Rise and Shine, Park Cities (5-19-11)
School’s the rule today, friends. It’s filling up this blogger’s radar, anyway.
1. First things first: Highland Park High School’s graduating class will be home free a week from Friday. The commencement ceremony is 7 p.m. May 27, at SMU’s Moody Coliseum.
2. So at Tuesday’s trustee meeting, when school officials cheered student filmmaker Marco Bottiglieri’s latest of many accolades — best director at the National Student Television Network awards in Orlando, plus 2nd place his trailer Truth be Told — even gymnastics coach Mark Sherman had some input.
“You’ve got to know,” cracked Sherman, “that Marco was on the gymnastics team his freshman year.”
Board vice president John Bunten’s brother was on the team once too, Sherman added as the crowd began to chuckle. In short, he joked, “all roads lead to gymnastics.”
3. Really, Sherman had some crowing of his own to do: Highland Park freshman Meyer Williams recently took first place at the Texas High School Gymnastic Coaches Association state championship — a rare feat for someone so young, Sherman said, and one that puts Williams in line to break long-standing school records.
Girls senior captain Arden Howell got big kudos, too: After helping the team to its best score yet at THSGCA — 222.35 — Howell earned her team’s very first state champion title. Howell will board a bus to Florida tomorrow, said Coach Brandi Lewis, and compete with the 2011 Texas National Team.
4. When Good Shepherd Episcopal wraps up its spring semester on May 26, headmaster Bob Kohler will make a farewell of his own. With a retirement effective in June, Kohler is planning for life apart from GSES — “while there’s still just a little gas in the tank,” he tells me — and getting many a sendoff party from folks in the Good Shepherd community. Among them: a fair-sized group of fathers who’ve known him since his time at St. Mark’s, where Kohler was an administrator for more than 20 years.
