Student Standouts & Staff Spotlight for December 16, 2022

Student Standouts: Turnell ’23, Weaver ’23, Etherington ’24, Brauer ’24, Birkel ’25, Guirl ’24, Mikulec ’24, Smith ’24, Kummant ’26, Williams ’26, Ramifications & Rampire Robotics Teams, Boys Basketball, Football

Staff Spotlight: Reichert

Congratulations to this week’s standouts below. Way to go #RamNation! And as always, if you have a story to share, please email weeklynews@micds.org.

Senior Makes the 2023 United States Archery Team

Last week, USA Archery proudly presented the 2023 United States Archery team and our very own AJ Turnell ’23 made the U21 Barebow Men team! “It’s very exciting to have this opportunity!” AJ shares. “I love the sport and am happy to compete at such a level.” Congratulations, AJ!

USAT “consists of the best archers in the country, selected based on performance in national and USAT series events over a yearlong season that travels the United States. Making USAT is a tremendous accomplishment that reflects countless arrows and hours of practice, travel and competition. Athletes who compete on the USAT event circuit do an amazing balancing act of school, work, family, friends and many other commitments. It takes a great amount of time, effort and personal sacrifice and the dedication required to reach this level of success is significant. Beyond the prestige of making the USAT, archers earn the right to wear USA across their backs on a special team jersey.

Ram Earns Top Fundraising Award at ACS All-Star Game

Dominic Weaver ’23 received the Jennifer Younkins Award at the American Cancer Society’s All-Star game at Missouri Baptist University. He received the award for being the top fundraiser out of all the players. Way to go, Dominic!

Three Rams Make 2022 All-Metro Field Hockey Teams

Congratulations to Ella Etherington ’24 on making the 2022 All-Metro field hockey second team! She led the Rams with 20 assists, scored six goals, and contributed an assist in 13 games.

We are also sending congrats to Ella Brauer ’24 and Caroline Birkel ’25 for making the 2022 All-Metro field hockey third team! Ella did a phenomenal job on defense and also made several assists. Caroline earned 20 goals and 47 points. She was also a star at converting penalty corners.

Way to go Rams!

Junior Dancing in the Nutracker at the Fox

Are you seeing the Nutcracker at Fox Theatre this Sunday, December 18? Be sure to keep a lookout for Ava Guirl ’24! Ava is appearing in both shows as the Arabian and Spanish Variations in the Act II. Break a leg, Ava!

Doubles Partners Make the 2022 All-Metro Girls Tennis First & Second Teams

Congratulations to Mikaela Mikulec ’24 for making the 2022 All-Metro Girls Tennis First Team! In STL High School Sports, Mikaela is highlighted for being the No. 1 singles player for the MICDS team and she was the Metro League co-player of the year.

Alongside Mikaela, partner Rachel Li ’24 made the 2022 All-Metro Girls Tennis Second Team. She held the No. 2 singles spot and she played doubles with Mikaela where the two won the No. 1 flight in the Metro League Tournament and finished second in Class 3 at state.

Three Rams Perform with COCA's Pre-Professional Dance Company

Three of our Rams performed December 8-11 as part of COCA’s Pre-Professional dance company, Ballet Eclectica. Jaida Smith ’24, Alexa Kummant ’26, and Isabelle Williams ’26 danced in “The Little Dancer, Moments in Time,” a concert-length ballet choreographed by Kevin Jenkins. They had the unique opportunity to work with Jenkins in a professional residency format this semester.

COCA Dance & Pre-Professional Division Manager Sam Gaitsch shared, “COCAedu partners with schools across the region to provide hundreds of students with an arts-integration educational experience tied to this production.”

Ramifications & Rampire Robotics Teams Compete in FIRST Robotics Competition

Ramifications team (#5155) write-up by Prakul Bhattarai ’26, Arjun Bodavula ’25, Joe Intagliata ’25, and Jackson Vetter ’25.

Our meet on December 3 was our first meet of the season, and in our opinion, it went alright. We experienced some issues with our linear slide and our device that picks up the cones. In one of our matches, we had an issue where the string that controlled the linear slide snapped, so we had to restring it and we could not pick up cones for two matches. We also had a match where the device that we use to pick up cones broke, but we had a backup that we implemented for the final match. We experienced issues during our matches where the mount for the linear slide was bending back and forth, and we resorted to pushing the cones for a few of the matches.  We ended up winning two out of our six matches, which was better than we were expecting. Most of the other teams at the match had very well-designed robots, so we were proud to win as many matches as we did. We had been experiencing issues with our robot prior to the competition as we were not able to robustly mount our linear slide to the chassis. A very positive part in almost all of our matches was our autonomous section, where we were able to read the cone correctly almost every time, which got us 20 points each match. Overall, we were proud of how we did and we hope to improve for the next competition on January 6.


Rampire team write-up by Tanay Goel ’24

The FIRST Robotics Competition is a competition that challenges and allows students to use their creative mindsets to build and design objects such as robotic arms and graphic designing 3D models. December 3rd was Rampire’s robotics competition of the season. This competition was for all teams to show their robots’ capabilities and team skills. Our team encountered many challenges and successes. The challenges allowed us to see weak points that we can improve on. We used improvisation and collaboration to fix the challenges they encountered while taking notes on what to improve on, so something similar doesn’t happen again. This competition encourages quick thinking and collaboration, both essential life skills.

Boys Basketball Rallies Out of Double-Digit Deficit to Win

The MICDS Boys Basketball team had an exciting win on Wednesday. Read the STL Today recap which shares how they came back out of a double-digit deficit to beat St. Mary’s 70-65. With only three seniors on the team, one of which (Coleman) had to sit on the bench part of the time due to fouls, the younger classmen stepped up to help make the game a win. Jayden Banks ’24 scored 16 points, Brin Lewis ’23 had 15 points, Brandon Clemens ’25 scored 12 points, and Marcus Coleman ’23 scored eight points including hitting all six of his free throws in the final 1:04. Way to work hard, Rams!

Post-season Honors for MICDS Football Players

Congratulations to our Rams who were chosen for post-season honors for Class 5 District 2!
All-District Honors:
  • Steve Hall ’23 – RB
  • Winston Moore ’23 – ATH
  • Cameron Lester ’23 – DB
  • Tyler Petersen ’23 – DB
  • Nate Schuckman ’23 – OL
  • Cortlin Dalton ’23 – LB
  • Lucas Allgeyer – DL
  • Peter Herzog ’23 – OL
  • Devyn Rodgers ’23 – DL
  • Davis Schukar ’24 – OL
  • Carter Enyard ’24 – LB

Class 5 All-State Honors:

1st Team:

  • Cameron Lester ’23 – DB

2nd Team:

  • Steve Hall ’23 – RB
  • Cortlin Dalton ’23 – LB
  • Lucas Allgeyer – DL
  • Nate Schuckman ’23 – OL

3rd Team:

  • Winston Moore ’23 – ATH & RET

Class 5 Academic All-State Honors

  • Nate Schuckman ’23 – OL
  • Willy Carpenter ’24 – DB
  • Steve Hall ’23 – RB
  • Davis Schukar ’23 – OL
  • Brian Gould ’25 – QB
  • Harrison Mandell ’23 – K

Go, Rams!

Staff Spotlight: Varsity Wrestling Coach Records 100th Career Win

With a 42-12 win over St. Pius X, Head Varsity Wrestling Coach Cory Reichert recorded his 100th career win. Way to go, Coach! We can’t wait to cheer on the Wrestling team during Coach Reichert’s next 100 wins! Go Rams!