Although it’s now wrapping up its second year, the “firsts” keep on rolling in for Cypress Creek Middle/High School (CCMH).
And, the honor of being one of the most significant firsts at the school certainly belongs to Lucas Budd, Cypress Creek’s first-ever class valedictorian, who on Wednesday, June 5 at, 8 p.m. at the University of South Florida Yuengling Center, will give the first-ever valedictorian speech to the first graduating class of 226 students in CCMH history.
“I will have my box of Kleenex ready,” says his proud mother, Brenda.
It was Brenda who first learned that Lucas was the Cypress Creek valedictorian. When she got the call, she couldn’t help but cry. Then she called to share the news with Lucas.
While Lucas knew his grades were going to put him near the top of the senior class, he was surprised by the news, but thrilled that his 4.577 weighted grade-point-average was No. 1 amongst the seniors.
Caitlin Scates was the 2019 class Salutatorian
“I wasn’t expecting it,” Lucas says. “It’s an honor, and I take a lot of pride in being Cypress Creek’s first valedictorian. I was pretty happy when I found out.”
Lucas has always been a great student, and actually began high school at Wiregrass Ranch High, before the district’s school borders were redrawn and he was zoned for Cypress Creek following his sophomore year.
Lucas never thought about being the valedictorian while he was at Wiregrass Ranch because he says the class ranks weren’t really publicized.
During his first year at Cypress Creek, however, he knew he ranked fairly high.
“I had seen that I was in the, maybe, top 5, but I wasn’t expecting to be valedictorian,” Lucas says. “I had never really thought about it, but of course every student who takes school serious would like to be valedictorian. I guess you could say it’s the ultimate goal.”
That’s why when other students would dodge the tougher classes, Lucas reveled in registering for them. “Everyone is capable of being the valedictorian,” Lucas says. “It’s just a matter of putting in the work. And sometimes, a little extra work.”
Lucas says he is proud of the way he balanced school with volunteering (more than 100 hours at St. Joseph Church) and his duties with club-related service involvement at school, which he says has positively impacted his view of community involvement.
“That was a great experience,” he says. “That’s one of the things I will remember most from high school.”
Academically, he is most proud of earning his Associate’s degree from Pasco Hernando State College (PHSC) as a dual enrollment student with a 4.0. He also has worked as a tutor at the PHSC Academic Success Center since last September, tutoring in English, Calculus, Biology, Statistics, Psychology, Chemistry, Anatomy and Physiology.
Lucas was awarded the National Hispanic Scholar by the College Board for scoring in the top 2.5 percent of high school juniors of Hispanis descent, and the National Merit Commended Scholar by the College Board for scoring in the top 3 percent of all juniors who took the PSAT as a junior.
Lucas spends his free time fishing in the lakes around the Stagecoach community he lives in, and particularly likes fishing for bass. The largest one he’s caught is 6-8 pounds, and when he’s not fishing, he is shooting hoops on the nearest basketball court.
A National Honor Society member at CCMH, and Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society at PHSC, Lucas will be attending the University of Florida in Gainesville in fall, where he hopes to study Biochemistry or Biomedical Engineering.
Brenda has taken great delight in listening to Lucas practice his valedictorian speech, which has been polished and is ready to go. She can’t wait until he shares it with the rest of his class.
“It’s inspirational, and it’s positive,” she says. “That’s just who he is.”
Nicolas Gordon leaps over the 4-foot-tall “wall” as he begins the obstacle course at Cypress Creek Middle/High School
While the rest of her classmates were inside classrooms and sitting at their desks, Cypress Creek Middle/High (CCMH) seventh grader Rose Macapinlac was running in a dead sprint towards the school’s athletic fields.
When she reached her goal, she turned around and ran back, then attacked an obstacle course that included a four-foot-tall wall she had to drag herself over, hurdles she was required to leap, orange cones she zig-zagged around and a low crawl she slithered through before reaching a 100-pound dummy she had to drag across the grass.
