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HM Students in Action

The following highlights are a snapshot of the wide variety of academic pursuits and athletic activities taking place on and off campus.
 

                                      Photo credit:  Olufemi Salako

Girls Varsity Squash Wins Division 6 National Championship

At the 2023 U.S. High School Championships in late February, Horace Mann School’s Girls Varsity Squash team won their last match of the tournament to claim first in their division, while the Boys Varsity team placed tenth. The tournament, held in late February, is the world’s largest squash tournament, with a historic high of 187 varsity squash teams fielding nearly 1,700 players across 13 divisions. The matches were held at various locations in and around Philadelphia. The team of eight brought home a trophy and colorful banner to commemorate the victory.
 

       A scene from SciTech 2023 (Photo credit:  Barry Mason)

SciTech
 
Horace Mann School’s SciTech symposium, held annually each spring, showcases the individual and group research of student scientists in 10th through 12th grades. Their projects cover a wide range of topics – including microplastics, neuroscience, diabetes, and agriculture, among others. The school community enjoyed perusing the display of poster presentations and asking questions of the student scientists. This year’s alumni speaker was Dillon Holder of the Class of 2017. Dillon works at Brimstone, a company that is working on creating environmentally friendly cement product.
 
HM Public Forum Debate Team Shines in Boston
 

The Harvard National High School Invitational Forensics Tournament, held in Cambridge, MA, each Presidents Day Weekend, is the largest and most prestigious high school speech and debate tournament in the country. Students from all over the country compete in a variety of areas including Policy Debate, Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Public Forum Debate, and Student Congress, as well as individual and duo speech events. (Source:  harvarddebate.org) The designated topic of this year’s tournament was right-to-work laws. After three days of competition, HM’s team of 32 debaters earned fourth place out of 315 teams in the varsity division. In addition, two HM sophomores received second and third place recognition in the Best Speaker category.

Varsity Table Tennis Clinches Third Consecutive Championship After Undefeated Season
 

After an undefeated season of 11 wins and zero losses, the Varsity Table Tennis Team narrowly beat Fieldston in the Independent School Table Tennis League Finals (ISTTL). This year’s victory marked the team’s third straight championship. Varsity competitions consist of five match-ups:  three singles games and two doubles games. Competitions are played best of five (the team to first win three games is the victor). Games are played to 11 points. Players alternate serving two serves each. A player does not have to win off their own serve in order to win a point. If the game becomes tied at 10-10, a player must win by two points. In this situation, players alternate serving one serve each.

HM Model UN Underclassmen Recognized as Best Large Delegation
 
At a May 7th one-day Model UN conference hosted by the Dalton School, more than 500 students from schools across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states gathered to discuss and debate international affairs. With the juniors and seniors taking second seat, Horace Mann School’s delegation of freshmen and sophomore students won the coveted Best Delegation for Large Delegation!
 
HM Senior Receives Corporate-Sponsored Scholarship
 
HM senior Benjamin Wu ’23 recently won a corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship from the PwC Charitable Foundation, Inc. His probable career field is medicine. He is among 840 high school seniors awarded corporate-sponsored National Merit Scholarship grants financed by about 107 corporations, company foundations, and other business organizations. Corporate sponsors provide National Merit Scholarships for Finalists who are children of their employees, who are residents of communities the company serves, or who plan to pursue college majors or careers the sponsor wishes to encourage. Most of these awards are renewable for up to four years of college undergraduate study and provide annual stipends that range from $1,000 to $10,000 per year. Some provide a single payment between $2,500 and $5,000. Recipients can use their awards at any regionally accredited U.S. college or university of their choice.
 
HM Junior Featured in Young Playwrights Festival
 
Etta Singer ’24 was one of 16 young playwrights whose work was featured in the 18th annual Young Playwrights Festival from May 12 to 14, 2023. The festival provides local middle and high school students with professional-level support to develop their original one-act plays. The culmination of the festival was a stage reading in the Dina Merrill Theater. She was one of 16 playwrights who had a chance to observe the development process and hear their plays read aloud.
 
HM Junior Named One of 36 to Watch in 2023
 

               Suzette Sheft ’24 (Credit:  Brian Marcus)

Suzette Sheft ‘24 was featured in The New York Jewish Week’s 36 to Watch 2023 as one of a group of “innovators who are remaking the Jewish community or contributing to society in ways that draw upon their diverse Jewish identities and sensibilities.” The publication celebrated her achievements as follows: At 16, Manhattanite Suzette Sheft published her first novel, Running for Shelter:  A True Story, a retelling of her grandmother’s Holocaust survival story. Her father’s untimely death motivated Sheft to write the book: “His passing exemplified to me the importance of recording our loved one’s stories before it is too late,” she tells the New York Jewish Week. A student at the Horace Mann School, Sheft also teaches creative writing to elementary school kids in the Bronx and is a young spokesperson for the USC Shoah Foundation. (Source:  The New York Jewish Week)
 
Visual and Performing Arts at HM
Student performances and artwork can be viewed on our Visual and Performing Arts Departments websites below: