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A Bittersweet Ending: Baseball Season Comes To A Close

May 10, 2013 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

By Ryan Harris

Staff Writer

After a streak of getting second place in the playoffs, the SLA Rockets baseball team will not be making the playoffs this year.

The Rockets, a D-division team at the beginning of the season, had one of its most successful seasons with a record of 11-1. Their only loss going to University City High School.

Although the Rockets did not make it to the playoffs, due to budgets cuts and school closings, they will be moved up to C-division next season.

The winners of D-division, University City, is one of the schools slated to close as a result of district budget cuts.

“The only reason we’re going to get to move out, and go C, based on the way the system is structured is because University City will not actually be a school next year,” says Coach Douglas Herman.

Even though his baseball team was pushed up a division, Coach Herman expressed his feelings on how they got to C-division.

“Had University City been in operation next year, we would not make the playoffs and we would still be D because we had one loss. That’s ridiculous.”

Coach Herman also expressed the pride in his team for season.

“The Rockets scored more runs this season than any team in public league baseball,” he stated.

The Rockets won their last game of the season against Sankofa Academy Charter School with a forfeit due to weather complications.

Overall, though they are not going to the playoffs, the Rockets have moved up a division; a bittersweet ending to their season.

Lehmann’s Plan: Pro Sports Teams should Support Athletics

May 10, 2013 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

By Jacob Lotkowski

Staff Writer

The Philadelphia School District is rolling out 300 million dollars in cuts to schools for the 2013-

2014 school year. These proposed cuts would include a complete elimination of 7.1 million dollar (2011-2012) athletics program for every school in the district.

Principal Chris Lehmann wants to change that.

With his petition on Change.org, Lehmann trying to get the attention of Philadelphia’s highly profitable sports teams, the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers, 76ers and Union to tap into the vast expanses of revenue, about a combined total of 800 million dollars (2012), to fund the district’s sports leagues.

There appears to be no precedent for private sports teams funding public programs in such a large, systemic manner. However, donations coming from players on Philadelphia sports teams are not unheard of.

In June of 2012, The Cole Hamels foundation donated more than $400,000 to three schools for updates of their playgrounds and libraries. The foundation was hoping that these projects would help keep these schools off the chopping block–but in January of this year, they were slated for closure.

Although this donation wasn’t able to save any schools from closing, it is that same type of philanthropic spirit that this petition is trying to get out of our hometown sports teams.

The petition has been picked up by local news NBC 10, The Philly Post, The Notebook and Philadelphia Business Journal. The petition has gotten more than 2,300 supporters total, but public interest peaked last week and signatures have since plateaued.

The School District is currently looking over the proposal and Lehmann is awaiting their response.

Until then, the only thing that can move forward is the number of signatures on the petition and awareness of the looming 2013-2014 budget cuts.

Philadelphia Students Protest Against School Budget Cuts

May 8, 2013 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

By Sam Lovett-Perkins

Staff Writer

Students of the Philadelphia School District spoke out against the proposed extracurricular cuts for the 2013-2014 school year by leading marches from their respective schools to the District building at 440 North Broad Street at 4:30 PM this afternoon.

The marches were in observance of Teacher Appreciation Day. “There is no teachers involve, there’s already a rally for teachers–this is a student-led protest,” CAPA Junior and co-organizer Teyin Tseng maintained.

Feeling that there isn’t enough representation from students, organizers aimed to raise awareness within the student body by showing the public that they take the budget cuts personally all in hopes of attracting the attention of Harrisburg.

The march was a result of a discussion between CAPA students Gregory Coleman, Maureen Smith, and Teyin Tseng in the wake of CAPA being unable to fund their annual musical.

By use of social networking, the three expanded their reach to find leaders who could rally students at each school. What resulted was a Facebook campaign that involved students from CAPA, Central, Masterman, Furness, Delaware Valley High School, Upper Darby, Palumbo, Bodine, and SLA.

The proposed cuts by the District include Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett cutting public education funding and a $300 million deficit for the Philadelphia public school system. Multiple teachers, counseling staff, and nursing staff are to be laid off as well as the cutting of afterschool sports, arts and music clubs, which would have a immense impact on many students’ school experience.

“It’s like the school district is telling students that becoming a musician or an artist is less important than becoming a doctor or a lawyer,” said J.R. Masterman representative Anea Moore, “Some students only come to school for sports, art, and music.”

SLA’s voice on the matter was less vocal at the onset as there was no formal representative at SLA to communicate with other organizers.

Sophmore Nikki Adeli believes in fighting the budget cuts but doesn’t agree with this course of action, wondering, “What is the point [of the march]? Yes, the district knows that no one likes these cuts, no one does,” noting that if students wanted to fight the cuts they should sign SLA Principle Chris Lehmann’s petition that would ask local sports teams to help keep school athletic programs active.

