Alex Carr's The Jaguars' Spot column for Wed., Jun. 09, 2010

Come see the Stars

          As of this writing, VCHS has again scheduled Senior Awards Night (the evening before this paper comes out) to honor the accomplishments of graduating students and award many thousands of dollars in scholarships.

          This year, in addition to Senior Awards Night, the school will also be hosting a pep rally Friday at noon in the gym to again honor many of the award recipients including the Timberline award to honor a student who overcame adversity, Jaguar of the Year, School Achievement award, and the Golden Boy/Golden Girl award.

          Principal McCowan told me, “I really hope the pep-rally will inspire lower classmen to do their best at VCHS.” He also said he is very excited about the pep-rally and is really looking forward to hearing feedback from students afterward. In addition to all the kids who will win awards at Senior Night, he said it’s very important to him that every student who has successfully completed their 12-year public education feels honored.

Tell me about it!:

          A few weeks ago, AP Euro teacher Mr. Tuttle told his classes they would be starting the much-anticipated Risk tournament. Since the classes had already taken both their AP test and finals, they had a little bit of spare time to play Risk, a game whose objective is to take your team to complete world domination. This is where the students in their classes find out who their real friends are.

          The kids started off by dividing themselves into five or six teams, each composed of a president, who selects the initial territories to be held. Then they elect a general, who decides troop placement; then a captain, who gives the battle orders; and, finally, an ambassador, who negotiates with the enemy teams.

          These negotiations are one of the most exciting aspects of the game. One team, for example, made alliances with two other teams in the beginning which gave then a much better chance to survive until the next round. Then, about halfway through the game, the team broke one of those alliances through an act widely referred to as “stabbing them in the back.” But it worked. At the end, only the two remaining teams in that original alliance were left on the globe. Then things got messy! Two hours of warfare later, the first team emerged bloody but victorious thanks in large part to the skillful tactics of the team’s general, Jeremy Halligan.

          In addition to becoming the supreme overlords of planet Earth, winning team members also got to pick the country they will write about for their end-of-the-year project. All in all, the kids said playing Risk was the perfect way to wrap up a year of studying alliances and famous battles in AP Euro.

          Got a great item for this column? Tell me about it! Catch me on campus or go to my web page and shoot me an e-mail (www.carrfamily.com/alex).

          Read all of San Diego Press Club award-winner Alex Carr's columns at www.carrfamily.com.