Halloween and COVID- 19
With a deadly virus still plaguing the country and Halloween approaching new questions are being posed as to what it means for the widely celebrated holiday. From haunted houses, to trick or treating, to corn mazes there are so many different ways to celebrate, and different regulations to follow.
Children and adults alike flood the streets going door to door asking for candy, but this year if they hope to do that they are asked to wear a mask and sanitize constantly. The Springfield- Greene County Health Department issued a statement advising that neighborhoods begin trick or treating at earlier times (especially for younger children), social distancing, and to avoid contact at all costs suggesting grab and go bags rather than a candy bowl. Trunk or treats are expected to have cars parked at least one parking space away from one another, as well as enforcing that guests socially distance and wear masks.
For most of us, our days of trick or treating are over, but the usual parties and haunted houses we attend may not be the best option. The health department is saying that haunted houses should not be attended and moved outside with possible. This also means that haunted corn mazes would be ok if proper precautions are taken (masks, distancing, etc.). They also are encouraging that indoor gatherings are moved outside and that masks are worn at all times.
This Halloween will look different in more ways than one. Hopes for a return to normalcy are high and this Halloween is just a reminder of the constant change in our world today due to the novel COVID-19. We are left with the question once again, will things ever return to the way they were?
Is Hybrid Learning The New Norm?
Springfield Public Schools has recently announced the new learning plans for students k-12. As of now kindergarten through 8th grade students will be transferring to a 4 day learning week in the beginning weeks of November. Students will attend school Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Wednesday is still left open as a day for the schools to clean and sanitize. As for students in High School, there will be no changes or adjustments. High school students will still follow the hybrid learning plan from August, which included; students A-K attend school on Monday and Tuesday, while L-Z attend school on Thursday and Friday. This new plan for the k-8 students is intended for the remainder of first semester/second quarter. There are still no updates on how school will look for SPS students coming back from Winter break continuing into second semester.
Keeping Up With FCCLA
FCCLA has consistently been meeting once a week since the school year started. Right now, the club has 15 members, but their doors are always open to new ones. The group has already done many things, some of those things including: sewing their own lanyards, making caramel popcorn, and decorating the parking lot in positive words with sidewalk chalk. As far as future plans go, FCCLA plans to dive into the spooky season by making their own Halloween cake pops. They are also preparing for competition in January. “Next month we will pick out the STAR events we want to compete in and start preparing for the January competition for Region 10,” says Ms. Cox, the FCCLA sponsor. Big things are in the works for FCCLA, and they are always up for new members. Anyone interested is welcome, but their only requirement is to have taken a FACS class previously. Middle school FACS classes count as well. Applications to join the club are available in room 102.
Coronavirus
Starting in December 2019, the coronavirus or codiv19 has spread around the world. First appeared in China, in the town of Wuhan, the virus arrived in Europe and America too.
Thirty five cases are known in the U.S., but in Europe the disease is spreading fast, especially in Italy. The virus arrived in February brought by a married couple.
The real panic started during the last two weeks of February when the codiv19 started spreading in the north causing the first deaths. Italy immediately reacted isolating the infected people and the government started a political ploy closing schools and meeting points like bars, clubs and sporting facilities.
This should interest anyone thinking about traveling to Europe, especially to Italy or to Asia because the virus is causing problems with flight and airports too.
To prevent the virus, doctors suggest to often wash your hands, don’t visit crowded places and put hands in front of your mouth when sneezing.
The King of Kings
Senior Austin Blecha, is our first openly gay courtwarming king, and he’s changing the game.
“I was astonished when I found out I was nominated, I know how conservative and constricted Kickapoo is so I was even more surprised when I won,” Blecha said.
When it comes to courtwarming, homecoming and prom, there’s a consistent pattern amongst the kings and queens of every dance. They are normally blond, straight but possibly gay, white people.
“ I mean I can’t believe they voted for the gay guy, but let’s go us,” Blecha said.
Blecha has officially changed courtwarming history. Potential winners that are different from the usual candidates can feel encouraged to become a nominee.
“I have the greatest friend in the world, they nominated me and took me all the way to a king,” Blecha said.
Nationally Recognized
Mrs. Fink is the sponsor of NHS.
National Honors Society (NHS) is a nationwide organization that only select students get to be apart of.
