Springboard Capstone

P-Russ's recap:

SUBJECT: NPS S&D ranks on a national stage!

Greetings, all,

First off, we at NPS S&D extend our congrats to Mr. Keeley and Team Atiin Dilzin for their success this weekend, as well as to the basketball teams for their early achievements!

Yesterday, seven of our students took part in the online nationwide Springboard Capstone Tournament. This was by far the biggest event our team has attended so far: There were nearly 600 students competing from over 100 schools representing 33 states spanning thousands of miles from Massachusetts all the way to Hawaii. And yet, even with such a comparatively small turnout (our smallest yet!), Navajo Prep was represented multiple times on the leaderboards:

• Aspyn Kaskalla earned 2nd place in Informative Speaking (for her moving speech on MMIW)!

• Natashia Anderson earned 3rd place in Poetry (for a delightful and poignant reading of Luci Tapahonso's "Raisin Eyes")!

• Natashia also earned 3rd place in Storytelling (for a riveting take on "The Princess and The Pea")!

• Talen Becenti earned 4th place in Storytelling (for her engaging delivery of Miss Nelson is Missing! by Harry Allard)!

• Talen also earned 6th place in Congressional Debate!

• Natashia showed up one more time by earning 12th place in Declamation (for her rousing interpretation of Rick Rigsby's "The Wisdom of a Third Grade Dropout")! We don't usually note rankings beyond the top 10, but the NSDA felt it was worth going this deep since Declamation was one of the largest events at this tournament: Natashia was up against nearly 50 competitors!

What a delight to see these names and our school's pop up (sometimes over and over again!) on such a huge platform! I feel so fortunate to be able to coach these relentlessly inspiring students.

Big thanks to Erik and Jennifer for judging. We are also very grateful to have had a couple of our students' parents help out: Yilnazbah Wauneka-Yellowhorse's father Robert and Haylei and Bradley Redhouse's mother Brenda.

Hope you're all having a lovely weekend.

Best,

John

Addendum:

Full results were just released, so there are a few other top 10s worthy of shouting out!

• Aspyn Kaskalla got 5th in Original Spoken Word Poetry!

• Jairus Benally-Begaye got 6th in Original Spoken Word Poetry!

• Talen Becenti got 7th in Poetry!

• Madi Mora got 8th in Poetry!

• Madi also got 8th in Original Spoken Word Poetry!

• Jairus also got 9th in Poetry!

• Talen also got 9th in Original Spoken Word Poetry!

• Madi also got 10th in Congressional!