By Ian Brackman

Former St. George’s bas-ketball star, Bol Kong, is

playing successful Division 1 Basketball in the U.S. Kong is competing with the Gon-zaga Bulldogs in Spokane, Washington and they are currently the tenth-ranked team in Men’s NCAA bas-ketball in the United States. Bol Kong, an ‘06 graduate of Saints is now a Sopho-more at Gonzaga Univer-sity.

He’s averaging a solid 5.9 points each contest in 15 minutes per game. Kong is also chipping in with 2.5 boards for the 14-3 Bull-dogs.

In his ninth season as as-sistant coach at Gonzaga, Tommy Lloyd is pleased with Kong’s progress thus far. “Bol is a skilled player who can really shoot the basketball. He is the leading 3-point shooter in the West Coast Conference right now. He also has the ability to play off the dribble but has not shown that yet

Ex-Saint has NCAA hoops success

By Bijan Johnson

This summer, I visited Iran to visit family and friends.

The day I arrived was the day when the post election protests erupted. The government had in-creased pressure on and suppres-sion of the people and rules were enforced through violence.

The tension was so high, that going out with friends was a risk. Everyday, we checked the news on foreign new agencies to see if any protest was going on. How sad it was that we couldn’t even rely on our nation’s own news networks for reliable informa-tion. No one trusted the national news anymore. No one trusted anything that was controlled by the government anymore.

Every time I went out with my friends to places frequented by teenagers (malls, coffee shops, theme parks…) I would see at least one person get beaten up for standing up for himself and his freedoms. The assaults usually resulted from being dressed in a fashion that was deemed “offen-sive” by members of the National Guard. Guards would consider it inappropriate if a man had his col-lar open or his jeans were ripped

Students witness violence in Iran or a woman wore a coat that was too short or her pants were tucked in her boots. Sometimes they would randomly attack someone in the crowd, beat them up and throw them in their vans. My par-ents were always afraid of letting me go out with my friends.

Another Saint George’s student who went to Iran for Christmas also witnessed these events. He wishes to be anonymous.

“It was very new to me,” he stated. “All my life I had never seen people gather like this in protest to an event. I mean, I had seen news about restrictions, ri-ots, and protests but I had never witnessed anything like this.” He was visibly frightened by the ex-perience.

“I would go out with my fam-ily like normal. I would be sitting in a coffee shop and suddenly I would see someone running down the street with the guards behind him. Other times, I would be hanging out with friends and a guard would come up to us and ask us to empty our pockets or just start yelling at us for no reason. It was so bad that I barely hung out in the malls or other public areas.”

“All I can say right now is that I am very frustrated that the gov-ernment is suppressing the peo-ple like this,” said this student, stating his support for the victims and participants of the post- elec-tion protests. “I think I’m speak-ing for every Iranian outside of Iran when I say our thoughts and prayers are with you.”

Ever since the 1979 revolution in Iran, The Islamic Republic of Iran had slowly increased pres-sure on the people until finally, when the 2008 election results were announced, the people who had said all but nothing these 30 years, felt as if they had had enough.

The tension also brought a sense of solidarity and sympathy to the people.

People, who were once afraid of talking about politics in pub-lic, were now having discussions everywhere about many main issues of society, having angry rants about how they were fed up by the government.

But the people are not falter-ing and the recent protests dur-ing December, showed that the people are ready to fight till the last breath.

at this level,” says coach Lloyd in a recent interview with The Echo, “but it is coming!” Kong is shooting 53 per cent from outside

the arc and also has a 54 per cent field-goal percentage.

Every day Kong is advancing

his game and is gaining more con-fidence and more minutes from his coaches. “On defense, Bol has really improved the last couple of

weeks,” says Lloyd, “ and is doing a great job defending the basketball.”

As a senior at Saints, the Sudanese-born forward racked up 24 points per game to go along with his ten re-bounds and three blocks. At Gonzaga, Kong is joined by two other players from B.C. including center Robert Sa-cre out of Handsworth in North Vancouver.

“Bol started out a little slow this year due to the sig-nificant increase in level of play. But he has really come on during the last month and has developed into our sixth man,” explains coach Lloyd.

“In the future, we are look-ing for Bol to be a true scor-ing presence from the wing position. Bol has a lot of

ability and with more experi-ence and hard work, I expect him to become a dominant force at Gonzaga.”

By Peter Ding

St. George’s school has raised over $9000 for Haiti as of Feb. 5. Heather Morris, Service & Charity Coordinator, who is

in charge of collecting funds in the school, said that the Saints staff and students collected funds in various and creative ways

These funds are going to the Canadian Red Cross. The govern-ment will match St, George’s donation dollar for dollar. According to Morris, the funds mainly come from homeroom money collec-tion, staff room money collection and recent activities organized by students.

