What’s happened recently...
The girls basketball season has had ups and downs. The schedule was one of the top 50 in the state out of about 400 girls basketball teams, and now has now dropped to around the 100 range.
During the first 10 games, the team played Lake Central, Valparaiso, and Kankakee Valley high schools. With a tough schedule at the beginning of the season, the girls had to focus and play hard during the first 11 games. The team is regaining their confidence with each game and each win.
With Michaela Schmidt scoring her 1000th point a couple weeks ago, it was a special and exciting moment for the team and the younger players in the stands. Schmidt is the third player to meet this goal in the school’s history. This is boosting their confidence, too.
At their upcoming senior night, they will lose five key players: Michaela Schmidt, Morgan Rinkema, Ariana Flores, Mackenzie Pickens, and Cecilia Silva. But with seniors leaving, younger players can improve just as the seniors did.
A couple freshmen, including Lauren Wilson and Audrey Vanderhoek, weren’t able to play this season, or had to stop playing due to injuries. Coach Tomcsi is hoping to see more of the younger girls become a strong team together throughout the years. There are still several weeks left in this year’s season, and then sectional season begins.
What's coming up…
Next month, the high school Student Council is hosting their annual Spaghetti Dinner to help raise money for a Highland family in need. This is one of the bigger events that the council hosts besides homecoming and pep rallies. Every year, the council finds and votes on a family. The Gambino family was chosen this year.
“Thankfully, we didn’t have to vote this year. We had only heard about the Gambino family,” said Student Council President Sarah Manning.
The dinner will be held at the Highland High School cafeteria from 4:30-6:30 p.m., Feb. 22, and tickets can be purchased at the door for only $5.
In addition to the dinner, which will be provided by Amici Grill and Pizzeria, there will be a silent auction. Some council members will be serving spaghetti, and others will be running the silent auction. All the money from the ticket sales, silent auction, and donations will be given to the Gambino family.
“Last year’s dinner was really successful, and we had a really great turnout. Hopefully this year will be the same,” Manning said.
The dinner last year benefited a student at Johnston Elementary School. Many people from the community came to support the family in need.
Posters will be hung up in each of the elementary schools, the middle school, and the high school as well as around town in some businesses.
Teacher spotlight
Besides teaching in the math department, Mr. Christopher Tomcsi is the girls varsity basketball coach. Tomcsi has been coaching at Highland for two years, but not as the varsity head coach.
“Coaching varsity is just a different level of competition, but coaching is coaching no matter what level,” Tomcsi said.
This is not his first season as a varsity coach, though. He served as head coach at Washington Township and Hobart high schools, and he also coached at Munster High. Tomcsi attended Griffith High School, where he played basketball through his freshman year.
“When I became a teacher, I always wanted to coach, and I played a little bit of everything throughout high school,” Tomcsi said. “So I was interested in any sport. Basketball happened to be the first one that had a coaching opening when I was at Munster when I first starting teaching.” There are many different parts to the game of basketball, from the plays to the players and officials, but there is also the “chest match,” as Tomcsi calls it, between the coaches. This happens when the girls execute a play well during a game and score a point.
One of Tomcsi’s favorite parts about coaching is being able to meet kids that he otherwise wouldn’t.
“Just getting to hang out with the girls and getting to see them in a different light besides in the classrooms is rewarding,” Tomcsi said.
Student Spotlight: Michaela Schmidt shooting to achieve goals
Senior Michaela Schmidt is now the third girl on Highland High School’s girls basketball team to score 1,000 points. She achieved this goal in a game against Hammond High School in the beginning of January. Reaching this goal was a very proud moment in Schmidt’s life, because she had been working toward it for long time.
Schmidt has been playing basketball for many years, and will continue to play in college. She is also involved in several extracurricular activities, such as National Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, Student Council, and the Athletic Leadership Committee. Each has taught her a great deal of life lessons, such as responsibility, leadership, and how to balance her time between sports, extracurriculars, and school.
“A good student and athlete needs to be able to balance their time between playing sports, studying, and focusing on their grades,” Schmidt said. By sticking to these lessons, she was also able to get a scholarship to go to Indiana University Northwest. She will major in nursing to become a pediatric nurse practitioner.
The advice she gives to younger students who want to be athletes: “Make sure you take your grades extremely seriously,” Schmidt said. “That’s another reason why I ended up getting the amount of scholarship money I did for college, because I took my grades seriously and I focused.”