Northern Heights students put their skills to work for Emporia Middle School
By Brandy Nance
Originally published 09:45 a.m., April 26, 2008
Updated 09:45 a.m., April 26, 2008
The Zola Witten track at Emporia State University was packed Thursday afternoon with eight middle school teams. Thanks to a small team of students and a staff member from Northern Heights High School, the teams walked away with the results in hand directly after the meet instead of having to wait for them.
Senior Chelsi Kaiser and sophomore Chancey Parker, both students at Northern Heights High School, along with their teacher Kim Dhority, worked behind the scenes Thursday afternoon with a computer program called Apple Raceberry Jam.
The program, which has been around for several years, allows users to enter in track meet participants by team, event and the average running time.
This is the third meet Chelsi and Chancey have worked this year. The two said they enjoy running the scores.
“Lots of fun things come out of it,” Chancey said.
Chancey added that the program breaks ties in events also rather than having to wait.
“He likes that it breaks ties,” Dhority said, with a laugh.
Emporia Middle School teacher Diana Wilhite said she started the movement for electronic scoring about 10 years ago. She asked Northern Heights students to come out to Thursday’s meet in hopes of getting Emporia Middle School to go with a similar program.
“It made it really nice for me that they could come and help with this to show Emporia Middle School,” Wilhite said. “I’m thankful Northern Heights could come out.”
Dhority started having the students in her classes use the program about six years ago, she said.
“Since then the kids have been running the program,” Dhority said.
Dhority said one of the big benefits of the program is immediate scoring.
“The kids score the meet as it goes along,” she said. “By the end of the meet, the scores will be printed and ready to go ... as soon as they bring the scratches up they don’t have to do anything by hand.”
Dhority’s students score the meet as a part of the in-house training program the North Lyon County school offers.
In-house training is held at Northern Heights because the school is too far out to offer on-the-job training. Dhority said there are six students in the program this year.
The students perform various duties including cleaning computers, publishing the district newsletter and making business cards and Web pages for businesses as needed.
“Kids can put it down for job experience,” Dhority said. “And most coming out can use all the office programs.”