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‘Best of the Class’ 2006

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Each year, WAFB does a series of video segments featuring valedictorians and top graduates from schools around the Baton Rouge area. As valedictorian, I was the representative for Maurepas High School. There are a lot of schools in the Baton Rouge areas, so they record the segments on different days. Basically, graduates showed up on a certain day at the Lod Cook Alumni Center on the LSU campus. The event was catered by Chef John Folse. To this day, I don’t know how he managed to make plain finger sandwiches taste so good. My mom also took a picture of some of us with WAFB anchorwoman Donna Britt.

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After eating, some of the WAFB personalities gave speeches. Meteorologist Jay Grimes could’ve been mistaken for a professional football player. The man is huge. When the speeches were over, we recorded both the individual and group videos. A few weeks later, I received a VHS tape from WAFB in the mail with the recording of my group’s commercial.

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Maurepas Graduation

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Here’s a 2006 article from The Livingston Parish News covering my class’ graduation from Maurepas:

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MAUREPAS – Graduation ceremonies honored 26 seniors at Maurepas School Friday night.

Valedictorian Austin Dixon was named Student of the Year, won a Faculty Scholarship and a Southeastern Louisiana University 4-year Honors Award for $9,200.

Dixon also won the American Legion Ladies Auxiliary Award and the Gerald Bantaa Humanitarian Award.

Salutatorian Justin Johnston also won a faculty scholarship, and an American Legion Award.

Both Dixon and Johnston received TOPS awards and Regents Scholars awards.

Regents scholars awards are presented to students who earned a 3.5 grade point average taking a college preparatory TOPS curriculum and made at least a 20 on the ACT test.

Other Regents scholars who also received the TOPS award were Julie Arthur, Seth Bourgeois, Ashley Cox, Jonathan Ellis, Kyle Hatcher, Ashley Lambert and Lucas Stowe.

Other TOPS award winners, having at least a 20 on the ACT with a TOPS curriculum, were Randy Owens and Joshua Rathe.

Rathe was the Academic Endorsement Winner. He also won a four-year Southeastern Louisiana University Honors Award for $2,800 for earning a 3.0 grade point average or better, with the Tops curriculum, and a 24 or higher ACT score.

Rathe also won the Woodmen of the World Award for the highest American History grade.

Ashley Cox also won an American Legion Award, a Knights of Columbus Award, and the Steve Bovia Award.

Ashley Lambert also won an American Legion Ladies Auxiliary Award and the Clark Farrell Award savings bond and plaque.

Lucas Stowe also won the Eatel Award, a laptop computer, which is given to an outstanding student in the fields of telecommunications and engineering.

Cole Berthelot and Jacob Powell won TOPS Awards certificates for at least a 17 score on the ACT with a TOPS curriculum. Cole Berthelot also won the $500 Hubie Leader Memorial Scholarship.

Talent Search awards for participation in Talent Search through Southeastern Louisiana University were given to Cole Berthelot, Kyle Hatcher, Ashley Jenkins, Justin Johnston and Randy Owens.

Cole Berthelot, Hollie Sharp and Ashley Jenkins were given 4-H awards.

Randy Owens won the lma Hughes Vocational Award and a Knights of Columbus Award.

Masonic Awards for patriotism and citizenship went to Julie Arthur and Charles Dupuy.

Department of Army Scholar and Athlete Awards went to Julie Arthur and Seth Bourgeois.

Also graduating Friday were Justin Adams, Chantel Bales, Russell Bell, Sabrina David, Chase Delatte, Joshua Fritsche, Kade Johnson, Corey Moran, Lyndsay Norris and Nick Richardson. (Dowty)

Works Cited

Dowty, Alice. “Maurepas Graduation.” The Livingston Parish News [Livingston, LA] 18 May 2006: A12. Print.

Team Chuck: The Greatest Team Ever Assembled

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Near the end of my senior year of high school, a student vs. faculty charity basketball game was planned to benefit the March of Dimes. A few of the seniors and I wanted to do something a little extra for the game, and I came up with the idea of making our team a set of jerseys with t-shirt iron-on transfers. There was an immediate and unanimous decision to name the team after Chuck Norris, and after floating around potential names like “Chucksters,” we decided on “Team Chuck.” After filling out our roster, I went around and got plain, white t-shirts from everyone that wanted a jersey. I spent the night before the game working on an old computer designing the shirts, printing and cutting them out, and ironing them onto the shirts. The computer was so old, it only had a one-gigabyte hard drive.

The Jerseys

The front of the jerseys featured our “Team Chuck” name above and below a cut-out of Chuck Norris’ head. The top-left of the front read, “STUDENTS vs FACULTY BASKETBALL GAME; MARCH 17, 2006; MAUREPAS GYM.” The top-right was blank, save for two exceptions. Our coach Chase Delatte (a senior) had a shirt that spelled out “Coach” with the letter “C” sporting a Chuck Norris-esque mullet. The team captains, Lucas Stowe (another senior) and myself, both sported the “mullet C.” The jersey number was split on the left and right sides of Chuck’s head. Everyone picked their own numbers. I told them I didn’t care what number they wanted, so I found myself making some jerseys with numbers like “3.14,” “07,”  “XVXI,” and “.5.”

The back of the jerseys near the neck had a small Texas Ranger badge. Under the badge was the player’s name or nickname, and under that was the player’s number. There was also a small block of text on the lower back, but I can’t remember what it was for. It was probably a quote from Chuck Norris or a motivational message.

