CHS News

CONGRATULATIONS to Creekside’s Academy of Environmental Sciences students who won the ESRI 2023 Florida GIS StoryMaps competition! This year’s competition topic was Living in the Sunshine State.

Lauren Griffin won FIRST PLACE in the state of Florida for her StoryMap on Forensics in the Sunshine State. Check out her StoryMap here:  https://arcg.is/108OP90

Grey Kohl received Second Place with her StoryMap on Habitat Fragmentation: https://arcg.is/00Paif

Honorable Mentions for the state competition include:

• Giancarlo Horton – Prehistoric Florida Fish: https://arcg.is/1nnanW0
• Brinlee Stevig – Florida Sand Dunes: https://arcg.is/0qTby11
• Olivia Bittencourt – Florida Red Tide: https://arcg.is/4STbj1

The Florida GIS StoryMaps competition is part of a national competition held by ESRI. The Florida Geographic Alliance hosts a state competition annually as part of ESRI initiatives to expand GIS technology applications and skills to youth. Students in the Academy of Environmental Sciences have partnered with ESRI Geographic initiatives for over 14 years and learn geographic information systems and spatial analysis to use in their university studies and future career pathways.

Lauren Griffin will represent her classmates and the Academy of Environmental Sciences at the Central Florida GIS conference held this September as she shares her StoryMap and explorations in GIS with community partners from around the state. CONGRATULATIONS Lauren and all Awardees of the 2023 Florida GIS StoryMap competition!

Qualifying FBLA members attended the State Leadership Conference in Orlando this spring. Congratulations to the following students on their accomplishments:

• Alexander Sheridan, 1^st Place, Information Management
• Luke Dixon, 2^nd Place, Information Management
• Charlie Aaronson, 5^th Place, Business Law
• Aiden Chang, 2nd Place, Computer Applications
• Megan Hayes and Maya Shternshus, 5^th Place, Graphic Design
• Marshall Reich, 5^th Place, Insurance & Risk Management
• Alexander Sheridan, 1^st Place, Introduction to Business Concepts
• Charlotte Romano, 2^nd Place, Introduction to Business Presentation
• Harshitha Bandaru and Varshitha Inturi, 5^th Place, Introduction to Event Planning
• Kenny Tran, 3^rd Place, Personal Finance
• Matthew Bravo, 2^nd Place, Political Science
• Ben York, 4^th Place, Spreadsheet Applications
• Rohit Bongu, 3^rd Place, Future Business Leader
• Krisha Shah, $2000 Business Through Education Scholarship Recipient
• Nikhil Patel, Region II FBLA State Vice President for the 2023-2024 School Year

Nikhil had four amazing campaign managers:  Makaela Kennair, Sahara Butler, Luke Dixon, and Cooper Maurer.

Creekside students were awarded the following awards at the 2023 Northeast Florida ACE Regional Competition:

• School of the Future RFP:  Best Proposal and Best Presentation
• Community Support RFP:  Best Presentation
• Best Overall — All RFP’s
• $10,000 Scholarship:  Lauren Castillo
• $3000 Scholarship:  Erin Philip
• $2500 Scholarship:  Anaye Varde
• $2000 Scholarship:  Brandon Shaw
• $1500 Scholarship:  Gwynn Williams
• $1500 Scholarship:  Carter Smith

Creekside was well represented at the Florida History Day competition in Tallahassee.  Students who scored either 1^st or 2^nd in the state in their category will now be advancing to Nationals in Washington DC this summer!