The sponsor of NHS is Mrs. Fink and Mr. Wilbur is also an co-sponsor.
NHS has many different focuses but here on campus, they focus more on volunteering.
“The students that are in NHS focus on service projects which are pretty much volunteering here at Kickapoo,” Sponsor and Teacher Jill Fink said.
In order to be part of NHS, you must meet the qualifications that are set in place.
“The qualifications are that you have to have a cumulative 4.0 GPA or above, you have to be a sophomore or older and you have to apply,” Mrs. Fink said.
NHS has many goals and they do their best to try to include all their members.
“The goal of our club is to mostly we’ve already got really good scholars and students our push is to try to get them to understand the importance of volunteering and giving back to the community,” Mrs. Fink said.
National Art Honors Society
The last time that we talked to the sponsor, which is coach BlackBurn, he was not even sure that they would have this club this year. They were very unsure as to why they were not gonna do it this year. They were also very unsure who the sponsor was gonna be because Ms. Dunn left the Kickapoo Staff at the end of last year. They are offering Advanced Placement for the art classes and would even know if there was even a need for this club. There will probably be no club this year according to Coach.
DECA Districts
DECA recently competed at the district competition, which took place Thursday, February 20th at Seminole Baptist church.
“21 people made it to state and 16 others were finalists.” DECA sponsor Cara Posegate said.
For those who qualified, the state competition will be held March 22nd-24th. Depending on the category, participants in the state competition can move on to the national competition if they place in the top three, four, or five.
Winter Guard Wins
The 2020 Winter Guard season is off to a great start.
The JV team, Kickapoo Gold, took home first place at the Ozark Winter Guard Festival, which means that they get promoted to the next classification. They completed in the higher division the next weekend and got second place. They are currently ranked fourth in the state.
The varsity team, Kickapoo Emulation, placed first at the Ozark and Fayetteville Winter Guard Festivals. They are currently first in the state in their division and will be competing at the WGI Springfield Regional this weekend.
Southside Rivalry
This Friday the boy’s varsity basketball team will come head to head with Glendale at 7:00 pm.
Kickapoo heads into the game 14-8. Glendale enters into the game 13-9. The matchup history since 2003 comes out at 14 wins for Kickapoo and five wins for Glendale.
Backpacks and purses are subject to search. The student sections will also be separated and monitored before, during, and after the game.
“Glendale has always been our rival and beating them feels different than winning other games,” sophomore Carson Noel said.
Change Wars
Once again FBLA is doing Change Wars for this week. The teacher who’s going to collect the most money, in change, during their first block is going to win the “war”. All the money collected is going to be donated to March of Dimes, a non-profit organization helping newborn babies in town.
Mr. Wooderson and the FBLA club are giving a delicious price to the winning teacher and their class, a party of donuts for the entire class.
Courtwarming
Courtwarming: Welcome to the Jungle will be held February 28th 8-10:30 pm. Tickets are $10 the 24-26th, and increase to $15 the 27th and 28th. Before purchasing tickets, make sure to check your fines and fees, have your ID with you, and know your dates full name. Guest forms are held in the front office. If you are bringing the same guest as you brought to homecoming, you will not need a new form. Spirit week is the 24-28th. The themes are Monkey See Monkey Do (Twin Day), Explore the Jungle (Tourist/Safari), Welcome to the Jungle (Band Tees), and The Lion Sleeps Tonight (PJ Day). A photo booth will be set up in the commons to take pictures in your spirit wear. Tag @Kpoocabinet on Instagram to feature all of your pictures. The Courtwarming assembly on the 27th with court attendants: Austin Blecha, Dylan Kay, Drew Stone, Boone Shevey, Carter Vienhage, Ethan Arroyo, Grant Maturey, Jacob Hall, and Zach Hamilton.
Seals of Excellence
Photo by: Lorna Peck
Talent Show Cancelled
Students and staff were preparing to host the annual talent show, which was scheduled to take place February 20th. Due to a lack of auditions, the talent show was cancelled.
There were five auditions for the talent show, four of which were actually approved, but this did not meet the minimum of 15 performances needed to have the show.
“There won’t be a talent show this year, but we will hopefully be back next year,” Kyle Loudis said.