Among all the ways to raise funds, Morris said homeroom fund collection was found to be the most efficient fund-raising.

“All the grades in the school have organized activities to raise funds,” said Morris.

For example, Grade 12s organized Northern Lights, a junior so-cial, inviting Grade 8s to 10s to buy tickets and dance. All profits earned from the tickets have gone straight to the Haiti funds.

Grade 8s, for instance, organized a lemonade sale in the Great Hall. The boarding community also contributed funds by selling late bed times.

According to the organizers of this fund-raising, many students in the boarding house donated $2 to postpone their bed time for half an hour last week. Staff room donations also provided significant support to this fund-raising.

Morris said that she had initially planned to raise only $5000; however, students’ enthusiasm for fund-raising has helped Morris reassess her initial goals. As Nigel Toy announced on Friday’s as-sembly, the school has raised $9000.

In addition, Morris said that additional fund-raising activities, such as the Grade 12s foosball tournament on February 2 and sales of JJ Asuming-Tawiah’s CDs will ultimately buoy the school’s donation, because the sale has made almost $500 in a week.

Saints dives into Haiti relief effort with $9000 contribution

A St. George’s School Student Publication Olympic Break 2010

By Ivan Cheung

Caution should be applied to any high school student’s

activities, because studies have shown that 1 in 4 teenagers have undiagnosed heart complications. This news comes shortly after the death of 21 year old SFU quarter-back Bernd Dittric. This world-wide problem is increasing daily.

“Sedentary lifestyles and inac-tivity can have a direct effect on individual weights, causing more people to be either overweight or obese,” said Kelly Bodutch, nurse of St George’s. “Gaming online should be reduced and physical activity should be increased.” According to a study made by the Heart and Stroke Founda-tion of BC, nearly 500,000 young children and adults are obese and therefore likely to have heart at-tacks in the near future.

Dr. Brian McCrindle, head car-

diologist of Sickkids in Canada, has emphasized this point by writing research papers and pre-senting studies. In an interview with The Echo, McCrindle said this problem will affect not only the present generation, but fu-ture ones as well. Obesity and those overweight will have an increased chance of develop-ing cardiovascular problems. In his medical paper, Cardiovas-cular Consequences of Obesity, he recommends that each young student should always be aware of the risks despite having seem-ingly healthy bodies.

“The problem is worsening,” he wrote. “ There is evidence that an epidemic of childhood obesity has led to an increase in cardio-vascular risk factors, which, if unchecked, will lead to disease.

”Schools have already been taking steps to prevent these problems in their students. For

example, banning and remov-ing chocolate bars in the vend-ing machines and using healthier ingredients in the cafeteria food are all actions to reduce heart disease problems in future gen-erations. “The purpose of the café is to provide students with good healthy food,” said Patrick Magu-ire, head of food services. “The Headmaster asked me to take charge of it with the mandate that it would provide healthy items to the students.”Despite these steps taken to prevent heart disease, Bodutch is very concerned about this worldwide epidemic and therefore cautions all students to keep their bodies in top condition to reduce the risks. However, it should be reassuring that as long as she has been at the school there has never been a heart attack or problem associated with elevated blood pressure.

“I can tell you that we have been

By Tony Ahn

Just before the retirement of Sandra Holmes, a new atten-

dance clerk has joined the staff of St. George’s as of January 4. Her name is Shannon Wilson and she works at the front desk. Her main job is to track down all the late or absent students.

“I love education, and since I could support education by work-ing here, I absolutely love my current job,” says Wilson. She used to work at retail shops, such as Lulu Lemon and Staples. She was the head of office in Lulu Lemon, a clothing shop, and worked in inventory in Staples.

“Throughout the entire day, the students come in, and I make sure all the information is logged in, and make sure I know why they are late and where they are and other jobs related to attendance,” says Wilson. “It’s a little more in-volved than it sounds, since I also

provide lunch relief to the recep-tion clerks.” Wilson says that she was looking for a new challenge, something that is relevant to edu-cation. During her search for a new occupation, Wilson found out about St. George’s through her friend, Jennifer Burton, who works in the human resources de-partment. Although this was the job she wanted, she revealed that she would eventually move on and pursue her ideal job. How-ever, she stated that she has no thoughts of giving up her job for a long time, as she says, “Eventu-ally I would like to get into inter-national relation, although I have no plans anytime soon to leave the school.”

“I hope to do my best at my current position. If we can make it so that we never had any late students and unexplained absenc-es, that would make me happy, along with everybody else within the school,” says Wilson.