Pre-Game

Like any good high school basketball team, we had a plan for pre-game warm-ups. I thought we should run out to the theme from the television show “Walker, Texas Ranger.” Lucas wanted to use Hulk Hogan’s “Real American” theme. We compromised and used both. Lucas also had a large American flag that he planned to run with and wave around. It vanished a few minutes before warm-ups, so we had to do without it. 

After we had already started layup drills, the teachers ran out for warm-ups, and the boys’ head basketball coach, Evan Balfantz, was leading the charge with Lucas’ American flag. He had swiped and hidden it in the girls’ locker room, which was being used by the faculty team for that afternoon. We never would’ve found it since Team Chuck was using the boys’ locker room.

The Aftermath

I won’t lie about it. We got beat bad. My excuse is that we were trying to make sure everyone got at least two quarters of playing time, regardless if that person was a basketball player. The faculty team was doing the same, though not nearly to the same degree.

It’d be pretty cool to bring back Team Chuck in the future for some kind of game or event. That beat down needs to be avenged somehow.

Mexico Mission Trip

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A few days passed, and we headed to the church early in the morning to depart. When I say early, I mean 2:00 A.M. Large vans and trailers were scattered all over the church parking lot. It probably looked like we were preparing for either the rapture or a drug bust. Once everything was organized, we prayed and hit the road.

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According to Google Maps, the distance from Sulphur Springs, Texas, to Villa Aldama, Tamaulipas, is approximately 870 miles. It’s about a 15-hour drive.

Three-fourths of the way through the trip, we reached the border city of Brownsville, Texas. After waiting a little while at the checkpoint, we were cleared to cross the border. This was the first time I’d been out of the country.

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Once we made it to Aldama, we had to check-in at our motel and unload our stuff. At first glance, the motel looked like any average motel you’d find in the United States. The only noticeable difference was the cobblestone floor of the courtyard. The rooms were surprisingly nice, too. After leaving the hotel, we drove around town and visited the home of the local pastor we’d be working with throughout the week.

As we were driving through town, one of the most noticeable features to me was the huge range of living style. We’d drive past a few nicer stores and more modern homes, and then a few miles down the road there would be nothing but huts made of mud and grass–like something you’d see in National Geographic.

The main section of Aldama had stores and restaurants all over. There was even a town square with a large stage. This was where our evening worship services took place. You can see the stage area in a couple of pictures. I’m in the yellow shirt giving my testimony. Standing next to me in the striped shirt is Carlos, one of our interpreters.

The Town Square

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About half of our mission work took place around the town square. After eating breakfast at the local pastor’s house each morning, we went to the town square for street evangelism. We split up into smaller groups with a translator assigned to each group. The translator for my group was a really nice guy named Gary.

Since Mr. Gary was the one that could actually speak Spanish, he did the majority of the witnessing. I didn’t want to interrupt him just to get in a few words. For the most part, I greeted anyone we met and told them what my salvation meant to me, and Mr. Gary carried on with the majority of the conversation.

As mentioned previously, we had nightly worship services on the stage in the town square that anyone could attend. Each service consisted of singing, a couple of testimonies, and a sermon and invitation. I had originally offered to give my testimony at the first service, but that night it rained, so I had to wait until later in the week to share. There were a handful of people that came to know Christ through the worship services, including a guy that was the Mexican version of a hot dog vendor that set up shop near the stage one night.

Nacimiento

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In addition to our activities in the town square, we were separated into groups to offer vacation Bible school to local kids in different areas. A couple of groups did this in the town area, but the rest were assigned to the smaller villages surrounding Aldama. The locations I can remember were Paso Hondo, Santa Maria, and Nacimiento. The picture of the village above was taken in Paso Hondo, although it’s a good representation of what I saw with my group in Nacimiento. Interestingly enough, I noticed an older model Coke machine outside one of the huts.

We had to leave the town and drive a few miles on a dirt road to get to Nacimiento. The Nacimiento village had a small church building where we held VBS activities for the community. Before we got there, we literally went walking around the village telling everyone to, “Come to the church,” in Spanish. Each day, we had a group of about 30 kids in the church. In true VBS fashion, we did skits and had different activities for the kids to do. We had the mandatory VBS cookies and Kool-Aid, too. I was able to share my testimony there, also. Even though there wasn’t any traditional “preaching,” we did have the privilege to see a few of the people there accept Christ.

I got to play soccer with some of the local kids while I was there. Our goals were consisted of cinder blocks and old oil drums. Some of the guys there were really good.

Uncle Wilton came to Nacimiento on the last day and led us up a trail in the mountains. It brought us to the edge of what looked like a huge sinkhole. After doing some research, it turns out the sinkhole is called Cenote El Zacaton and is fairly well-known. It’s the deepest, water-filled sinkhole known in the world. It’s over 350 meters deep (Gary 141). Bret Gilliam wrote that it was the site of a world-record scuba dive in 1994 (cited in Gary 141).

The End of the Trip

We spent our last day in Mexico at the beach. I learned about my uncle’s too-strong Gatorade that has the ability to “make you a man.” It was a pretty normal beach visit, except for one of the members of the NBFBC youth group getting baptized in the Gulf of Mexico.

Once back in the United States, we stopped in San Antonio for a night. We were able to check out the River Walk, and we ate at the restaurant that was owned by one of the guys in our mission group. It turns out the mission group from the previous year had stopped at his restaurant after their trip. He talked to them and found out about everything and asked to join the group the following year.

It was an awesome experience, from the evangelism to the food at the pastor’s house every day. I’m really glad I was blessed with the opportunity to go.