Sabrina LaVopa and Priya Schramm – 1^st place for their documentary Extending a Ladder and a Hand: The Life and Legacy of the Daughters of Bilitis

Lily Clarke – 2^nd place for her historical paper Standing Firm: How Wangari Maathai’s Ecofeminist Movement Challenged the Roots of Kenya’s Patriarchy

 The following students also represented St Johns County at the competition:

• Melania Carrigan
• Kaea Charfauros
• Josie Domitrovic
• Riley Hayes
• Krisha Shah
• Anna Villanova

During 2018, CMiC, a long-time national ACE sponsor, and the family of the company’s late founder Allen Berg, announced a pledge of $10 million to advance the construction industry in memory of its founder, Allen Berg. The initial grant established the CMiC-Allen Berg Memorial Scholarship Awards, administered through the ACE Mentor Program of America. These scholarships are multi-year awards aimed at talented, deserving ACE high school seniors intending to pursue post-secondary education and training leading to careers in architecture, engineering, construction or the skilled crafts. Each of the 77 ACE affiliates across the country may nominate one student for consideration. This year, Kendall Reckamp of Creekside High School was our Northeast Florida nomination. She was one of 25 winners of a scholarship in the amount of $32,000 to be provided over four years with additional mentoring support during her time in school. As an affiliate, we have had four winners in five years including three from Creekside. Kendall joins past Creekside winners Tarynn Kaelin and Leighanna Goldman.

Congratulations to all of the amazingly magical Miss Creekside 2024 contestants on shining so brightly!

• Puja Penmetsa was named Most Photogenic
• Sasha Stenson was named Most Scholarly
• Bryn Fremont was named Miss Congeniality
• Makaela Kennair was named Most Talented and won the People’s Choice Award and Best Publicity

Kennedi Hyatt was named 2^nd Runner Up

Bryn Fremont was named 1^st Runner Up

Makaela Kennair was crowned Miss Creekside 2024

Jaden Duffey (President of the YRC) coordinated with a local non-profit organization, Five Star Veterans for a community service project at their facility. Five Star Veterans  provides displaced military veterans the safe housing and the supportive services they need to successfully transition to living independently in a place they call home.

Five Star relies solely on the community. Jaden Duffey, along with Henry Morris (VP of the YRC) and Mr. Davenport (Club Sponsor) worked with a group of 7 club members volunteer to support Five Star. Those members were:

• Aiden Chang
• Mason Mann
• Qingyuan Tian
• Dayvin Patel
• Colin O’Farrell
• Canyn Novello
• Alexander Sheridan

While at Five Star, the Young Republicans Club did various landscape projects that consisted of the trimming of overgrown bushes and hedges, raking and bagging leaves and pulling weeds.

At the end of the project, Amanda Mills (Lead Case Manager and head of Community Outreach) and Ms. Suzie Loving (Chief Administrative Officer) expressed their gratitude to the club and its members.

The National Youth Cyber Defense Competition places teams of high school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company. Through a series of online competition rounds, teams are given a set of virtual operating systems and are tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services.  In the Open Platinum Division there are 632 teams in the nation this year, with 84 teams in Florida.  Creekside’s Frostbyte team placed 1^st in the State, and included Silas Hicks, Matt Mato, Alan Birch, Mark Slover, Joshua Morris and Nathan Spees.

The second place team in the state, Cyber Parrots 3: Chipwrecked, included Seth Marusic, Ian Fish, Thomas Boudreau, Tyler Gunther, Jack Dempsey and Alex Wenzel.

In the Gold division, 819 teams in the division nation wide.  Our team The Task Managers consisting of Nathan Bowman, Lauren Graves, Aidan McCabe, and Cibria Moore took 1^st in the state and 4^th in the nation.

For more info.  https://www.uscyberpatriot.org/

Congratulations to the Teaching Academy’s award-winning Project Innovation Team, ProtectED, for placing second out of nineteen teams in the district and also for winning Best Pitch at The Link’s EnterCircle Summit! The team members (Lauren Prangley, Bryn Fremont, Sophie Garris, Reese Kinney, Elizabeth Bridgewater, and Halle Williams) developed a product called the Tot Tag, a device designed for universal use on car seats that alerts caretakers and law enforcement if an infant is forgotten in a vehicle.

Congratulations to the following Creekside High School students who are Semifinalist in the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Competition:

• Evan Johnson
• Maddox Jordan
• Sabrina LaVopa
• Ravi Nitta
• Hari-Krishna Patel
• Erin Philip
• Krisha Shah
• Wuzhou Xiong