FIFTH OPENING – The Sitka seine boats Hukilau and Rose Lee pump herring aboard this afternoon at the end of Deep Inlet during the fifth opening in the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery. The opening was being held in two locations beginning at 11 a.m. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson) 

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Daily Sitka Sentinel

Sitka, Mt. Edgecumbe Building Positive Bridge

By TOM HESSE

Sentinel Staff Writer

Earlier this month the Sitka and Mt. Edgecumbe High School basketball teams played the final “battle of the bridge” game. But as those teams were squaring off this season, a different set of students was building cooperation, not competition, between the two schools. 

“We wanted to do something positive for the community. Students are often inundated with, don’t do drugs, don’t bully, don’t do this, don’t do that, and we wanted to recognize positive behaviors,” Mt. Edgecumbe science teacher Michael Mahoney said. “We also wanted to build bridges between the schools – positive interactions between Sitka and Mt. Edgecumbe High School.”

Mahoney coaches in the volleyball  field of the battle of the bridge. He said good competition is healthy but not every interaction between the schools needs to end in a region tournament. Additionally, not every achievement of a student is something that’s measured in a scorebook. 

“So we thought a great thing to do would be to build a combined service project, and it went very well last year and we’re looking forward to doing it again this year,” Mahoney said. 

The project is Recognizing Inspiring Youth of the Sitka Community (RIYSC), and it’s a joint effort by the Mt. Edgecumbe and Sitka High student councils to recognize kids in grades K-12 who are doing positive work. Award winners are recognized at a dinner, which will be held March 24 at Centennial Hall.

What qualifies as positive work? Mt. Edgecumbe senior Gabrelle Grady said it’s an open-ended question that allows for a range of interpretations. 

“There’s kids that got nominated for like helping out their grandma or dedicating their time to other people. And it can be interpreted by people filling out the nomination form for what they think is positive,” Grady said. 

Students, teachers, community members and coaches can nominate kids of any age. Mahoney and his Sitka High counterpart, Ben Clark, are in charge of nominations. 

Clark said one of the best parts of last year’s awards was to see who was making nominations.

“It is K through 12. I know that was one really fun part, to see the kindergartners and first grade and second grade up there. And that was one of the things from last year, and I hope we see it again this year – a lot of the kids in those grades, their peers nominated them. It was cool to see a third grader nominate a third grader for something they saw as inspiring or helping each other out,” Clark said.

Elias Erickson, a Mt. Edgecumbe freshman, was recognized last year for being involved at Blatchley Middle School. He said it’s a new way to encourage Sitka kids. 

“I was involved in a lot of things in middle school and it felt like I was doing a good job and at no point until RIYSC had anybody recognized ‘hey you’re doing good and you should keep doing this,’” Erickson said. “Nobody had ever done something like this that clearly recognized people, so that’s what I like about this.” 

Hannah Kimber, a junior at Mt. Edgecumbe, was also nominated in the event’s inaugural year. 

“It was just for putting myself out there and being a leader at my school. It was really nice to be nominated and see that people were actually paying attention and they see that I really am helping other people,” Kimber said, adding that she thinks it’s valuable for students to see each other outside of gymnasiums. 

“I feel like there’s a lot of negative stuff between sports. We have this big ‘battle of the bridge’ thing that goes on ... and this kind of gives us a chance to see that they’re doing good stuff, too, and it gives a chance to connect differently than ‘oh, look, they’re from Sitka High and they play on a different team than us so we’re going to cheer against them,’” she said. 

Sitka High students Misha Bekeris, Julia Middleton, Kashfia Nahreen and Brandon Carlos are among the other students involved in the RIYSC project. Middleton said it’s nice to remind the community of the work students do. 

“It’s really important for the community to see students being nominated and that we have good people who are young and they’re improving and helping people,” she said. 

Tickets for the event are $20 for adults and $10 for students and children. Tickets are on sale at Old Harbor Books. Money raised from the event goes to support the SAFV shelter and Youth Advocates of Sitka.

Mahoney said last year’s event highlighted a lot of work they didn’t even know was going on. 

“Not only are we supporting students who do wonderful things but you get to see students up there who you might not normally see,” Mahoney said. “There are so many things that we were made aware of that we had no idea the students were doing – volunteering abroad, going to help tsunamis and hurricanes and things like that.”

And Grady said it’s nice for people to see the two schools working together. 

 

“I think it’s good for the community to see Edgecumbe and Sitka High interacting together. We can interact and it can be good and healthy. It doesn’t have to be competitive all the time,” she said.

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20 YEARS AGO

March 2004

Matthew C. Hunter of Sitka recently returned from Cuba as part of a St. Olaf College International and Off-Campus Studies program. Hunter, a junior physics major at St. Olaf College, is the son of Robert and Kim Hunter of Sitka.


50 YEARS AGO

March 1974

Eighth graders have returned from a visit to Juneau to see the Legislature. They had worked for it since Christmas vacation ... Clarice Johnson’s idea of a “White Elephant” sales was chosen as the best money-maker; Joe Roth won the political cartoon assignment; highest government test scorers were Ken Armstrong, Joanna Hearn, Linda Montgomery, Lisa Henry, Calvin Taylor and David Licari .....

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