2024-2025: A year of ups and downs

By Rheya Buchan, staff writer

This school year has been full of many wonderful ups and noteworthy downs. But, despite everything that has happened, Maria Carrillo High School has been able to accomplish a considerable amount. From the Varsity women’s regional soccer win to the Poetry Out Loud competition, everybody agrees that the 2024 to 2025 school year has been memorable.

For example, a few months ago, the Varsity cheerleaders—who had gone to the National Cheer Competition for the first time—and won the whole national competition, and the JV team made it all the way to the finals.

Overall, it seems like many of the MCHS sports teams were dominating this year. For example, the Varsity women’s soccer team won their first ever North California championship, winning one to zero, and beating out Chico. Principal Amy Wiese even held a ceremony honoring them with medals and cake, keeping a smile despite the fact this was the day the school district let her go.

Although many don’t consider dance as a sport, the rigorous training, perfection, and staggering moves that they integrated into their routines at the Dance Show begged to differ. Rosemarie Henry, MCHS’s resident dance teacher, commented, “it had been about 15 years since I choreographed a small ensemble piece, a quartet, and this year I was just so moved by the school closures and consolidations. Mainly the emotional impact that it’s had, and so I choreographed a piece that was a reflection of all the emotional turmoil, and our dancer’s captured that perfectly.”

Other than that, the advanced dance team’s had many amazing performances such as at the Homecoming Game and the Lip Sync Rally. No matter what routine they’ve done, it’s always been so coordinated and gorgeous.

Speaking of artsy performances, this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition had the biggest turnout since its beginning years. Maddie Doyle, one of our hardworking English teachers, happily said, “there was an absolutely excellent turnout and great participation.” The overall winner, Emily Fordham, is an MCHS sophomore who ended up winning county and going all the way to state.

The Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors were busy this month grinding for their numerous AP exams, with Sophomore in general seeming the most stressed out about AP Chem and Euro.

Many events have happened recently, like the Art Show for example. Ceramics and the Fine Arts created have come together for people to check out beautiful sculptures and artwork. Charles Zweig, the MCHS Ceramics teacher, said “his students have been working very hard and are infinitely creative.”

Along with them, Culinary has been cooking up a storm that everybody can smell on campus. They cook a variety of things, from naan and butter chicken to pastries, and their diverse range of foods and incredible skill set led them to win five out of seven events for the FCCLA cooking contest, a huge victory for them.

Even though they haven’t gotten too much recognition, the softball girls have been able to push through as well. Freshman Desirae Munz said “the team’s biggest accomplishment was placing first in the Cloverdale tournament, because it showed [their] improvement from the beginning of the season.”

Many of the other freshmen as well have been excited about the new opportunities that high school presents them on their sports teams. A few thoughts from the most excited kids are below.

Raisa Joshi, on the women’s freshman basketball team proudly stated, “The team’s passion for the game is a result of the team’s shared vision, trust, and discipline.”

Another sport that doesn’t get too much attention at MCHS is badminton, but they have also had a very good season, and did well at the NCAA tournaments. Grinning,  Zakk Valonez commented, “I think our greatest feat is growing together as a team. In the beginning we were all a bunch of strangers. Some close friends but mostly separate. Now, the team is almost like a family, with everybody supporting each other.”

“Even though Rosa slaughtered us every time,” Anita Lei, a freshman, added.

Santa Rosa also recognized many of the students here at MCHS with Ava Noel being the only freshmen to qualify for NCSS and was the overall MVP. And, Tava Carrillo winning an athlete award, and giving MCHS and all the female runners an immense pride.

Speaking of running, the two sports that garnered the most attention were Track & Field and Cross Country. These sprinters, long-distance runners, shot put throwers, and hurtlers brought immense pride to Carrillo. Aria Dossat, a freshman who participated in both sports, shared that “Pushing your body as hard as you can for a short distance is insanely hard, but having the stamina to do that for longer distances is also huge. Cross country is this for us, and that makes us so special.”

So, the year of 2024 to 2025 was an incredible year for Maria Carrillo in sports and academics, and we can only hope that it carries on.