And, that only marked the halfway point of the modified Physical Abilities Test (PAT) that is required for Florida Department of Law Enforcement Capitol Police.
“Once they pull that dummy, that’s when the legs turn to jelly,” said April Heuss, the teacher of CCMH’s criminal justice program, which she says she believes is the first of its kind in the state of Florida.
After a school year of teaching students things like proper radio procedures, teamwork, leadership and the importance of law enforcement, Heuss wrapped up the school year by putting her classes through the arduous demands of a simulated PAT, which has to be passed by prospective law enforcement officers.
Students in her classes had to exit a vehicle (in this case a golf cart) with a flashlight in hand, run 220 yards, complete an obstacle course, drag the dummy, do the obstacle course again, run 220 yards, dry-fire a plastic gun six times with each hand, and call in their report.
While law enforcement applicants have to complete their course in 6 minutes, 4 seconds, Cypress Creek students were wrapping up their modified course (with a 100-pound dummy compared to the 150 pounder dragged by law enforcement) in 3:30-5 minutes.
“Getting over the wall with a flashlight in my hands was the hardest,” said Rose. “My legs hurt.”
Gabriel Linck was the fastest boy on the day, with a time of 3:35, running it twice with plans to do it again.
Anna Ritchie was the fastest girl, finishing in 4:03.
“They are all wanting to see who got the best time, who is going to win,” Heuss said. “This was supposed to be a one-day thing but the kids were so stoked and excited about it we decided to keep doing it for three days. They love it.”
Nupur Lala bought some time by asking for it to be used in a sentence. A hint of a smile crossed her bespectacled face. Inside, she was bursting.
Meena Lala watched her 14-year-old daughter intently. There had been one scare during the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but that was a few rounds back, on the word “poimenics,” maybe the only time she had gotten nervous.
But not now. Not on this word.
“L-O-G…”
Odalys Pritchard remembers the moment like it was yesterday. She was on the edge of her seat, watching her Benito Middle School eighth grader on ESPN trying to spell her way into history.
“I remember seeing the smile and the confidence when they gave her the word,” Pritchard says. “I knew she knew it.”
“…O-R-R…”
Right before she was given the final word, Nupur caught a glimpse of the event organizers preparing the trophy for the winner.
“It felt like a dream,” she says, and she wasted no time, quickly spelling the winning word.
“…H-E-A!”
When Nupur nailed the final word at the 76th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee on June 3, 1999, she jumped as high as she could two times, stopped to tuck her shoulder-length hair behind each ear, and jumped again, her yellow placard designating her as Speller No. 165 flailing about with her arms.
She grabbed the big trophy, raised it up to the sky and smiled the widest of smiles.
“It didn’t feel real,” says Nupur, now age 34. “I remember jumping up and down, and wondering ‘Is there going to be ground beneath me when I land?’”
***
Twenty years later, she remembers every detail, from the hero’s greeting she received at Tampa International Airport to receiving a key to the city to a slew of television cameras eager to record her every move.
There were banners declaring “Busch Gardens Spells Champ N-U-P-U-R” and local daily newspaper headlines calling her “The goddess of spelling.” The Neighborhood News (see pg. 36) called her “Super Nupur.”
New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner invited her to New York and gave her tickets to see “Phantom” on Broadway. Even Hooters put up a sign congratulating Nupur.
Her parents, Meena and Nupur’s father Parag, had her write the restaurant a thank-you letter.
“In hindsight, thinking back, it was extraordinary,” she says. “I’ll never forget the way that Tampa treated me.”
Nupur is greeted at Busch Gardens after her win.
However, when she felt the most famous, she says, is when her mother was driving her home to Hunter’s Green one day, and the guard at the gate asked if that was the Spelling Bee champ in the back seat.
Meena said yes, and he asked if she could hop out and say hi. This was a time before cell phones, so he didn’t want a picture. He just wanted to congratulate her and share his admiration for her accomplishment.
