The Best Christmas Pageant Ever Decks the Halls



Senior Rena Brainard and junior Bailey Pankratz rehearse for The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which showed on December 13, 14, and 15.

              This year is the start of a tradition, one made by the Goddard High School theatre department. Mrs. Jamie Oettle, the director of the theatre department, chose The Best Christmas Pageant Ever for the winter play.

Oettle  previously taught at Goddard, and from then she put on The Best Christmas Pageant Ever for the first time in 2005. During her first year back, she is reintroducing the play.

“I chose it to try to build to program back up, partly by getting kids interested at a younger age and by having a bigger audience because of the little kids,” said Oettle.

The majority of the actors in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever are between ages three and middle school. Multiple high school actors performing this year also played parts when they were in elementary school.

“I think it’s great for them to come back because it lets them see it from a different perspective,” said Oettle.

The returning child actors are junior Bailey Pankratz, sophomores Amanda Brooks and Sydnie Randolph, and freshman Malori Bridwell.

“It’s weird as a high schooler because I have to take care of the little kids, and they had to take care of me,” said Bridwell.

Oettle chose this play for many reasons. For one, it was because it has a deeper, biblical message about Christmas. Secondly, it tells about how stereotypes can cause people to misjudge people. Lastly, because characters change from the beginning to the end.

“Anytime a director can get a character [to] change in a play, it’s always a good choice,” said Oettle.

 

Young Golf Team Struggles to Find Swing

By C.J. Hall

The Girls Golf teams are considered to have a rough season ahead of them. The only returning varsity players are senior Shelby Hooper and sophomore Taylor Schlyer. The lack of returning varsity players challenges the team and pushes them to achieve something good.

"The girls might look up to me more since I am the only senior," senior Shelby Hooper said.

This year is a rebuilding year for the team. This puts new expectations and goals in place for them.

"My expectation for the team is for them to get better at practice and get lower scores," Girls Golf coach Ms. Rita Smith said.

Along with a set of team goals, the girls also have their own personal goals.

"My goal is to get a college scholarship and go to State," Hooper said.

The team’s other returner, sophomore Taylor Schlyer, wants to see personal improvement in specific areas of her golf game.

"I want to get better at putting because I have bad eyes and cannot see the putting line," Schlyer said.

New freshmen players this year are Haley Bloom, Bethany Cocklin, Tiahna Hernandez, and Dakota O’Dette. There are only 6 sophomores and juniors. The 4 sophomores: Lauren Wedel, Riley Stearns, Morgan Shobe, and Taylor Schlyer and the 2 juniors: Amber Freemen and Tori Watkins have already had some chemistry together. Smith sees a bright future for Girls Golf.

"The loss of many varsity players resulted in the loss of team skill, but added things like better team chemistry," Smith said.

Soccer Makes Comeback

By Karina Medrano

This year’s soccer team is making a comeback with Mr. Ryan Rooney as its coach again. They have trained to be able to win for the Lions.

"The soccer team is doing good, inconsistent, but so far it’s been really good," said Mr. Rooney.

He said that last year he had trouble with the players needing to step up and be leaders, but this year, a lot of players want a leadership role in the team. Although it has been a rough start, he has confidence that they will get through all the hardships. He has high hopes for the team.

"If only the offense could score more goals," Mr. Rooney said.

Mr. Rooney also said that mental toughness was also a weak point but it will strengthen in due time.

Some have said that everyone is cooperating and that they all have fun, are laid back, and have alot of fun.

Cross Country Lacks Seniority

By Mandy Brooks

 

The Goddard High School Cross Country teams are finding themselves challenged with a startling lack of seniority. Young runners are being looked at to achieve more, push themselves harder, and be role models for the freshman this year and the underclassman to come.

"I think there’s going to be a lot of runners that find out they can do more than they ever expected," assistant coach Ms. Marylee Ramsay said.

Ms. Ramsay also said that she expects her runners to push themselves out of their comfort zones in order to grow as runners. The runners use goal setting in order to achieve the things that they wish to accomplish. Not only have they set individual goals, but they have set team goals as well.

"My goal for this season to go to state as a team," sophomore Austin Winder said.

By setting goals, the runners know what to work towards-along with what their coaches expect out of them.

