Discus Award Winner
Winners Gallery
PHOTOS
Nichole VanDenEng
12th Grade, WI
ATTRIBUTES
Academics
I have always been one to push myself to obtain excellence, which I have managed to achieve throughout high school with a 4.0 GPA. During my first three years of high school I challenged myself with rigorous courses including numerous honors classes. This year I am taking two AP classes and an advanced math course, while juggling the many hours of homework and studying I have managed to score highly in my AP classes as well and my GPA has exceeded a 4.0. Instead of using my off hour to study and do schoolwork I decided to become lab assistant for my AP chemistry teacher. I prepare solutions for labs, help choose different experiments that teach his regular chemistry classes most efficiently, and I am able to tutor students that struggle. I am also a member of the National Honors Society.
Athletics
Being an avid competitor in athletics I received the honor of being named captain of the basketball team three of my four years of playing. The basketball program at my high school is taken very seriously. Excellence is the only option and we have lived up to that standard by winning conference my freshman, sophomore, and junior year. The success we achieve comes with responsibility. Players are asked to coach on Saturday mornings at youth basketball camps. This year we even organized a camp for special needs children in the community and ran it ourselves. I was also named floor captain of the volleyball team my senior year and received the honor of MVP as well as a Third-Team All Conference. I also started as center mid-fielder on the soccer team the two years I played.
Faith
I was raised Catholic but I did not truly find my own faith until I went on a mission trip through Catholic Heart Work Camp. The hot summer in St. Louis was no match for the work of the Lord, where most teenagers would complain He used that week to change my life. That summer my mission was to help an elderly widow with cleaning, yard work, and painting. The following two summers I worked at a retirement community meeting residents and doing landscaping, and I helped make a blind man and his son’s home safer for their disabilities. These mission trips really fueled the fire for faith in a few of our youth and we began organizing “mini mission trips” around our community open to younger kids. I also wanted to be even more involved in my Parish so I read once a month during mass.
