WHS Graduate (2016) Julian Sonn completed his freshman season on MSOE’s (Milwaukee School of Engineering) baseball team – an injury red-shirted him his academic freshman year. Playing in the NACC conference, Julian was First Team selection playing first base.
Sonn’s statistics for the 2018 season:
Batting Average- .339, Runs – 26, Hits – 57, Doubles – 11, Triple – 1, Home Runs – 3, and led the conference with 42 rbi’s.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) experienced the excellence of UW-Whitewater first-hand on Friday when he met with a group of University of Wisconsin-Whitewater economics students who took part in the finals of the national Fed Challenge Competition in Washington, D.C.
The team was the first-ever from a Wisconsin university to advance to the finals and competed against regional winners Harvard University, Pace University, Princeton University, and Virginia Commonwealth University.
“I want to thank Sen. Johnson for visiting our campus and spending time with our outstanding students,” Chancellor Beverly Kopper said. “We are pleased to have the opportunity to introduce Senator Johnson to the power of a UW-Whitewater education, which provides students with exceptional experiences both in and out of the classroom, giving them the skills to be leaders in their chosen fields and their communities.”
Sen. Johnson held a listening session at the Mary Poppe Chrisman Success Center and was especially interested in hearing from students.
“I always appreciate when our leaders come to our campus to speak with our students,” Thomas Kind, Whitewater Student Government president said. “Sen. Johnson brought up a lot of great things to students, including the importance of being able to argue your opinions and, if someone else has a better argument, being willing to change your mind. I think it is an extremely important quality to understand the skills that develop a person and prepare them for what their future will hold.”
Chancellor Kopper presented Sen. Johnson with a copy of a book that commemorates the 150th anniversary of UW-Whitewater. The campus began a year-long celebration of its Sesquicentennial on April 21. For more information, visit www.uww.edu/150.
John Stutzman, Lakeview School alumnus, meets and greets the current Lakeview kindergarten and first-grade students at the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison. John volunteers as a Zoo Docent at the Madison Zoo. On Friday, he arranged to give Lakeview students an “up close” view of some zoo animals.
John is a 2014 graduate of Whitewater High School and a 2017 graduate of UW Madison pursuing his interests in politics, zoology, and wildlife photography. He is currently publishing a Wisconsin Wildlife photography book. Best of luck to John and thanks for the presentation!
Lakeview Loves is a weekend food in a backpack program currently serving 27 students at Lakeview Elementary. This program is FREE for Lakeview Students to sign-up and all students qualify. Our hope is that all students are fed over the weekend and come to school ready to learn each week! Lakeview Loves is honored to have such great community support from Shopko to help keep our students fed.
From Tuesday, April 24, through the early morning hours of Sunday, April 29, twenty-six members of the Whitewater High School Robotics Team Ferradermis and seven adult mentors traveled to Detroit for the FIRST Championships. While there, the team competed with and against 405 teams from around the world including France, Poland, Chinese Taipei, the Netherlands, and Canada as part of the high school level FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). The Cobo Center in Detroit simultaneously played host to the middle school FIRST Tech Challenge Championships and the elementary school FIRST Lego League and Lego League Junior Championships.
Altogether, the four events hosted more than 15,000 students from 700 teams and 37 countries. Ferradermis had one practice match and ten qualification matches on Tesla, one of the six competition fields for FRC, with randomly assigned alliances of three robots, finishing with a qualification record of 4-6 and ranked 48th out of 67 teams in the Tesla division. One of the highlights of the qualification matches was playing with the number one overall team in Tesla and helping set a high score for the event.
Ferradermis would like to thank the dozens of businesses, organizations, and community members who came forward to help the team in its fundraising efforts which made the trip possible.
Photos from the event:
The students had a great learning opportunity that brings their 7th grade Social Studies curriculum to life.
Highlights of the trip included a bicycle tour of DC’s memorials at night, visits to the African American and Holocaust museums, and a Broadway show.
To see full details and photos of their adventures, check out the trip blog at wmsindc2018.blogspot.com.
The City of Whitewater learned today that it has received Federal approval for two proposed Economic Opportunity Zones (EOZs) in the community. The EOZ designation, which will provide an additional economic development tool in the City of Whitewater, was created under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which Congress passed late last year and President Trump signed into law.
“We’re very excited at the quick approval of our two EOZ nominees given by US Treasury Secretary Robert Mnuchin,” said Dave Carlson, Executive Director of the Whitewater Community Development Authority (CDA). Governor Walker had included Whitewater’s two nominees as a part of a broad list of 118 sites statewide which were forwarded to Secretary Mnuchin in late March.
