don’t forget about the two first-round picks Oklahoma City will re-ceive in next year’s draft. Whoever the Thunder take, will just add to the depth on their bench, un-less someone with great potential falls to them, then they would really be the winners of this trade.

I’m not saying Kevin Martin will win Sixth Man of the Year or anything, but I almost want to say the Thunder won the trade with the Rockets.

If you put aside who won and who lost the trade though, and you have one of the top trades in a while, with it working out well for both sides.

Some would say it even overshadows the Dwight Howard to Los Angeles Lakers trade.

Liz HernandezStaff reporter

The varsity Eagles soc-cer team begins their season this year with a scrimmage against the Reagan Raiders on December 27th.

The team feels comfort-able with many of the var-sity payers returning from last year.

“We have many return-ing players, we only lost two from last year,” Head Coach Robert Williams said.

Varsity and junior var-

sity’s first regular season game is on January 10th, during the Hays Rebel cup. The first game for the freshmen is on January 22nd at Akins.

“I want to see how the team responds to actually playing on the field as a team,” Williams said.

The team will rely on their varsity experience heavily this year.

“Our varsity has more experience than most of the teams in the Austin district,”

Williams said. “Most teams have young-

er players on their teams.”

The play-ers seem to be confident about the up-

coming sea-son. “The varsity

team has an amazing touch to them,” junior Eric Lozano said.

Some of the players be-lieve that they have a chance to play at the professional level, as players from past teams have.

“Some players on the team may have a chance to go professional, like some of the previous players from Akins have,” Lozano said.

Lozano, however, has no intentions on playing at the professional level.

“I play soccer for fun and that is it,” Lozano said.

One of Lozano’s fellow teammates seems to agree

with him about how the team will do this year.

“We help the new play-ers by scrimmaging them and telling them what they can improve on to be better players,” Junior Javier Mar-tinez said.

Martinez and Lozano play soccer for different rea-sons.

“I have always watched soccer as a kid and wanted to play it,” Martinez said. “I have been playing soccer since I was seven, now I am 17 and still playing.”

Sonny Molina

Soccer Team tryouts

New and old players try out with new plans

Dez Moore Editor-in-Chief

Clock ticking down, 35 seconds left, the game tied at 45. Senior Courtlan Ross dribbles the ball back and forth from left hand to right hand. The clock hits seven seconds. Ross drives to the hoop after crossing his op-ponent and shoots the ball.

“I was thinking about everything but finishing the shot,” Ross said. “What kind of celebration should I do after I win this game.”

The shot misses. “All I could think about

was proving myself next time I had the opportunity,” Ross said.

However, junior Tedrick Lowery, who happens to be the younger half-brother of Ross, rebounded the missed game-winner and immedi-ately signaled for a time-out.

The anticipation and angst in the crowd came to ease as the official blew his whistle.

“I was really upset with Courtlan for missing that shot,” Lowery said. “But, I realized we still had a op-portunity to win the game.”

Ross inbounded the ball from under the backboard, a gentle lob in the air. Lowery jumped in the air with two defenders guarding him, caught the ball and imme-diately shot the ball before coming down.

“Coach (David) Peavy set the play up for me to catch the lob and dunk it but it didn’t turn out the way we wanted and I was just hop-ing that my shot went in,” Lowery said.

The shot rolled down the backboard and bounced once off the rim before go-ing in. The crowd erupted in

cheers.“These are the games

that show our evolution as a team,” senior Frederick Bar-ton said. “We would have lost that game last year.”

Barton is right, the Ea-gles fell off last year from their usual winning ways to a disappointing 12-20 sea-son record and even worse 0-10 district record.

“There was a lack of trust and leadership last year with coaches and teammates,” Barton said.

The lack of trust and leadership has been filled; as the Eagles hold a first place record of 9-1.

“We are staying disci-plined this season. We are communicating well and we have bought in to Peavy’s program,” Ross said. “Fredd (Richardson III) and I have really stepped up and be-come the leaders on the team

while other players such as Rakim (Jackson) and Mario (Trevino) are stepping up and making plays.”