“The protest today showed a strong sense of purpose, unity, communication, organization and passion in the youth of Philadelphia, ” said Freshman Leo Levy, who managed to tell his story publicly at the rally about SLA’s school nurse who spends her time tending to three different high schools. “The plethora of represented schools showed how this threat is being felt across the entire city, and even outside.”

The protest has galvanized Philadelphia youth, as rumors of a walkout on Thursday May 9^thstart to arise. The supposed walkouts are, however, not supported or affiliated with the organizers of the 440 March.

More is to be expected as Central High School representative Afaq Mahmoud told SLAMedia, “Plans are already going underway,” but noting they are unassociated with Thursday’s rumored walkout.

A Broad Street Play-by-Play

May 7, 2013 by lpahomov 1 Comment

Broad Street Run Play-by-Play from SLA Media on Vimeo.

By DeShawn McLeod

Staff Writer

Broad Street on May 5, 2013 was surreal.

We had to be at school by 6:30 AM if we wanted to get a bus ride to the starting line. I

Start of the race. Photo Cred; DeShawn McLeod

accidentally woke up at 5:57 AM. Wonderful morning, right?

Once everything was situated and the bus nearly came, I realized I didn’t have my knee brace. Wonderful morning example #2.

My corral started at 8:50 and we were off! I remember seeing City Hall from Broad and Olney and I imagined how long it

would take to get there.

Me and my running buddy Dejah Harley agreed to keep the same pace. We got to Temple Hospital and soon we reached Broad and Cecile B. Moore. There was a parade of bystanders, Temple Owls, cheerleaders, bandmates, and football players cheering us on. That was between miles 3 and 4.

Once we got to mile 5, there were hundreds of people out supporting us. The water-givers were cheering, the spectators were cheering, and even the runners themselves were

cheering from all the hype.

And then we got to City Hall. I couldn’t believe it.

Once we were on our way to South Philly, things started to look up hill. (Well, downhill, because the whole course was literally all downhill.) My legs weren’t hurting and my knee was doing just fine.

But then we hit mile 8, and that’s when the soreness started to kick in – everywhere. My partner and I kept the same pace and felt the same pain.

To get me through, I remembered practice. We had two miles left and I just reminisced about running to Lloyd hall and back during after-school runs at SLA.

Mile 9! Once I saw that we had half a mile left, I pictured myself running from Lloyd Hall to the Viking Statue. I was thinking in my head… the finish line is not far away.

When the Navy Yard sign confronted us, we knew we had just a quarter mile before we

After the race, with friends. (Left to right.) Daniel Varnis, DeShawn McLeod, Dejah Harley, Ellen To, Vannary Kom. Photo Cred; Aaron Tang

were able to stop. Dejah grabbed my hand and we jogged the last bit in stride with each other. Then we saw our coach, Internship Coordinator Jeremy Spry. He had already finished, so he jumped the fence and grabbed my friend’s other hand and picked up the pace and we crossed the finish line hand-in-hand.

“Was that the hardest thing you ever had to do?” Spry said.

Breathless we responded, “Yes.”

I want to give a shout-out my running partner and friend, Dejah Harley for keeping the pace and going farther than ever before.

App Review: Candy Crush

May 7, 2013 by lpahomov Leave a Comment

By Sam Lovett-Perkins

Staff Writer

Recently smart phone and tablet users have been indulging their electronic sweet tooth with the addicting and multicolored entertainment app: Candy Crush Saga by King.com.

Commonly referred to as just Candy Crush, the game is a Bejeweled-style matching game where lines, of three or more, similar colored candies must be made by switching positions of one with another on a grid board.

This style of gaming is not a new one, most notably seen in Bejeweled, but what sets it apart is the addition of “special candies” that act as bonuses and that each level could have one of many different tasks required to beat the level.

Like many apps, if you haven’t downloaded it–a friend surely has and its popularity is singularly passed around by touch of finger. Before I downloaded this app I was well aware of its addictive qualities, but it wasn’t until I had played for an hour and a half in bed did I fully realize what a monster I had let into my life. Luckily for each failed attempt at a level, one loses a life that is only regained by waiting an aggravating 20 minutes.

In truth I’d say it is a very addicting game, but after about an hour and a half I have to say it isn’t necessarily fun. There is a certain overwhelming frustration when you only have 5 more moves left and you know you have no chance of winning the level. It only gets more infuriating when you have to keep looking at the happy go lucky characters in the game smiling at your repeated failure.

Senior Callie Monroe holds a similar opinion. “On the first day I’d give it a 10 out of 10, but by day 5 I’d give it a 4 out of 10, I had to delete it because I got so frustrated.”

Meanwhile on the opposite side of the spectrum Physics and Spanish Teaching Assistant Mr. Gray is an avid Candy Crusher. “It’s a really fun game, it’s addictive”.

It is clear to me that this game is for those with a little too much time on their hands, and should be avoided by those wishing to be productive.

Play at your own risk, the initial sugar rush to complete all the levels fades fast leading into an infuriating crash.