With the lack of seniority, it is considered hard for the runners to have someone to look up to. Although senior Mackenzie May has run for four years in high school, he isn’t the only inspiration for these young runners.

"I look up to Kacey Duncan and Kendra Young because they’re really fast, really good, and have a lot of endurance," sophomore Alicia Dirks said.

"I looked up to Lincoln Lemon last year, because he always seemed to do well in Cross Country," Winder said.

Not only do the runners have these current and previous Cross Country stars to look up to, they can also look to Ms. Ramsay for encouragement and tips for success.

"I started coaching in 2000, so I’ve been coaching for 12 years," Ramsay said.

Head coach Mr. Mel Hussey is also in his second year as the returning coach for these runners. Ms. Ramsay has said that although the two coaches have had different personalities, the transition from coach to coach has been fairly easy due to the fact that they both have similar coaching styles.

　

Is Sex Discrimination Justified?

By Houston Hilton

Whenever the topic of discrimination is announced, it seems to me that several people think of some of the most unoriginal words ever – namely racism. But if it is really thought about, discrimination does not necessarily pertain to stuff like racism all the time. In fact, discrimination can relate to many other factors, such as how rich somebody is – trust me, I have experience with that first hand. But perhaps one of the most prominent bases of discrimination today is sexism – discrimination based on either the sex or gender of person – and yes, there is a difference between gender and sex, technically. Don’t believe me? Well, gender is actually defined as the "role" of a person when comparing him or her to the rest of a culture or society. For example, if what many consider to be a man physically were to perform, say, raising his children and staying at home, he would be considered to have a gender of a female. Sex, on the other hand, is the factor that most of us consider the difference between a girl and guy as being…that physical distinction…need I go on? Anyway, getting back to the main subject, this sort of discrimination seems to have its own fair share of publicity these days. But is this publicity justified? In my opinion, it is not. Let me elaborate…

For starters, I don’t think that this new publicity about sexism is justified because there are still plenty of other modes of discrimination that still generally go about unnoticed. If it is really thought about, some of the most seemingly innocent happenings can technically be bits of discrimination – as known in that typical offensive sense. Take post-school systems, as an example. When someone receives a degree after completing a certain number of courses, they become eligible for more higher-paying jobs than someone who doesn’t have such a thing. As a result, there is discrimination on who can and can’t work in this respect. Some may rebut – arguing that this is not discrimination, but instead a reward system for achieving so much. But this probably isn’t so, as some of those ineligible people maybe had other reasons for not going into college besides effort – namely money. Sometimes people are forced to be inapt for acquiring a degree simply because they do not have money to pay for college in the first place! And where can that stem from? A lack of feasible, household income as a result of parents not having those higher-paying, "college only" jobs in the first place. Basically, it’s a cycle of keeping the "lower" members of that aristocracy at their current place – strikingly similar to how African Americans used to be considered lesser than White Man in the archaic Colonial American Era. But at the same time, similar to today, such discriminations pretty much went unnoticed as a political problem.

And speaking of the socially unnoticed methods of discrimination that happened throughout history, here’s another argument against the modern, comic exaggeration of popular feminine sexism: what about its opposite bit of discrimination that still widely goes out unnoticed? I mean, it is heard all of the time about women being denied jobs because, well, they’re women, but what about the men? Do not men, at times, be discriminated against for wanting to, say, do a girly job? And even if there’s not direct discrimination on the matter, there is still a general, societal conform that causes many boys to only do boy things much more often than girls - I am perhaps one major exception, as I deliberately to beat this conform by wearing pink shirt at least once every one to two weeks – anyways, getting back to the point, take Goddard High School as a local example for what I mean. Though GHS volleyball technically allows men to join the team, it still doesn’t seem to be part of GHS Volleyball culture to have some testosterone on the volleyball court - aside from managers. In fact, it wasn’t until quite recently that more estrogen was added to the, say, wrestling team was it?

So, with that said, it can be seen that sexism can, and does, go both ways. Furthermore, it can also be reasonably said that the exaggerated publicity of feminine sexism as a standalone mode of discrimination is essentially Ludacris. However, the possible publicity of that mode of discrimination, in combination with masculine sexism, and all other possible bases of discrimination is not ridiculous. I am not favoring either party on this matter. I am just stating my belief on sexism and discrimination in general.