North High Students Participate in Unique Activities
With a diverse mix of students that form the North community, comes a diverse mix of interests and hobbies that students take part in. Many students participate in clubs and sports teams at school, but others also spend time outside of school participating in unique hobbies.
When she isn’t busy with her duties as student body president and her work on social justice action team, senior Anna Rickard spends her time on the ice as a synchronized skater. Rickard, who started skating in the fifth grade, was inspired to try it by family.
“My grandparents skated and my dad skated when he was little. They were really good at skating, and I wanted to be just as good as they were,” said Rickard.
Rickard has won multiple awards with her team, an attribute to their hard work on the rink.
“We practice once a week [for four hours], and then we do early morning practices. Sometimes, we have to do double run-throughs and that’s when you skate your program back-to-back, and you die afterwards.”
Despite the intensity of the training that the team does and the pressure that their coaches put on them to be the best, it helps to bring the team closer together.
“Being on a team with other people is really fun. We spend a lot of time together, and we all get to best friends,” said Rickard.
Rickard isn’t the only student whose participates in unique outside of school activities. When he isn’t at school, junior Jacob Shepherd spends his time training for his black belt. Shepherd, who takes part in the martial art form of Taekwondo, has been training for over three years.
“Three and a half years ago, I started training. Martial arts always seemed like a cool thing to me and a school opened near by my house, so I thought it would be cool to try it. I went and tried it, and I loved it and kept training ever since.”
Shepherd is currently on his recommended black belt, which means that in order to get his first degree black belt, he must pass testing dependent on how well he does the necessary form segment and board break. In order to master these things, he trains weekly.
“When it comes to how often I train, it differs from week to week, but I try to go three nights a week and some of those nights I train for two hours if there are multiple classes,” said Sheppard.
Sheppard also realizes that in order to do well, he has to pay attention to the small details. “I really try to just focus on the details that, when I was a lower rank, I didn’t focus on and just try to learn as much as I can from my instructor and I’ve also been taking to looking stuff up online and watching videos of other tournaments to see the skills that other people use.”
Regardless of belt rank, Shepherd understands the larger lesson that comes along with immersing himself in Taekwondo.
“[It teaches me to] never give up. Things won’t always be fun; there have been times in Taekwondo when it hasn’t been fun and I’ve had a hard time but you can’t give up when things get hard. Things are gonna get better but you to keep on trying, keep on going,” said Shepherd.
Roshae Hemmings, Assistant Editor-in-Chief