Meet Shannon Wilson, the new attendence

clerk

Bernd Dittric, the SFU quaterback who died last year, due to an undiagnosed heart complication

Shannon Wilson, attendence clerk for Administration, was looking for a new challenge in the education field

when she joined Saints

By Roy Yang

The St. George’s Art depart-ment has embarked on a

social experiment to bring out the inner creativity of the entire school community. The initiative is inspired by an ongoing global project called 1000 Journals, a method for “interaction and shared creativity among friends and strangers.” Art teacher, Santhe Leblanc’s plan is to dis-tribute blank journals and have the students and teachers fill the pages with their own art. After adding their own contribution, they then pass it on to another in-dividual. Eventually, Leblanc will collect the journals for display.

“This project is a window to everybody’s creative side. It doesn’t’ matter where you are

1000 Journals project to promote artistic inspiration and creativity

from, everyone is creative.”The 1000 Journals was first

suggested to Leblanc by grade 8 student Mark Levine. There are now six journals circulating throughout St. George’s, being filled up by student and faculty with lay art. At the end of this ex-periment, Leblanc wants a “cross representation of the St. George’s community.”

“The purpose is to have the journals come back [reflecting a] good depiction of the school. If they come back with penis il-lustrations, then that is [a gen-eral] representation of the student body, and that’s what it is.”

Leblanc feels that the school system stifled the creativity in many students and others. For her, the aim is to reach out to all the staff, teachers, and students who

are afraid to be creative. “Hon-estly, I believe that the school system stops many kids from be-ing creative. Because of the set [academic] schedule, it destroys creativity of students growing up. Then, people become afraid to be artistic. The goal here is to give people who aren’t [always] able to be creative a chance.”

Leblanc wants a good, mature response for the project before it goes on display during Arts Week. “In art, it is a continuation of creativity. You pick up right where you left off from childhood drawings. Artists like Picasso ex-pressed that childhood drawings [in his opinion] were the best and innocent forms of art. So I en-courage people to be creative and just draw or write anything they want to in these journals.”

very fortunate at St. Georges to not have had any student suffer from a heart attack in the past that I am aware of,” the nurse said. Despite this, McCrindle is very aware that all heart disease symptoms are hard to spot and therefore may be fatal, especially

if there are additional contrib-uting factors such as obesity and “teenage” activities such as drinking beer.

“It’s easy to miss the invisible time bomb waiting to go off,” McCrindle says.

Six journals, such as this one, will be distributed thoughout the Senior school in an effort to “interact and share creativity among friends and strangers.” This project is being sponsored by Santhe Leblanc.

Students cautioned to avoid sedentary lifestylesIn BC, nearly 500,000 young children and adults are at risk of serious cardiac issues

By Matt Yensen

While many people will be relaxing and cheer-

ing on their favourite athletes during the Olympic Break, two Saints students will be embracing the Olym-pic spirit. Grade 11’s H a r r i s o n Xu, and Scott Lev-elton, will be perform-ing in the Paralympic o p e n i n g c e r e m o -nies, and the Olym-pic closing ceremonies respective-ly.

Levelton was not at liberty to c o m m e n t on his role during the c e r e m o -nies. Lev-elton was only able to say, “I’m part of an act featuring a very large n u m b e r of people; an act which I really think en-compasses the Olympic spirit.” He heard of the opportunity to perform through Venturers (the

By Peter Ding

For the first time in its history St. George’s has fielded a

curling team. Coached by John Hughes and Verne Becott, the team partook in its first bonspiel a few weeks ago. Hughes said that the curling team demonstrated that it could do very well during its first year at the regional level. As Hughes described some chal-lenging competitions between our school and other schools, he said, “Our students were serious challengers to encounter expe-rienced teams. It gave me pride that players had such courage. If the bonspiel happened at the end of term 2, our team would be for-midable.”

This year’s team is made from the most experienced players in the school. Rob Patterson is the team captain. Hughes said, “Pat-terson curls outside the school and is a member of Arbutus Curl-ing Club.”

The team also includes Benj Lewis, Eric Cheng and Daniel Rothballer. Lewis and Cheng have been in the curling program for “a couple of years.” Roth-

level above Boy Scouts), and was eventually successful in his ap-plication to what he describes as a “… really cool opportunity.”

Levelton will be performing in the closing ceremonies on Fe-

burary 28. Xu on the other hand was able to reveal more aspects of his undertaking at the Para-lympic opening ceremonies. “I’m involved in a group called Gotta

baller is a member of the German national curling team. Hughes said, “Our team members worked well together. I was impressed by their altitude and skill level. If we had a competitive team next

year, we would just need more practice. This year is a strange year for curling because of the Olympics. It was difficult to get ice time, so there was only one practice before the bonspiel.”

