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Finding a home or business in the modern age is made easier with apps like Google Maps, but what happens when an address doesn't appear in those digital location services? The problem can be made worse if the place doesn't have an address nailed or posted on the building. Such was the case when high school senior Tyson Messmer was trying to find someone's home at Panhandle Trailer Court. It helped him decide on his senior project. "I couldn't find it anywhere," Messmer said. That experience and...
In a special session last Saturday, the school board approved the contract for a new elementary school principal. Board members unanimously accepted the contract for Ann Hilburn as Evergreen Elementary School principal beginning the 2022-23 school year. Hilburn is in her first year as the special education teacher at the high school and middle school, having moved to Wrangell from Mississippi last fall. Hilburn was part of an applicant pool of more than 30 people, which was narrowed down to eight to 10 applicants. Schools Superintendent Bill...
Schools try to prepare students for life beyond the walls of academia and sometimes that requires more than classroom education. Last Tuesday, high school and middle school staff held a health fair that centered around not only physical and mental health but financial health and planning for the future. Separate sessions were held for the high school and the middle school and each was brimming with students actively going to various tables, asking questions, playing games and competing with...
Art students are decking out their deck shoes. Wrangell High School was one of 250 schools across the country picked to participate in the Vans Custom Culture art contest and could win up to $50,000. It was an opportunity that almost didn't happen. "We were supposed to get the shoes mid-February. (Vans) sent them but they got lost," said art teacher Tasha Morse. She contacted the company, which told her to keep a lookout for the shoes. If the two pairs didn't arrive, they would send...
Picking a senior project was just like ringing a bell for Caleb Garcia. Since 2013, the 17-year-old has been involved with The Salvation Army, so being the volunteer coordinator of the nonprofit's Red Kettle fundraising effort made perfect sense. Born in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley, Garcia grew up in southern part of the state around Los Angeles, where there's no shortage of people in need. His mother, Lt. Rosie Tollerud, of The Salvation Army, said her son was always ready to...
A new plasma torch purchased by the school district will provide shop class students with a more versatile way to cut and build metal projects - and it won't cost the district a penny of borough funds. The new computer numerical control (CNC) machine is like the shop's current CNC machine, a computer-driven router, but it uses a plasma torch, which cuts with electrically charged, superheated gas. It will give students much more choice in projects, according to shop teacher Winston Davies. "I've...
Stikine Middle School wrestlers ended the season on a high note with the most pins made in the past four years. This year's squad consisted of 22 wrestlers. Each one was able to have at least one match where they pinned their opponent and won. Out of 337 matches, 167 ended with a pin for the wrestlers. Coach Jack Carney reported it was the highest number of pins in the past four years. Though the young grapplers faced plenty of tough competition, the biggest challenge may have been caused by...
Betty White was a veteran of the armed forces. Ruby Bridges was the subject of a Normal Rockwell painting. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles is 4-foot, 8-inches tall. Libby Riddles was the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. These are just some of the facts learned by Evergreen Elementary students during a March art project for Women's History Month about famous and not-so famous women who have left their mark in the world. The art project began last year, with 20 children from the...
Just like migrating birds, the Stikine River Birding Festival is coming back to Wrangell. This year, instead of just one weekend, the festival is spreading its wings to three weekends in a row from April 22 to May 7 with a focus on education. "Instead of having one intensive weekend, hoping to capitalize on visitors, I think we recognized it was never really attracting a huge amount of tourists," said Corree Delabrue, district interpreter for the U.S. Forest Service Wrangell office. She also...
Senior James Shilts cares about his school so much that it became the focus of his senior project. Shilts and wrestling teammate Rowen Wiederspohn grappled with the idea of beautifying part of Wrangell High School to satisfy a graduation requirement. "I was at a wrestling meet in the afternoon (last fall). I was walking outside, and I noticed the benches and how bad they were looking," Shilts said. "The next day, I went and talked to (assistant principal Bob) Davis to see if it was a good...
It takes a lot of extra work to do what one Wrangell High School student has done to get a jump on her future. Junior Adriana Nelson will graduate with this year's senior class in May, having satisfied all the coursework to do so. But it wasn't easy. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only about 3% of high school students nationwide graduate early. "I had to take three extra classes," Nelson said last Thursday, while taking a quick break from class. "Then I have an...
For 41 years, a Wrangell High School student was chosen as Shop Student of the Year. The honor was put on hold for two years but has been revived. Shop teacher Winston Davies decided to start giving out the award again, picking Logan Ritchie, who graduated last year, as the recipient for the 2020-2021 school year, when larger shop projects couldn't be finished due to COVID-19 restrictions. "I'm just carrying on a tradition that was started back in the 1980s," Davies said. "There are 41 previous...
Island Salon has moved to a new location on Peninsula Street, but the mission remains the same: Keeping clients looking their best. The move was to combine the salon with Wrangell Fitness, so clients can not only look good but feel good. The salon and the fitness studio are both owned by Clay Culbert and Heidi Milazzo, and both opened five years ago at separate locations. "Part of the reason for moving into here was to consolidate both businesses and to keep things easier," Milazzo said. "Our...
