Holly Mitchell

Even though she’s only been dancing a few years, senior Holly Mitchell is ready to take the stage. But that is not enough for Mitchell. She has decided to bring others with her as she plans to teach a weekly hip-hop class.

“It kind of happened by accident,” Mitchell said.

After her friends said they would be interested in taking a class from her, Mitchell decided to make an announcement during assembly to see if anyone else was interested so she could launch the program.

With 21 people signed up, the class already seems to be on a path to success.

“I’m most excited for seeing people actually enjoying [dancing]. There are a lot of people coming [to class and saying] ‘I can’t dance.  I can’t do this. It’s impossible.’ And so I have to tell them to try.”

Even though Mitchell has not spent much time dancing, she already feels comfortable with the art. She danced when she was five years old in styles including jazz and Irish step dance, but stopped, and picked it up again in tenth grade after learning some hip-hop dances on Youtube. She only started taking classes this year.

“When you’re dancing, you’re totally focused on yourself and how you feel,” she said. “It’s a time to take care of you, and it’s really fun and exciting and at the end of it you feel so rewarded. It’s my way of doing something for my body.”

Choreographing has made her change her perspective on dancing.

“Choreographing my own dances has made me think a lot about my motion, and I have to then explain to people what I’m doing. It’s a lot of introspection and being able to explain [the steps] to other people,” she said.

Even though she has been enjoying the process, Mitchell still has worries.

“I’m most nervous [that] at the end of this, no one can do the dance. I’m really scared that I’m going to teach all of these classes and we’re not going to have a solid dance to perform.”

Mitchell is currently holding on to her promise that her group will perform at the talent show later in the year.

“I’m hoping by the end of [the program], if I succeed, there will be a ton of [students who] want to go to prom and bust out hip-hop moves. That would be awesome.”

Mitchell’s overflow of ideas and enthusiasm for dance will lead her to be an encouraging teacher and a great performer.

Daniel Tressler

Although he is a new kid on campus, sixth grader Daniel Tressler is already making a name for himself throughout the school. Most people know him for being on the Junior Varsity Cross Country team, but Tressler also plays competitive chess.

“My interest in chess started when I found my dad’s old chess set and was curious to learn a new board game,” he said.

He started playing chess in elementary school at Sweetwater Episcopal Academy.

Tressler does not like to limit his competition and plays with people of all different styles and skill levels. While he usually plays chess with his friends and father, he also likes to challenge himself by playing against his grandfather.

Although he is proud of his accomplishments, Tressler has found the little victories to be more rewarding.

“Although I have earned a couple of tournament trophies and individual medals, my proudest chess accomplishment was beating my dad!” he said.

When he discovered that chess board in elementary school, he never realized how much the game could change him.

“It teaches strategy even under stress,” he said.

This stress management has come in handy in the many tournaments Tressler has competed in since he started playing.

“At tournaments, I have played chess against players with much more talent than me and still managed to win because I dealt with my stress better,” he said. “Chess has helped me think through situations and make better decisions.”

While he does love chess, Tressler admits that he has had some difficulty adjusting to a new school with more expectations. Because of this, he often only has time to play at home in casual games, but plans to get back to competitions soon.

“If I’m anything like my father, I’ll be playing chess as long as there are chessboards around,” he said.

Rowland Evans 

While most students see a music career as more than a reach, sophomore Rowland Evans, who goes by Rowly to his friends, has already found a niche in the industry.

After hearing the song “Say my Name” by Porter Robinson, Evans was inspired.

“I researched it [and] I just kept digging. I eventually started making music,” he said. “[When] making music, to perform it, you DJ it. So I started DJing at clubs when I was thirteen.”

With a mentor who kept pushing him to work more with music, Evans realized that Djing was more than a hobby.

Evans has played multiple times at the House of Blues and traveled to Miami to DJ after parties at music festival Ultra. He’s also opened for producers such as Kill the Noise and played at a few Magic games. He said that he has DJed “[nearly] all the clubs in Orlando.”

“I play every Wednesday night at Riot and Friday nights at Attic,” he said.

With much of his time spent producing music, he needs to be incredibly organized at school. While the teachers know about his music, he has to make up a lot of work with all the school he misses.

The missed school has been worth it. “One of the guys that really got me into Djing is Kilogram. He’s produced…number one songs,” he said. “When we were at Ultra, we couldn’t walk ten yards without [someone asking for] an autograph.”

Evans enjoys many aspects of DJing, but his heart is set in music production.

“The best part [about producing music] is making a song that’s totally original and having people appreciate it,” he said. “Making a song is so personal, and to have that accepted, [that is] really weird and to have people really like it…I think that’s really cool.”

Evans says what he misses out on most is sleep, but he still doesn’t think there’s a negative part of music, because he truly enjoys what he gets to do.

Evans is truly appreciative of the opportunities he has been given through his music career. “I’m just really thankful to be able to do this,” he said.

Leanne Van Allen

While most people struggle with writing anything in iambic pentameter, Senior Leanne Van Allen impressed many with her writing skills when she created a poem in Spanish that was published in a magazine.

The current Advanced Placement Spanish Literature student originally wrote a poem two years ago for a class assignment.

“Senora Gonzalez really liked mine so she asked if she could submit it. Then I had to write a bio [and] send in a picture,” she said. “[But] we forgot to submit a permission slip, so nothing happened.”

Last year, Van Allen included the permission slip, but did not hear back from ¡Albricias! (which means “good news”), a national Spanish Honors Society magazine.

“We didn’t hear anything from the Spanish Honors society until this year. At the beginning of this year they sent me the magazine,” she said. “They didn’t even tell me they had published it. “

Van Allen prefers reading and listening to Spanish rather than speaking it, but she has visited Costa Rica, a Spanish-speaking country in Central America, twice. She visited once with the school’s program with Spanish teachers Annette Galindo and Amarilys Heard.

Van Allen has aspirations that are farther reaching than just visiting these countries. “It’s been a goal of mine to be fluent in Spanish for a really long time,” she said. “That’s why I’m doing all the Spanish classes available to me. I’m close to fluent.”

Spanish is not the only language she aims to be fluent in. She is a current student in the Malone Online classes for Arabic and hopes to continue with the language in college.

Van Allen sees how our connected world today makes speaking foreign languages an even more impressive skill. “Being able to speak another language in this day and age is so important because we interact with people who speak that language all the time,” she said.