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on to all-state Music

11/12/2014

By Jorja Weitl

"Stay fierce" said by Dustin Mennenoh (left). Bradley Nissen (right).

This year Audubon High School is proud to send not one, but two students to All-State Music. Senior Bradley Nissen and junior Dustin Mennenoh are two very talented and lucky students that get to go sing at the All-State Music Festival.

Last year Mennenoh got several of callbacks, but this year he finally gets to go to All-State and sing. Mennenoh said, “It’s pretty awesome knowing that this year all my hard work and dedication finally paid off, and I get a chance to sing at All-State. It feels great getting to say that I made it to state in something and that I proved I am a good singer.”

Nerves don’t really get to Mennenoh. He said that he knows a few people that will also be performing, so it’s going to be exciting this year.

Besides Mennenoh going to All-State for the first time, this is Nissen’s second year. Nissen said, “It’s really a big honor to be getting to sing at All-State for a second time.” During try-out Nissen said, “I got nervous during my audition, but once I’m at state I [will] feel fearless. I sing with 600 other people, so, if I do mess up, no one would notice.”

Since Nissen is a senior, he's really happy to get to go to All-State in music one last time in high school and has a few more things he’d like to accomplish before this year is over. He said, “I hope to make Jazz Choir Championships and do really well just like last year. It would be a nice cherry on top of my senior year.”

Both Nissen and Mennenoh said this year was different since they were taught by a new choir teacher, but she really helped them learn the music.

Powderpuff

10/29/2014

By: Madison Lawson

Brianna Goecke is pumped about her first year in powderpuff and is determined to win.

The annual girl’s powderpuff game is coming up! The date is set for Nov. 9. The start time is planned for 2:00 p.m. but may change to 4:00 p.m. pending the football team's postseason. There are some courageous juniors and seniors stepping up to take on this boy’s game, in a much lighter version of course. The powderpuff game consists of four, ten-minute quarters of flag football. It has been an Audubon High School tradition for six years. The participants are all doing their part to get pumped up for the game.

“My strategy is to work with my teammates, and do everything we can to just catch the ball and run with it,” said junior powderpuff player, Brianna Goecke. She enjoys the game because “it’s a tradition, and the girls are just as tough as guys.”

Taking things a little more seriously, senior coach Trevor Smith has a different strategy for his team and he said that it is too top secret to share with the press. “No comment, I wouldn’t want to reveal my strategy.” However, he said he plans on making sure his team comes out inspired and ready to play. Smith said, “We are going to be strong as a team. That’s what this game is about.”

Rachel Lewis, a senior powderpuff player, is all about having her team work together and rack up the points. She plans on pumping her team up by simply telling them, “To just go out and have some fun!”

Powderpuff is a fairly new tradition at Audubon, and Lewis said, “It’s the closest thing we have to tackle football for girls, and we all like football. We need to have a girls team! Not to mention, it helps with teamwork and bonding as a class.”

Hatching Chickens: Try Again

10/29/2014

By: Molly Armentrout

Mrs. Elmquist and her Animal Science class began a new project this year of hatching eggs.

     On the week of September 29th, Mrs. Elmquist and her Animal Science class began raising Japanese chickens from her farm. Japanese chickens are known as ornamental chickens; this means they are raised for looks and not for their meat or eggs.
    The class started with six eggs. The eggs sat in the incubator for three weeks on a rotator, to simulate the mother hen sitting on them. Before they hatched, the eggs had to be candled. To candle an egg is to hold a light under the egg to see if it is fertile or how far along the chick is.
    When it was time to watch the chicks break out of their shell, Mrs. Elmquist noticed they were having a very tough time hatching themselves. She had her class assist.
    “I did not participate in hatching the eggs, just candling them,” junior student Brianna Goecke states.
    Only one of the chicks survived the assisted hatching. Mrs. Elmquist named this little chick, Hope. Not long after Hope was looking like she could survive, she drowned herself in her little bowl of water.
    Mrs. Elmquist was determined to find out why the chicks couldn’t hatch themselves. She had her class research, and they found out that the incubator wasn’t humid enough, making the shells hard and not soft enough for a beak to break through. Of course, the Animal Science class isn’t giving up though! They now have a fertile duck egg, provided by Mrs. Elmquist, and 5 “mutt” chicken eggs provided by eighth grader, Grace Christensen.
    When asked about trying again, Brianna Goecke states, “You learn from your mistakes. [Now we know] we have to keep the incubator humid.”
    Mrs. Elmquist tells us, “There is a science to raising eggs and you have to follow the protocol of humidity and temperature. It’s hard to be a mother hen [but it was] cool to see the Animal Science class figure out what went wrong."

winn dixie in spanish

10/15/2014

By Jorja Weitl

Miss Westering going around her Spanish classroom reading and discussing with students about the book "Because of Winn Dixie".