St. George’s did not have a curl-ing team prior to this year be-cause curling is a first term sport for most schools. “St. George’s does not have curling as a first term sport, we are discussing the

Two Grade 11s are excited to be participating in the OlympicsSing Gotta Dance and we’re per-forming a number as a group. Our routine has been quite chal-lenging to learn, and we’ve been practicing extremely hard for March 12.”

In terms of motiva-tion, Xu felt that often times the Paralympics are forgotten, and de-cided to put his effort into making sure that they will be remem-bered fondly by all those involved. “For some, this is the one thing they’ve been looking forward to their whole lives,” he said. The task of per-forming in the Olym-pics and Paralympics is something that was not taken lightly by Xu.

“Ever since I found out that I was to be performing in the Para-lympic ceremonies, it has been hard to grasp that I really was go-ing to be showcasing my efforts on a world stage,” said Xu. “All I can do is train hard, and leave as little as possible up to chance.”

This same reverence for the Olympics was not lost on Levelton either as “walking into BC Place full 60,000

screaming fans is definitely go-ing to be a challenge, but one I’m looking forward too. Oh and be-fore I forget, Go Canada!”

Eric Cheng, Daniel Rothballer, Benjamin Lewis and Rob Patterson recently competed at regionals

Saints’ presence on the BIG stage

possibilities to change that,” said Hughes. Encouraging more stu-dents to be interested in curling, Hughes said, “The main purpose of curling is to make everyone who is interested in curling inclu-sive. Also, there is no grade re-striction on curling because grade 12s can definitely work with grade 8s.” “Participants are getting pins for curling,” said Hughes. “Ms. Weckend offered lots of help. She will make curling pins with a nice curling broom on it.”

According to Hughes, the team had only four players, but it would be normal to have at least five members on a team. Hughes said, “We will probably expand the team. Honestly, we are reas-sessing strategies for next year.”

For the last couple of years, the school has offered curling as a recreational sports option.

About 16 Senior school students load up the busses on Wednesday afternoons for the half hour drive to the Marpole Curling Club.

Nabil Virji, a member of rec curling, explains, “Curling is a really relaxing game. Athletically is is not very demading.”

Competitive curling team off to solid start in winter season

By Matt Yensen

While the majority of students miss only a few days of school a year, Grade 11 Justin Hayto is not one of them. Spending

the majority of his time on skis, Hayto has been competing on a number of teams, including representing St. George’s at the high school level, all the while traveling across the country and the globe to train and compete at a national level.

In an effort to get a head start on the ski season, Hayto traveled to the Farnham Glacier in the Canadian Rockies well before any snow had fallen on the local Vancouver mountains. “It was a really amaz-ing experience,” he said, “... being helicoptered up to the glacier every morning, and from there having cats shuttle us after every lap on the glacier.” More recently however, Hayto has spent time racing in Lake Louise where he placed an impressive fourth in slalom, and sixth and ninth respectively, in two giant slalom events. When not on the road, Hayto trains every weekend at various mountains, and T u e s - days and T h u r s - days at local m o u n - tains, such as Cypress and Seymour. While at these local s lopes , Hayto said he trains mainly in GS and slalom. He explained, “There is simply not enough room for speed training.” His years of persistent train-ing culminated in an eighth place in slalom at the Whistler Cup, an event that features 390 young athletes from over 20 countries.

During the upcoming 2010 Paralympic Games, Hayto hopes to act as a forerunner for the alpine skiing events. He will help to ensure that conditions on the course are at their best for competitors.

Unfortunately for Hayto, time spent pursuing his skiing aspirations translates into time away from school. “It’s really quite a challenge having to catch up on missed tests, assignments and quizzes. On top of that, I have a responsibility to teach myself a lot of material,” he said. Often times he has had to reschedule exams, often cramming them into only a couple of days in order to attend races. Even with all of these pressures Hayto has worked diligently to ensure that his grades remain “steady.”

In order to stay as up to date as possible, he first meets with his teachers before departing on a trip, and discusses what he will be missing, and what work he will have to do on his own. “I recently bought a laptop so I’m able to communicate with my teachers while on the road. It’s been a big help being able to contact my teachers for help or guidance.”

Although he has made many sacrifices for skiing, Hayto is sure that he’ll never give up on the sport, in one form or another. “Skiing is definitely a part of my life, something I never plan on giving up. I don’t know where I would be without it.”

“His years of persistent training culminated in an eighth place in slalom at the Whistler Cup...”

Grade 11 trades books for skis