Every year, the Hammer Award goes to the teammate who’s smashed through all the challenges – whether it’s mastering new positions in the sculling team or making the most improvement throughout the year.
The coaches all agree on who deserves the award, and the winners are announced at the end of the year.
I was awarded the 2024 Boys Varsity Team Hammer. It may look like a plain old hammer, and it is, but to us it’s a symbol of hard work and dedication. It’s those early morning practices at 6 am, those late-night sessions that don’t end until 6:30 pm. It’s all the calluses and blisters on my hands. It’s for cutting my 2K time down by 35 seconds to 7:10.
Look who is getting inducted to National Honor Society!
I devote all my free time to athletics, tutoring classmates, getting good grades, blogging, developing games, and keeping a close eye on the stock exchange as an investor.
I guess you could say I like to take it easy and relax!
Scholastic Rowing Association of America (SRAA) has been the principal source of rules and procedures governing high school rowing. They also run the Scholastic Championship Regatta which is widely acknowledged within the rowing community as a national championship event.
This year, our team has been invited to compete in four different categories based on our results in the NY Championship. I will be participating in the Junior 8+ category.
What does the Junior 8+ category mean? I am glad you asked.
It means that the boat has 8 rowers plus one coxsain all under age 17 (who will not turn 17 within the current year) or a junior in high school. Our boat has three juniors including myself and the rest are sophomores.
State Championships, the Main event of the year for all teams.
Statewide scholastic (high school) teams and large club teams, comprised of rowers from multiple high schools, attend this event with the goal of qualifying for national championships.
While top two scholastic teams qualify for Scholastic Rowing Association of America National Championships (SRAAs), clubs try themselves for a chance in USRowing Youth Invitationals.
It is a good thing that scholastic and club teams have this type of separation, because clubs often have a very unfair advantage. They select people based on performance rather than attendance to a certain school. On top of that they usually have a much higher budget than the scholastic teams. One club even had their own therapist giving massages at the race!
Back to this year’s competition, according to the event website there were 66 teams competing with 628 boats.
On day one the boys rowed small boats then on day two we rowed the big boats. So, on Saturday I raced in the singles event, and on Sunday the eights.
During this season, I only had the opportunity to practice rowing a single twice before the race, since our coach prefers to practice larger boats, like my eight. Single racing demands a different strategy, as well as good form and technique. These boats are lighter and have a narrow width to smoothly glide across the water’s surface, making them highly susceptible to capsizing if not balanced well while rowing. This is exactly what happened to the participant preceding me during the time trials. Despite him having enough power to overtake the boat that started before him, he capsized just 250 meters shy of the finish line.
Every year, our coaches would gather the team and deliver a speech emphasizing that state championships are just as crucial as prom. They would then urge the team to wrap up the festivities early and head home.
Why? Because our school prom day has always been on the same weekend as the state championships.
This year it was my turn to listen to the same advice both from my parents and coaches. Luckily I am going to prom with one of my teammates. We both will be racing on Saturday before prom and will also have races on Sunday early morning so neither of us would be leaving the other behind in order to get enough sleep.
On Saturday I woke up at 6am, spent a full day at the regatta, and came home to quickly dress up for prom. At night I got back about 11pm, to wake up again at 6am for another day of racing.
Time for the first race of the spring season, where we usually get back into the racing mindset, adjust within our boats, and get into our own rhythm.
This year’s regatta brough 40 teams from the Northeast to compete against each other.
Coach tried out smaller boats – quads – in this race in our category. I raced both days in different quad categories. On the first day in U17/Juniors, and second day on V2.
Our boat on the first day had a steering issue during the race and kept pulling us towards one side, as a team we struggled during the race keeping the course and power through. On the second day we raced well but lost the 3rd place to another team by 0.4 seconds and to 2nd by 2 seconds.
Who wouldn’t love to solve a puzzle and eat free pizza?
This year was the 36th annual Siena College High School Programming Contest. We had 4 teams representing our high school.
Contest was 3 hours and 7 challenges. Each team was free to write the code either in Python or Java. Only 2 teammates are allowed near computers to write and debug, while others have to stay in another room to solve and design the next challenge.
When one of our teammates got sick after school, we were left only with 3 people including me. So, we had only one of us to write code, while the other 2 worked on solving the challenge and designing the solution. We managed to complete 3 challenges successfully, and almost finished the fourth one. At the end of the night none of the teams even completed all 7 challenges so our result puts us in the top half of the contestants, which is good considering we competed with one less teammate.
Good news is the winning team was from my highschool. Go Nisky!!!
Want to know how challenging those puzzles were? See the image below:
Junior year, Spring Break means another college trip time. This time we were west bound within New York state. 4 colleges, 2 days.
Binghamton University
RIT
Cornell University
Syracuse University
Now that I am more experienced, here is a list of my observations and comparisons.
You need to visit a couple colleges to be able to understand the differences, decide what you would like to look for, or what to ask.
Most colleges in NY prefer that you commit to a degree when you are applying, or when you talk to their admissions officers they advise you to do so, whereas in the south most colleges say that you will be admitted to a school. Take courses first year and then apply for a degree within your school, based on your first year courses and grades.
There is a high chance of rain or cold weather in April up north, while it is sunny and warm in February in the south.
Sun makes things shine, and look more welcoming.
Colleges in the north offer swags to visitors… Shopping bags, key chains, bottles, stickers, and lots and lots of brochures.
You meet with interesting people, possibly see other prospects or most importantly the actual students around the campus.
Backpacks with bubble straps are a must in Duke. You can be a hippy in NC State, or a crossover between artsy and nerdy in RIT.
Don’t forget to nod your head when an old guy with an angry looking dog stops you at Chapel Hill and asks your pledge not to apply to Duke.
Eating at the college cafeteria is another good experience. Binghamton’s Tully has Earth’s best fried chicken and Cornell has the best mussels.
Binghamton is a dust-free college. Not sure how they manage but literally there is no dust, or dirt anywhere. Or no dropped, or forgotten waste, food wrapper or anything anywhere. Do they have hidden cleaning elves?
Despite being more clean, Binghamton’s school and dorms look underwhelming compared to that of a private school like RIT.
Every college visit includes the part where they show you the blue emergency lights, which seem to only be used by a female student who sprained her ankle and needed help. Maybe boys with sprained ankles prefer to hop around rather than calling help?
Cornell has a waterfall near the visitor center. They have a colorful canoe rack next to the waterfall with no visible blue lights around. To me this feels like trust.
Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy that means “continuous improvements”..
Since the beginning of the year, we have been making improvements on our clawbots with various sensors and additional code.
On our first version back in October, our robot had to have manual code for its 90-degree turns and forward movements to go from point A to B in a shortest possible time. Here is a sample demo video recording during grading.
In our last version in February, our robot is equipped with many more sensors that allow autonomous code (the programmer only codes for actions in response to data gathered by sensors and the robot paths the course itself ). In this example we have the robot move along a waved black path on the ground. In addition, it can grab, carry and unload articles by its claws from point A to B. Here is our sample demo video.
This time our mission was to create a robot with enough power to win in a tug of war contest.
After trying many different robot structures and different gear ratios for the perfect torque to speed balance we built the perfect robot and won the challenge.
Berk @Nisky 