“This has the potential to spark some much needed growth in our community,” said Larry Kachel, Chair of the Whitewater CDA. “The EOZ program will allow certain investment gains to be redirected, with significant tax savings, into economic opportunity funds which will make investments in communities like Whitewater.” Investors will be able to earn permanent tax savings on the original capital gain based on how long they keep it invested in the economic opportunity fund.
“The details of how the program will operate still need to be ironed out in Washington D.C., but we are excited to be adding this new program to our economic development toolbox,” said Carlson. “We’ll begin working right away with developers who may wish to do projects in Whitewater based on the addition of this new incentive.”
The two Whitewater EOZs include the portion of the city in Walworth County east of Franklin Street and the portion of the city in Walworth County west of Franklin Street and north of Main Street.
Timmerman Auditorium in the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Timothy J. Hyland Hall hummed with nervous energy during the Midwest High School Pitch and Warhawk Business Plan competitions on April 4, 2018.
For the second year, the evening led off with the high school pitch competition—the only event of its kind in the Midwest where aspiring young entrepreneurs receive feedback from judges and vie for cash prizes. The competition was developed to foster an entrepreneurial mindset in high school students while advancing their business model development and professional presentation skills.
Each student or team had six minutes to present their business idea to the panel of judges, who asked follow up questions, provided feedback, and evaluated the presentations for content and delivery.
Claire Darmstadter from Sun Prairie High School, Mike Henry from Parker High School, and Mathew Hall from the Elkhorn Area High School earned first, second, and third places, respectively. Madeline Eggert and the team of Margaret Mroch and Diamond Orin, all from the Elkhorn Area High School, also presented their plans.
The high school pitch event was followed by the collegiate Warhawk Business Plan competition, which was started in 2007 to help UW-Whitewater student entrepreneurs transform their ideas into startup businesses. The finalists ranked in the top three split $2,250 in prize money to help advance their start-ups.
Entrepreneurship major Sam Lepak and business partner Evan Laird were awarded first place for their start-up Pintful, entrepreneurship major Ben Breitenbucher was awarded second place for Breit Innovations, and communication major Daniel Kry came in third with his pitch for SpecClips.
Sharing the judges’ regard for the aspiring entrepreneurs, Kevin Kaufman, Director of the Small Business Development Center at UW-Whitewater, said, “I was thoroughly impressed with the preparation, presentation skills, and innovation shown by all of the competitors in the pitch competitions.”
Fellow judge Jim Lindenberg of Lindy Enterprises added, “These young adults are already seasoned veterans, and they are going to be very successful people in the future. I can’t wait to read about their success in years to come.”
First launched by the UW-Whitewater CEO student organization in 2007 and originally modeled after the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest, the annual Warhawk Business Plan competition supports student entrepreneurs by not only awarding cash prizes, but ensuring they have a fundamentally solid business plan and are prepared to explain their startup idea to prospective employees, investors, and customers.
UW-Whitewater CEO’s mission is to inform, support, and inspire college students to be entrepreneurial and to seek opportunity through enterprise creation. This successful student organization offers access to invaluable resources, such as the UW-Whitewater Launch Pad and UW-Whitewater Incubation Program, as well as exceptional education and networking experiences.
Band students from Whitewater and Fort Atkinson High School traveled to Memphis and New Orleans over their Spring Break! This trip provided amazing opportunities to experience the birthplace of America’s music- Jazz! Students had three wonderful concerts, at Metairie Manor, historic Jackson Square, and Kenner Discovery health and sciences academy! They received a private performance in the historic Preservation Hall and enjoyed dinner and dancing aboard the Natchez Dinner Cruise. So much history, culture, and Cajun food were enjoyed!
On March 7, 2018, Scouts gathered in Madison for Wisconsin Girl Scout Advocacy Day at the State Capitol. Whitewater HS Junior Morgan Radaj was one of four chosen out of 66,000+ Girl Scouts in Wisconsin to speak about the impact that GS has had on her life.
Congratulations to Sophie Walton, 8th grader, daughter of Russ and Kim Walton of Whitewater, for winning the CESA 2 Regional Scripps Spelling Bee on February 28 at Whitewater High School. Her final winning word was claustrophobic. She now advances to the 2018 Badger State Spelling Bee on Saturday, April 24 at Madison College.
Congratulations also to Andrew Rollette, 8th grader, son of Jeannine Volbright of Whitewater and Jeffrey Rollette of Chicago, as he was recently chosen as a qualifier for the State National Geographic Bee. Andrew will now travel to Madison on April 6 to compete with other top qualifiers from around our state.
We wish both of these students the best of luck as they take on these new challenges and are very proud to have them representing Whitewater!