“We saw the results last year and we all realized that we have to change some-thing,” Barton said.

The team suffered a blow before the season started when Peavy dismissed se-nior Lionel Hollins from the team.

“He was a good kid and I love him to death,” Peavy said. “I had to make the best decision for the team and Lionel was not buying in to what we needed to do to move forward. As good as he is, I believe we are a better team now because we have a bunch of kids buy-ing in to what we are doing here.”

Hollins transferred to Travis High School. The two teams have met once

this season and the Eagles had an impressive showing against the Rebels knocking them off 69-41.

“It was a big game for us because some of their play-ers left our school to go play over there, so we wanted to show them that even with them leaving we still can play well,” Richardson III said.

The highlight of the game came when junior Marcale Lotts viciously slammed down an alley-oop pass from Barton.

“My alley-oop was nas-ty,” Lotts said. “It was my favorite highlight so far.”

Lotts, a junior 6’7 for-ward, is a transfer from Mis-sissippi and is establishing himself as the premier big man in central Austin aver-aging seven rebounds and two blocks a game despite playing on an sprained an-

kle. “I transferred from Mis-

sissippi because I was not progressing at the level I wanted to,” Lotts said. “I chose Akins because Peavy said he would do his best to develop me and bring me to the next level.”

Lotts and Hollins were expected to become a domi-nant frontcourt this year be-fore Hollins’ departure.

“I was really looking for-ward to playing with Lionel this season,” Lotts said. “It sucks he chose to transfer.”

The team has moved on and found success even without Hollins, but clearly knows that they have much to work on before calling themselves a legitimate state contender.

“We know we have a good record and are playing well, but we are not satis-fied.” Ross said.

Basketball Hot start

Alex Herrera

Game WinnerAfter a grueling but rewarding game, the Eagles basketball team came out on top as they celebrate their 47-45 victory over the Lehman Lobos. The Eagles currently hold a 10-1 record placing them at the top of the district.

Boys win in phenomenal fashion

However, one of the coaches feels that the tournament was a disappointment by the performance that was show by his wrestlers.

“Some of the guys proved their skills and the outcome is what they deserved, but for some of the other wres-tlers I was pretty disap-pointed because they could have performed much better at the tour-nament.”

Coach Tambunga and Kirksey had bitter-sweet feelings towards the end of the night against their Travis Rebel opponents. The lady Eagles beat their lady Rebel opponents in impressive fashion but the boy’s team did not experience similar results.

“I believe if we had a full team we could have beat the Travis

Rebels,” Kirksey said. “We had to forfeit more meets than we original-ly expected and that is what our problem is.”

Anna Becerra feels that the Travis meet started off her season well since it was her first meet of the season and she won.

“When I went to other meets and tour-naments there was no one else in my weight class so I was not able to wrestle anyone un-til the Travis meet,” Becerra said. “Since I won, it started off my season on a good note and it should help me get a higher seed when I wrestle in future tour-naments.”

Meet with Travis produces mixed results

Alex Herrera

Caught in a lockSenior Frank Callahan holds his opponent in an ankle pick. Callahan won first place at the Leander tournament.

uuCont. “Wrestling” pg. 1

Wrestling Match results

Jan. 9 @ TBD

Jan. 11, 12 @ Delco

Jan. 16 @ Crockett

Jan. 19 Morton

Ranch Tournament

@ Katy

Wrestling Schedule


Photo Essay

Tragic love story brings racial gangs together

(Top Photo) Death SceneSenior Gabi De La Rosa mourns over the death of her lover who gets shot by senior Jose Maldonado playing Chino in retaliation of the death of Bernardo. Tony accepts his own demise as the tragic hero of the story according to senior Jackson King. “Having to release all the tension from the show and all the build up goes away when I fall and accept the death of my character,” King said.