“That might have been the moment I felt really famous,” Nupur says.
***
It was just the beginning, though. In 2002, the documentary “Spellbound” was released, to critical acclaim. It followed Nupur and seven other Regional champions through the 1999 Scripps Spelling Bee competition. It earned $6-million and was nominated for an Oscar, giving Nupur a second round of fame.
She never thought she would always be the Spelling Bee champ from Benito Middle School in Tampa.
“I’d say it’s the one accomplishment in my life people are still interested in,” she says. “It has stayed with me more than anything I’ve done.”
There were times, she says, that fact chafed Nupur. To be defined by something you did at age 14, when you barely knew then who you even were, and then to have so much more expected of you as a result, was frustrating at times.
“I’ve had different feelings at different points in my life about all of it,” Nupur says. “Definitely early high school, early college, I felt that there were such massive expectations from winning the Spelling Bee at 14. I was still trying to figure out who I was and where I wanted to fit in in the world. It was very difficult.”
Today, however, Nupur has found her path. As a result, it is easier to embrace being noticed by someone who recognizes her name or face.
***
Nupur attended high school in Fayetteville, AR, where her family had moved just a few months after the Spelling Bee victory. She graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2007 with a B.S. degree in Brain Cognitive and Behavioral Science, and worked for three years at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in Cambridge doing functional MRI research in cognitive neuroscience
She graduated with a Master’s degree in Cancer Biology from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2015. And, after earning her Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, she is now doing her residency in Neurology at the Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.
She hopes to do a fellowship in neuro-oncology, specifically Glioblastoma multiforme, the brain cancer that killed U.S. Senator John McCain.
***
Millions of students from all 50 states battle each year to make it to The Scripps National Spelling Bee, scheduled this year for Sunday-Friday, May 26-31, in Washington, D.C.
A Benito newsletter recognized Nupur, as well as her stiffest competition.
Nupur remembers the grind. She did her first spelling bee in Kaye Whitehurst’s seventh grade English class, merely to earn extra credit. She hadn’t even heard of the Scripps Spelling Bee, but once she discovered she was good at it, winning it became a goal.
Few remember that she actually made it to our nation’s capital for the first time as a seventh grader, when she was eliminated in the third round on the first day in 1998.
She was happy and proud, but she remembers while she was almost universally praised for her efforts, a classmate taunted her by reminding her that she didn’t win.
“I still remember that feeling. One moment you can be on top, and the next moment, you’re back to being a regular kid,” she says. “I didn’t realize how much it bothered me or how much I internalized that feeling. It fueled me for years.”
Nupur says it was Whitehurst, who had gone to D.C. with her student in 1998, and Pritchard, who is now interim deputy director for Hillsborough County’s Achievement Schools, that helped lift up her spirits.
“Teachers don’t even know the impact they make,” Nupur says. “I hope they read this and know they made a tremendous difference.”
***
With Meena (who spent many hours reading the practice words to her daughter), Whitehurst and Pritchard in her corner, Nupur was determined to get back to the National Spelling Bee in the eighth grade, and her goal was to make it to the televised portion of the event. She competed in a half dozen regional events to qualify, but says the stiffest competition was actually at Benito.
There were 249 competitors from around the country who survived Regionals and made it to Washington and 144 of them were eliminated on the first day.
But, not Nupur. She had made it to the televised portion on Day 2, and when she did, she says a strange calm came over her.
“I met my goal,” she remembers thinking. “It was still the most surreal moment of my life.”
Nupur’s parents moved to the U.S. from a small town in central India in 1984, where Parag worked as an engineering professor at Syracuse University in upstate New York, where Nupur was born. They moved to Tampa in 1997.
Nupur’s win marked a historic shift in the Spelling Bee. Since her win, 19 spellers of Indian descent have either been champion or co-champion.
