The Official Student News Site of Parkway West High

Pathfinder
The Official Student News Site of Parkway West High

Pathfinder
The Official Student News Site of Parkway West High

Pathfinder
“Dance is a big part of my life, and it has been since I was three years old. It’s not only really fun, but my closest friends dance with me at my studio, so It’s great getting to see them every day. A specific time I was really proud of myself in dance was when I completed my first solo in sixth grade. I felt proud that I was able to perform in front of such a big crowd, and I actually ended up doing pretty well for my first time competing. A challenging part about dance is when I can’t get a skill, and I don’t know the reason why I can’t. It can be really frustrating since all you want to do is be able to improve in the sport you do. I overcome this by just moving on to a different skill for a while to take a break, and eventually, I’ll come back to the previous skill and work on it for a while again. I love dancing, however, I don’t see myself pursuing it in the future just because it is so time-consuming, and dancing in college can be a big commitment.” - Paige Schnarr, 11

Paige Schnarr

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 24, 2023

“Something I’m proud of is how much weight I have lost, and the amount of muscle I have gained back. At the start of quarantine, I was around 220 pounds, and I just wasn’t satisfied with how I looked. I felt pretty pressured by social media influencers, and that’s something that motivated me to want to change my lifestyle. At first, I would just play video games all day, and I was losing weight in an unhealthy way, but one day my friends started going to the gym, and I just thought it was finally time to change. Now, I’ve been going to the gym for almost two years, and I have lost around 60 pounds. I try to go almost every day because it’s just a part of my daily routine now, and it’s something that makes me happy. I also feel proud to see how much improvement I have made, but I’m still not satisfied with how I look yet. I want to be able to compete in the future with weightlifting, and I’m hoping to gain even more muscle than I have now.” - Michael Tigue, 11

Michael Tigue

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 23, 2023

“Something I do outside of school is that I resell different video game skins on Counter-Strike and game bundles. I used to also resell sports cards, but I don’t really focus on that anymore. As a short summary of what I do, I go on sites where I can buy skins for less than they’re worth, and I would resell them on different Chinese websites. I first started doing this as just a side business because I wanted to earn money in something that I spend some of my free time doing. Counter-Strike is a fun game, so I thought, just why not try to earn money by playing games? Now I just use the money I earn to invest more into buying skins on video games to resell, and it has now become a continuous cycle.” - Phillip Tovrea 11

Phillip Tovrea

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 22, 2023

I’m passionate about doing well in school. I think that as a freshman it’s important to start on the right foot in high school since it can affect how you do later in the year. A lot of people say freshman year doesn’t matter, but I still want to do the best I can on all of my tests and homework so that I can get the grades that I want. Doing well can also give me a cushion for next year and the years after that, and if I do well it can make college cheaper with scholarships. I hold high expectations of myself, and it stresses me out and I get frustrated knowing that I could have done better.” - Camden Wilford, 9

Camden Wilford

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 19, 2023

One of my biggest accomplishments is winning all districts and second, all-conference in the top suburban conference of Missouri. No freshman in Missouri won my conference, so I’m really proud because all of my hard work paid off. I’ve been playing basketball for my whole life, and so did my mom and my grandma, so it sort of runs in the family to play basketball in high school and college. My coach is my biggest inspiration because he’s always cheering me and motivating me on the court. He’s probably my number-one fan. I can see myself playing for the rest of high school and it’s also my dream to play basketball in college.” - Ava Albanese, 9

Ava Albanese

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 18, 2023

“I joined the Poms team because I like performing. I [have done] gymnastics since I was a little kid but I really wanted to do dance because I wanted to try performing in front of the school and my friends. Gymnastics is also really hard on your body, it takes up a lot of your time. I had practice every day for five hours and that was very exhausting. I wanted to try something new. Dance and gymnastics are similar, you're still performing but dance is more performing to a lot of people and interacting with the crowd, whereas gymnastics is you're doing it by yourself. A lot of my friends were dancing and I had watched them for so many years. I wanted to do that and then when I made the team, I was so happy to get the opportunity. We really bring each other up on the team. The difference between gymnastics and dance is with gymnastics you have to do it for yourself, but in dance you're doing it for other people. I think that really motivates everyone to do their best. I was definitely very nervous when I first started to be seen by everyone and show everyone what I could do. I realized though we practice so much and we know what we're doing, so to just have fun.” -Abby Cauley, 11

Abby Cauley

Amelia Bothmann, CJ1 Writer • May 17, 2023

“I really enjoy playing soccer and I want to go far with it. It's hard especially during my fall season because I was playing softball through school and club soccer for three teams. It was a challenge because a lot of weekends I was going out on tournaments, then coming back was really hard with the lack of rest and everything. I really want to go far and I want to go to college and play a sport in college. I know the next step is playing in high school and then playing in college and then just continuing on. You need to make sure that you're living life to the fullest. A lot of my challenges in sports are injury based and those are the hardest. You have so many people telling you that you shouldn't play because you should want to heal before you do. But the hardest times in my life are when I'm injured. When I can't play and then I feel like I'm letting down my team. But you have to take that step back though and realize if anyone else was in that situation you wouldn’t want them to possibly hurt themselves just to keep playing. You would want them to take care of themselves and get better.” - Stephanie Fussner, 9

Stephanie Fussner

Amelia Bothmann, CJ1 Writer • May 16, 2023

“Something I am hoping to do in the future is college gymnastics. I have currently been doing gymnastics for 13 years, and my parents first put me in because they needed to find a way to get me out of the house. I have practice five days a week, and I compete from December through May. I have met some of my best friends through gymnastics, and my teammates and coaches motivate me to improve because just seeing my teammates work hard and progress makes me want to improve too. I’ve faced a few injuries throughout the years, and it can be really hard to recover from them. Because my practices are so often, if I’m injured I have to miss a lot of the time which can be really damaging to my improvement because gymnastics is all about repetition and it’s hard to get back into it after you take time off. I definitely want to do gymnastics in college, and I’m currently trying to get recruited by emailing coaches and sending videos of my gymnastics skills.” - Ava Bauman, 11

Ava Bauman

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 15, 2023

“I’m passionate about being close to others around me. Good friendships influence my life when I can have a lot of people around me, and it makes me happy to see other people happy too. I put myself in a lot of new social environments where I’ll pursue new hobbies and meet new people in those spaces. I got into Dungeons and Dragons, car mechanics, and video games which is where I mostly meet new people. One of my favorite things to do with my friends is going on walks since it’s a relaxing activity and puts you in a more personal situation where it creates more room and time to talk to them. I also talk to my friends and see if they know anyone new in my areas of interest, and then I’d go and introduce myself to those people. Overall I value building new and current friendships, and I hope to be able to continue that for the rest of my life.” - Mason Sehi, 11

Mason Seay

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 12, 2023

“Traveling is my favorite thing to do since my family loves to travel too, and we always visit new places with every opportunity we get. Over spring break, I went to Rosemary Beach in Florida with my friend. My family loves traveling to warm places, so a few of my favorite vacations have been when we visited Jamaica, the Grand Cayman Islands and Mexico. I would describe myself as adventurous, so traveling is extremely exciting to me since I visit places that I only ever get to hear about. When traveling, there’s also no stress of school or anything back home, so it’s like a whole week of fun. Over the Summer, I’m going to be traveling to Alaska, where I get to try bobsledding for the first time, and I’m very grateful I get the opportunity to do something like that.” - Emma Nunnelee, 11

Emma Nunnelee

Angie Ren, Staff Writer • May 11, 2023

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