This year Miss Erin Westering decided to have her Spanish 3 and 4 students read “Because of Winn Dixie” by Kate DiCamillo. Westering chose this book for them to read in Spanish to go along with the school district’s “One School-One Book”. Not only did she choose this because of the “One School-One Book” program, she said it also has many other benefits for the Spanish students. Westering said, “Although Spanish 3 and 4 are reading the book in a different language, younger students know that the older kids are reading right along with them.” That shows good leadership to the school’s upperclassmen. When Westering told her Spanish classes they would be reading “Winn Dixie,” they were pretty excited. Once they found out they would be reading it in Spanish, their views changed. Junior, Matracea Wagner said, “I thought we were going to read it in English, truth-be-told.”

How does reading a young kid’s book benefit a high school class? Reading a full book in Spanish is a new thing for Spanish 3 and 4 classes. Westering has the students read out loud and listen to each other in class. Westering says, “We have been working on using context-clues to gather meaning from sections of the text and finding words/phrases we understand to find the main ideas of the chapters.” By doing this, it can help “expand our vocabulary” Matracea Wagner said. Wagner also said, “It’s very difficult because I don’t know half the words.” Along with the rest of the class Wagner’s learning by reading the book in class and using the information she has already learned in Spanish. By reading an actual book, in Spanish, it introduces the students to other forms of words and phrases. It’s a good learning experience for them.

Bank Iowa Challenge Cup Winner!

9/11/2014

Audubon High School is the 2013-2014 winner of the Bank Iowa Traveling Challenge Cup in class 1A. Based on academics, athletics, and fine arts, Audubon beat out numerous schools with an impressive 750 points! For more information see the website link. Here is the video below created by Miss Granger that highlights the many activities that contributed to Audubon winning the cup.

Music - "Don't Fail Me" by Desoto Jones. Click here to find it on iTunes

Highway 71 Garage sales

4/30/2014

By Sarah Mosinski

Shoppers looking for deals on a Saturday morning.

The first weekend in May, the annual Highway 71 Community Garage Sales take place. This year's sales start on Friday, May 2 in the evening and end on Saturday, May 3 around 1:00 pm. Audubon, Exira, and Brayton participate in the event, and all three towns offer their own map.

At each garage sale, a person can find a variety of things. From furniture to clothing, all ages can be satisfied. If one is lucky, he or she might even find some puppies or kittens for sale. Many men look for the tools and lawn items. Senior Austin Miller usually searches for plates and cups, or anything that catches his eye. He enjoys shopping with his parents and siblings.

Faith Fliflet looks for clothes and shoes. The weirdest thing she has seen at a garage sale was an Ouija board. Any deals are great for a young adult going to college. College students also are known to look for furniture and things for their dorm or apartment.

Putting a garage sale together is a lot of work. For Jennifer Mosinski, this is nothing new, but it is still much work. The preparation involves gathering the items together, pricing them all, and then setting them up. Jennifer teams up with other families or friends to make the garage sale even bigger. “Adding food and drinks to the garage sale always cheer people up. They get to shop and snack at the same time!”

Summer Jobs

4/30/2014

By Sean Card

With the summer on the horizon, many students are making big plans. They’re looking forward to the pool, going out with friends, or just driving around with the windows down. However, how do they pay for everything? According to the United States Census in 2010, 30% of high school students over 16 have a part-time job. Audubon students are no exception.

Morgan Parris has worked at a local grocery store for almost three years now. “I plan on working there this summer to save money for college. My only problem is I can’t stop spending it.” Parris believes that working a part-time job is great for kids who want to build up a good work ethic and have some “spending money.” She plans on doing work study next year to help save up for books and other necessities.