Wrangell schools need substitute teachers, and they’re looking anywhere and everywhere. The substitute drought has been a problem for a few years, but it’s been made worse by COVID-19 and a lack of people willing to work. “Currently, we have 16 substitutes on the list, which means three or four are available on any given day,” said Kimberly Powell, administrative assistant for the school district. “We could use 10 more.” Powell said in the past they have had 25 substitutes on the call list, making it easier to cover for any staff — from teac...
Hard work and dedication took the Wrangell High School girls basketball team all the way to the state championship game, and it earned recognition for the coach and honors for three players. Head coach Christina Good was selected as the 2022 Division 2A Girls Coach of the Year by the Association of Basketball Coaches All-State Team, while players Kendra Meissner, Kiara Harrison and Jamie Early were selected for Division 2A first team honors. Meissner and Early, as seniors, were also selected...
High school basketball is over and withdrawals have sunk in. Hi, I’m Marc and I’m addicted to sports and sports coverage. Things weren’t always thus. When I accepted the position of editor with the Sentinel, one of the things I knew I’d have to take on was sports reporting. I dreaded it. My previous experience in that field of journalism was limited to editing sports stories, giving feedback on page design and discussing story ideas with reporters. As long as I didn’t have to attend a game or try to speak the lingo, I was perfectly fine in that...
It only takes a fraction of a second for a school, health care center, municipality or others to be the victim of a cyberattack. It could take months or even years to recover, if at all. Brittani Robbins, executive director of the chamber of commerce, and Matt Gore, an educational technology leader and former IT director for the borough and Wrangell School District, are working together to educate Alaska communities about the threats to cybersecurity and how to mitigate them. They are also advocating for strategic partnerships to develop disast...
More boys - and girls - of summer are needed. Sign-up for Wrangell Little League began a month ago and has been extended through Saturday. Organizers said there is room for more players and volunteers. "We just don't have the numbers," Kaelene Harrison, the player agent on the Little League board, said last Thursday. "What it will come down to is: I'll just be calling people, going through our list from last year. 'Hey, are you guys going to play this year?'" Last year, there were just a few...
As the green of spring begins to replace the gray of winter, the Wrangell Community Garden crew wants to prepare its plots for planting. Volunteers are needed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on April 16 at the community garden site at 1.5 Mile to move soil, set up garden beds and fill them with soil. “In theory, we will be setting up the new beds and filling them, possibly Wrangell lasagna-style, depending on how much soil we have available,” said Kim Wickman, community garden board member. Lasagna-style filling starts with a layer of soil or gra...
The biggest lesson Darryl Smith has taken away from his high school senior project is the benefit of teaching others - even his teacher. Smith's project centers on creating signs for the U.S. Forest Service, but it required him to learn and employ woodworking technology that can have long-term benefits for the community. Ten road signs are being milled by Smith with road names engraved in Tlingit and English. The signs, which are 18-inches high by about four-feet long, will be transported to...
If it wasn't for the carts at Muskeg Meadows, more golfers might be forced to walk between holes. One teen is making sure that's not the case when the course opens this year. High school senior Jimmy Baggen is working on providing maintenance for several of Muskeg's carts for his senior project, an idea that came to him because of his interest in golf and mechanics. Baggen has been interested in fixing cars (and carts) only for a couple of years after hanging out with a friend of the family who...
Options for television in Wrangell narrowed in mid-January when some DISH Network customers lost access to the Alaska affiliates for ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX when the provider switched satellites. After two months of calls to the satellite TV provider and technicians, a solution might finally be on the way. Kitty Angerman, who has been a DISH customer for more than 20 years, said when the channels disappeared from her menu she didn't think much of it because it's happened before. Unlike past...
The Lady Wolves came off their Southeast regional championship with the confidence to compete all the way to the state title for the first time since 1985, eventually falling one game short. In three games in Anchorage last week, the Wrangell High School girls basketball team twice showed why they entered the Division 2A state tournament as the top seed, but it was not enough to overcome the strong defense and speed of the Tikigaq High School squad from Point Hope. The Tikigaq Harpooners of the...
For nearly 10 years, Renèe Roberts has dedicated her life to swimming, and all those miles swum are taking her places. Roberts, a standout member of the Wrangell High School swim team, signed with Western Colorado University and will be one of 12 freshmen this fall joining the women's swimming and dive team. When she was 9 years old, Renee started swimming for fun, but was learning and practicing swim strokes right away. In 2016, at 12, she joined the Wrangell Swim Club and began improving her...
The Wrangell community gym was the site for tumbling, grappling and pinning last Saturday. Forty-two members of Wolfpack Wrestling gathered as their families watched from the stands to put their training to the test. Ages 5 to 11 faced off with their fellow squad members to show their skills. Head coach Jef Rooney, a wrestler himself, moved between matches, providing direction, conferring with referees and giving solace to the junior wrestlers who fell to their opponents. Five of the grapplers a...
