High Life A WEEKLY FORUM FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS : Western High Scholars Beat Nevadans

Western High School of Anaheim recently scored a best-of-three-matches victory in a Kiwanis Bowl academic competition against Las Vegas El Dorado High, the Kiwanis Bowl champion of Clark County, Nev.

The 10-member team won the right to challenge the Clark County champion after winning its first Orange County Kiwanis Bowl title on March 13, when it defeated four other division winners--Dana Hills, El Toro, Foothill and Santa Ana Valley--in a double-elimination, round-robin competition.

Members of Western’s team are: seniors Shane Swanson (captain), Michael Duskis, Steve Her, Don Saavedra and Tom Shrake; juniors Jesse McReynolds, Nguyen Tran and Sara Wadhwani, and sophomores Khoa Do and Jason Kuan.

Jim Tozzie, who teaches social studies and psychology at Western, is the team’s adviser.

Competing students were asked to answer questions in areas such as history, geography, vocabulary, politics and science.

The Huntington Beach High School girls’ drill team has wowed judges at competitions during the past six months, including an outing recently that earned it an opportunity to take the show overseas this summer.

The 43-member squad continued its winning ways Saturday by finishing first in the USA Nationals at Cypress College. It was the team’s first appearance since winning the large drill-team division title at the recent Miss Drill Team USA. That victory earned it the division’s national championship and a berth, along with teams from 17 other high schools across the country, in the international finals in Japan in August.

It marks the first invitation the school has received to the international competition. The 1984-85 team won the Miss Drill Team USA title but that was a year before the worldwide finals were instituted.

This year’s squad has placed first in the large military division of each of its six competitions during 1989-90. If the squad wins again at its final event next month, it will complete its first season without a loss since the championship squad of five years ago.

The key to this team’s success, said first-year coach Linda Stewart, has been the girls’ discipline and unity. The girls practice as a full squad three hours per night, five nights a week, in addition to five extra hours’ minimum they are required to work in their smaller groups, she said.