Emma Konkler, a senior at Audubon, does not, however, have a job. She keeps up her time with keeping her siblings out of trouble. She also has summer practices for basketball, track, and volleyball. “I don’t have a job now, but I plan to have a work-study job once I get to college this fall.”

Plunge for landon

4/16/2014

By Nick Andreasen

FFA students scamper out of the frigid water.

With the expansion and use of social media, it is amazing how quickly people can learn about, and rally behind, a cause. A recent trend across the country has been doing the “Plunge for Landon.”

In late February, the Shaw family, living in Tarkio, Missouri, found out that their 5-month-old son Landon was sick with a rare form of cancer. Since the family is on Medicaid, which won’t cover all of the costs coming in, bake sales and bucket donations were a popular local form of aiding the family. Then, a group of fathers in Tarkio decided to make the challenge and dedicate it to Landon.

The challenge itself is a fairly simple ordeal. When one receives a challenge to do the plunge, the idea is to challenge at least three other people to do it, also. One pledges to donate an amount of money for Landon’s fund for everyone else that takes the challenge. Then, they jump into whatever source of cold water they have handy, completing the plunge.

Many different people and groups around Audubon have been challenged to participate in the plunge. Recently, Audubon High School’s FFA Chapter received a challenge to do the plunge. There was an awesome showing, and over fifty members participated in the plunge. Junior Davis Sebetka stated, “It was fun, it was for a really good cause.”

Senior Kara Christensen also participated in the plunge. She said, “It was really cold, but I was really glad that I did it.”

Within two weeks, as of Monday morning, 41,738 members have joined the Facebook Group “Plunge for Landon.” This is a great cause that our school and our community has become involved in. If you haven’t participated yet, find a lake or pond, challenge others, take the plunge, and help out the family of baby Landon Shaw!

Photo Gallery and Video below

Photo Gallery of FFA Plunge (Photos submitted by Jill Christensen)

new Foreign exchange student

4/2/2014

By: Andrew Holmes

Newest AHS foreign exchange student Giovanni Orzes.

This semester Audubon community schools received a new foreign exchange student, Giovanni Orzes, from Italy. Orzes is from Pedavena, it's on the northeast side of Italy right near Venice and the Alps. His favorite part of coming to the United States was, “L.A. it's awesome! The city is huge, and I love the sea side."

Comparing Italian style to American he said, “here the clothes are more casual dress. Over there it's more of a specific style, like polo’s and jeans." He arrived in the United States at the beginning of the 2013-14 school year, but spent all of it in Omaha up until February 13, when he transferred to Audubon. Orzes now stays with Tim, Jan, and Kaitlin Andersen in Audubon, and he is currently in tennis and track. Tim and Jan Andersen were recently given the Audubon Education Association's Friend of Education of the year award for their many years of dedication hosting foreign exchanges students.

Dartball by Sarah Mosinski

3/27/2014

By Sarah Mosinski

Dartball boards out and ready for CYO.

Lately, a game called Dartball has started up again in the Audubon area amongst church groups. It has a lot of history and quite a bit of potential for the future. It uses a dart board but has a baseball set up, and it is played with nine or fewer players. Approximately 20 feet from the board, the player throws the dart underhand. Depending on where they hit the board, with steel tipped darts, they could score a hit, strike, ball, foul, or out. The team with the most runs wins.

According to wisdartball.com, the official dartball website made in 2007, the first dartball tournament took place in 1939, around the Milwaukee area. The Wisconsin State Dartball Committee was formed in 1951, and held a state tournament yearly. For a while the game was just men, but in 1981, a women’s division was added to the annual tournament. In 2010, the Dartball Hall of Fame was introduced. Monday night is considered the Dartball Night across the country.

Many leagues are formed by Lutheran Churches and it has become a pretty big deal in the Audubon area. The Lutheran leagues opened it up to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic group. Some of the men from the Knights of Columbus have gone to the St. Patrick’s Youth Classes teaching them about the game. Linda Kerkhoff mentioned, “A lot of people aren’t aware of it [dartball], and the men wanted the kids to try something new.”

Rachel Mosinski was at CYO, a Catholic Youth Game Night, on March 26 and she said, “It’s a very fun game. I will definitely play it again.”