Locals Only: Go, academics, go!

If newspapers covered all aspects of high school like they do Sports:

School is back in this week at Winthrop J. Honeybear High School, and that can only mean one thing: high grades.

Pencil sharpeners will be whirring, calculators crackling, computers used for research and research only again this academic year.

Forty-five returning Honor Roll students will attempt to make the leap to High Honor Roll. These kids are the likes of Jimmy Paprika, who spent the summer writing essays . . . in Latin. Go get em, Jimmy.

The Honeybear Bears are again led by Jean, Gene and Jon Onwardson, the triplets that had the whole state buzzing, last WASL season. Jon had a perfect score in Writing, Gene was 100 percent on Reading and Jean aced the Math portion. College recruiters from Harvard, Yale and M.I.T. have practically been camping out at the family home. And these kids are only juniors! Principal Evelyn Sniflin has high hopes for “the trips,” as they are known: “I really think one or two of them, if not all, could go all the way . . . to NASA!”

press bw 2web

No wonder: the Onwardsons have already designed and launched a working “mini-Space Station,” a football-shaped satellite that runs on paperclips, rubber bands and one AAA battery. 

The Drama Department is “giddy with excitement,” says Director J.M. Ivanov, over incoming ninth grade Gennifer Stallone. (No relation to the movie star.)

“As a fourth grader,” raves Ivanov, “she was so good at playing Ophelia that her teacher gave in and made ‘Hamlet’ a one-woman show.

“She can do it all,” the director continues, “from ‘Annie’ to Beckett. I really think she’s the next Meryl Streep.”

He added that he is cautious “not to get caught up in the hype” over young Ms. Stallone, who is reportedly being scouted by the Juilliard.

(This newspaper attempted to do an interview with Gennifer, but her agent advised her against it.)

The Math Team is led by James “Jimmy the Trig” O’Neal, who as a sophomore set a school record by taking Pi to 18 decimals, before suffering a season-ending migraine. 

Anjie Duncan and three other returning starters have the Honeybear Debaters looking strong. Anjie has been undefeated in conference debate competitions for two years running, losing last year only in the State finals when she was disqualified, for arguing with the officials over who was supposed to go first. “She never loses an argument,” marveled Andy Jones, the Debate Team’s manager, and Anjie’s boyfriend. “Never, not once, not ever. Never. Ever.”

The Honeybear Journal, returning champ as the Best School Paper in the County, lost its editor and three top writers to graduation. Journalism teacher Margaret Hatcher is “cautiously enthusiastic” about a transfer who “wrote a prize-winning ‘Meatloafgate’ series at his last school.” Ms. Hatcher added that “we need to cut down on the typos, get in Student Government’s faces and stay there, and bury the competition, not the lead.”

The unofficial Class Clown position is wide open, after the transfer to Western Juvenile Detention of Dave “Shaving Cream” Johnson. (Details of his transfer were not officially released, although a source confirms it involved “lighter fluid, a bag of dog poop and a high ranking City official.”) Now that he is back from a school year-ending suspension, Joey Pavlof is considered a contender; last year, as a new transfer, he pranked the entire school for three weeks, by pretending to be blind. (He convinced his parents that “all the kids are wearing dark sunglasses and carrying canes.”) 

The Scrabble team is still recovering from last year’s scandal, when star player Bonnie Dutton, just one good word away from clinching the State championship, was discovered to have a blank tile in her mouth. Her “I thought it was a chocolate square” excuse did not fly with judges, who expelled her and the team from the playoffs.

“It’s going to be tough to live down,” said veteran Scrabble coach Antonio D’Aquainastolli. “We’re just going to have to take it one letter at a time.”

tscanlon@northcoastnews.com