George Mason Students Flex their Extra-Curricular Muscles in Area Competition

Continually recognized as the premier public school in the Washington, DC area and even in the nation, George Mason High School has again proved its merit this year in activities outside the classroom.

Over the last few weeks, over 100 students from the High School and scores more from the middle school and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School competed in regional competitions judging intelligence, musicianship, design and overall outside-of-the-box thinking.

Last month, the Robotics team from the High School competed in "FIRST Robotics," an international competition in which students compete to build robots that perform a task. "Team 1418" consists of Kevin Zhou, Keith Rothman John Tyson, John Elliot, Dustin Rottner, Greg and Alex Douglas, Nora McCullah, Dan Sheffle, Alex Nette and Bjorn Westergard. Under the guidance of long-time art instructor John Ballou and physics teacher Dave Applegate, the squad won the NASA/VCU Regional Rookie All-Star award for 2004 with its robot "The Grue." Their robot features a pneumatic claw, a multi-purpose arm for grabbing and utilizes a wooden cane for hanging things.

In presenting the award to the Mustangs at the "FIRST Robotics" event, the master of ceremonies said: "Our rookie all-stars have quickly developed a level of maturity in leadership that will serve them well in future competitions."

The team's successes as well as detailed images of the robot can be found at their impressive website, http://1418.org.

Over the last weekend in February, George Mason's Scholastic Bowl team placed second at the state competition in Williamsburg, Va., narrowly losing the championship. The team, featuring Rahul Gupta, Shawn Pickrell, Stephen Twentyman, Ted Smith, Joe Mauro, Kaitlin Bottock, and Evan Cunningham, tied Easter Montgomery High School in the final match before losing to them in a sudden death playoff.

"This year's team of seniors is perhaps the strongest and deepest I've had," said coach Jamie Scharff, who has been the Scholastic Bowl coach at Mason for the last five year.

Mason finished 23-4 in the regular season and this is the third consecutive state championship. The Mustangs have won each of the last two.

Close to 15% of the high school's population participate in one activity: band. Last Friday, March 5, the GMHS symphonic band competed at the District X Band Festival-the culmination of a year's worth of work. Performing against larger area high schools from Hayfield, Annandale and Falls Church, among others, the 80-member band racked up four straight superior ratings in Grade V music from the judges. Under the direction of Mary Jo Webster, the band had never performed such difficult music in the competition.

Members of the band are cultivated as far back as the fourth grade and, in fact, there are 15 seniors who performed at the District competition who have been playing since fourth grade.

On the next day, March 6, fourteen teams of students from the elementary, middle and high schools went to Mount Vernon High School to compete in the annual regional competition of Odyssey of the Mind. The international program has groups of kids focus on "creative problem-solving" for anything ranging from mechanical devices to presenting their interpretation of literary classics.

Three groups won first prize and one group placed third. The three first-place teams from will go on to the statewide competition in April.