Loudis is a communications arts teacher, and teaches broadcast journalism. He has been teaching for 15 years. In those 15 years he has never had this happen before, but he is still positive about the upcoming years.
“I hope it will be different next year, and we will have a rocking show,” Loudis said.
Buzzing To The Top
The last few weeks have been very busy for Scholar Bowl. Their two teams have gone to different competitions and tournaments and placed highly at them.
“Last Wednesday we went to Sarcoxie where B team got first place and A team got second. We had four people that placed in the top ten at that tournament,” sophomore CJ Wears said.
Placing first and second in that tournament made Scholar Bowl fired up and prepared to continue on with their other competitions.
“That Saturday we brought four teams to WashU in St. Louis. A team got around top ten and B was around 15. There were 35 teams and it was a very difficult tournament. We have a tournament coming up in two weeks at Mizzou,” Wears said.
E-sports coming to Kickapoo?
Contender finally opened back at the end of January. Which is a E-sports “gym” to be able to train, learn, and compete against others or on their own time. Giving people the opportunity to be able to use high powered equipment that normally would cost thousands of dollars to obtain. With this obviously means that it is a goal for the other schools along with kickapoo to have true teams and tournaments as well too. The big problem though is funding. The cost to rent the space, the whole facilities, on top of the equipment ,etc. The amount it would cost wouldn’t be worth it to be able to have a full fledged team along with competition by the end of the year (3 months away).
The goal now is to try and have all five other districts to be able to compete all together and against each other. Funding is the biggest thing tho because for the fall league (when it would be starting up) would be $2,400 for the whole school with only two teams JV and Varsity with a MAX amount of people at five. All details aren’t still completely in even though contender is now open they still have failed to respond back to Mrs. Cabbella the sponsor of the E-sports club.
Hopefully by the time the next year rolls around we will be able to show our school spirit at a E-sports game cheering on Kickapoo and creating another great rivalry with Glendale within another sport. All that can be done at this point is to wait and see what will become of Kickapoo’s E-sport team. The world of this type of competition is rapidly growing and it’s only a matter of time for more people to make it big by just playing games.
The Writing Center
The writing center is pretty much a group of people that help with any sort of writing that they need help with, such as papers and other things. They have been helping my class a lot with papers that we have been writing lately. They help make edits and tell the student that is working on it basically how to improve grammar, quotations, and much more. They helped me with my paper that I wrote in English III a couple of weeks ago. They are there for any special help that we all need.
Furry Final Therapy
A Therapy dog sits and waits patiently to be pet.
Pet Therapy of the Ozarks is a program that offers certified service animals to come to schools, nursing homes, hospitals, and other facilities.
They started doing this in the library as a way to try and relieve students of stress that they may feel at the end of a semester.
“We had seen some articles about colleges doing it and we know how stressful the end of the year can be for students,” librarian Melody Netzer said.
This is the third year in a row they have visited. They came Thursday, December 12th during lunch hours. Last year they implemented tickets to try to not overwhelm the dogs.
“It is free and the only reason we do that is so we don’t overwhelm the puppies,” Netzer said.
Pet therapy is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to get out some stress or who just loves petting cute dogs.
Bowling Club
The bowling club is one of the many events that take place at Kickapoo. Bowling starts after winter break and is a very competitive club.
Bowling club practices at Andy B’s, starting after winter break. Senior Spencer Robarge is very excited to bowl this year and has been practicing very hard in the offseason.
“We are getting ready to start and hoping we have a good team coming together. Personally, I had a 300-846 about a month ago” Robarge said.
A 300 is a perfect score and 900 is a perfect score in three games. He is very excited and has been practicing for bowling by winning national events.
Kickapoo Journalism Wins Big in DC
Journalism has done it again. While they do not like to toot their own horn as much as they would like, they have done very well at their last competition in Washington D.C. There were thousands of other yearbook and magazine students at the convention and KHQ was able to win over seven titles overall. There were over 20 different competitions and the students all won individual titles in all different categories. The competition went on for approximately five days and it was stationed in the heart of Washington D.C. Along with the competition was also a numerous amount of classes that the students could attend. There were writing sessions, photography lessons, and all of the above. Students were given the option to attend these classes before the competition began to help them later on with their publication. The next convention will take place in Nashville, Tennessee in the spring.