(Bottom Top Photo) Waiting to attend the danceSeniors Katrina Agudo and Daniel Maya, playing Anita and Bernardo in the musical West Side Story; prepare to go to the dance where they will perform the mambo. Ac-cording to Agudo, Anita feels confident with her handsome boyfriend Bernardo before the dance because she knows she looks gorgeous and will steal the crowd’s attention. “Before mambo, Anita is feeling confident and arrogant,” Agudo said. “With a dashing, handsome man on her arm and a stunning dress she made herself; I thought she had everyone reason to intimidate all the other girls and strike a pose.”

(Bottom Photo) Puerto ricoStarring as a young girl from Puerto Rico named Rosa-lina, senior Melissa Maya sings about her characters feelings on how much she misses and wishes she could go back home. Maya wanted to audition for the role as Maria, but knew it was more stress. “I really wanted to try out for the main role as Maria, but it was stressful because there would have been more pressure put on me,” Maya said. “Overall it was fun and it was cool to have a duet with Kat.”

(Side Photo) Intimate momentRomance blooms between the two lovers Maria and Tony played by seniors Gabi De La Rosa and Jackson King. Ma-ria and Tony share a strong bond of love in the play which according to De La Rosa did not stop her from doing an outstanding job and show that once your on stage you are in the world of the show. “Rehearsals were strange because I was friends with Jackson for a very long time so there was a lot of laughing in each others faces,” De La Rosa said. “But once I got on stage my mind set was that I was Maria and I was lost in love with Tony.”

(Top Bottom Photo) Accepting the rumbleLeaders Riff and Bernardo played by seniors Jesus Ramirez and Daniel Maya agree to a rumble between the Jets and the Sharks over territory in Manhattan. Before going on set as Bernardo, Maya did a lot of meditation because his character was the total opposite of him. “Be-fore playing as Bernardo I mediate because he and I are completely different. He fights, is aggressive, and loves,” Maya said. “I am neither of those things besides loving. The difference between us and love is that I would pay more attention to my girl.”

Alex Herrera

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Alex Herrera

Alex HerreraPhoto Editor

Two teens coming from completely dif-ferent backgrounds fall deeply in love despite enormous odds against them was at the heart of Akins Journey The-ater’s presentation of West Side Story earlier this month.

The lovers, Maria and Tony, meet at a dance where Maria’s older protective brother Bernardo interrupts their first tender mo-ment. Tensions run deep throughout the play because Tony, who is Polish and Bernardo, who is Puerto Rican, run in rival gangs, the Jets and the Sharks.

“In the beginning Maria wants to experi-ence the world because she’s always been known as the baby,” senior Gabi De La Rosa said. “Once she meets Tony she grows up and understands what it means to fall in love and wants nothing more than to be with him.”

Tragedy strikes in the middle of the play when the two rival groups battle over terri-tory in central Manhat-tan. Both Bernardo, and the Jets leader Riff are killed. Bernardo falls at the hands of Tony, who is forced to confess his fault to Maria and sur-prisingly she accepts his apologies.

“Tony wants to es-cape his past so his

love for Maria could be safe,” senior Jack-son King said. “Even though he did kill Ber-nardo, Maria and To-ny’s love is so strong that even after every-thing all they both want is to be happily togeth-er.”

In the end, the story mirrors Romeo and Ju-liet as a member of the Sharks, Chino, who had been promised the hand of Maria, murders Tony, in retaliation. In the AJT version, the final scene brought both the Jet and Sharks together as they car-ried Tony off the stage, leaving the adult actors on the stage to contem-plate what they had witnessed.

The play was a suc-cess, according to AJT director Maureen Sie-gel, but there were try-ing moments through-out the preparation process as the original choreographer resigned weeks into production. Parent Jesus Ramirez, whose son was in the play, jumped in to fill the empty spot. Ramirez is also the Akins Football Boost-ers Club President.

“I was very excited to volunteer to choreo-graph the play, but be-fore I came there was a lot of work done by the kids already,” Ramirez said. “It was my major in college and I have been in the dance world for over 20 years. One of my passions is clas-sical ballet.”

The Eagle's Eye; Issue 3, Vol. 12; Akins High School

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Transcript of The Eagle's Eye; Issue 3, Vol. 12; Akins High School