Since her win, Nupur says she did not watch the Spelling Bee every year. She confesses to a rebellious period where she didn’t want to be the “goddess of spelling” anymore.
But, when she does watch it, she says she finds herself moved by the reactions of the winners, as well as her own memories.
“It was the culmination of a lot of hard work, by me and my family,” Nupur says. “I did something very few people have, and I will forever be grateful for that moment.”
So will those who knew her, like Pritchard. Nupur’s picture commemorating her win still hangs in the front office at Benito. And, for a long time, there was a large photo portrait of Nupur displayed at the Hillsborough County School Board boardroom auditorium, until the boardroom was renovated in 2017.
“It was always nice seeing that picture,” Pritchard says. “I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. Nupur was a shining star. There’s probably a lot of people who remember her vividly.”
Of 48 teams that competed in the FIRST LEGO League State competition on April 6 in Delray Beach, a team of six fifth and sixth grade students from New Tampa, called Team TechnoWizards, took home first place and are on their way to competing for a national title.
The team consists of Pride Elementary fifth grade students Ayona Bagui, Dhruv Kulkarni, Naina Sethi and Nikhil Katiyar, along with sixth grade students Anika Prasad, who attends Benito Middle School, and Netra Vijay, who attends Williams Middle School.
The team has been working together for two years now, under the guidance and support of coach Sudhir Katiyar, who also Nikhil’s father, along with other parents of team members. Last year, Team TechnoWizards qualified to go to the State tournament, but didn’t place at that competition.
This year, they placed second at the Florida-West Coast Regional competition in February, which qualified them to compete at State. At the State tournament, their improved performance landed them the first-place prize, outmatching all of their competition.
“That happened because the team worked together in all aspects,” says Sudhir.
FIRST LEGO League teams use STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) as the basis for innovative learning and competition. FIRST also is an acronym that stands for “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The theme for the 2018-19 season was “Into Orbit.”
The league uses LEGO Mindstorms robots as one part of its competition. Teams had to design, build and write programs to cause a robot to perform assigned tasks related to the theme.
More Than Just Robots
Robots are only part of the competition, though.
Teams also have to complete and are judged on a project. For this year’s competition, the team members researched numerous topics regarding problems in space and chose one that was most important to them — the well-being of astronauts.
They created a prototype to depict possible solutions to prevent health hazards to the astronauts, like loneliness.
“They are not judged just on the technical aspects” explains Sudhir. “They are also judged on the FIRST core values, such as how did you resolve issues and conflicts within the team, and how did you solve problems when your coach wasn’t around?”
FIRST’s core values include discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork, fun, gracious professionalism and cooperation.
Throughout the competition season, which runs concurrent with the school year, Team TechnoWizards also explored and served their community at the public library and in their schools, as well as for Feeding Tampa Bay, the Children’s Home Network, St. Joseph’s Hospital, American Heart Association and an aerospace museum.
A field trip to NASA in Cape Canaveral gave the team a chance to meet with a real astronaut, and a trip to iFly Indoor Skydiving gave them a simulation of an experience in space.
Thanks to its win at the State level, Team TechnoWizards was invited to attend the FIRST LEGO League Razorback Invitational, a 72-team championship tournament that includes national and international teams.
It is being held this weekend on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville.
Pasco County’s Teacher of the Year Holly Mickler, center.Photos provided by Holly Mickler.
On the last Tuesday of school before the holiday break, one of the science teachers at Pasco Middle School (MS) in Dade City called fellow Pasco MS teacher Holly Mickler into her classroom to ask for some help judging science fair projects.
Mickler’s students were working on assignments with tutors, so she said she could leave her classroom for a few minutes to help.
That’s when Pasco County’s Superintendent of Schools Kurt Browning, Pasco School Board member Megan Harding and several other officials from the school district and teachers union knocked on that other teacher’s classroom door.
The group was directed to the science fair, where they surprised Mickler with the news that among all of the teachers in Pasco County, she had been chosen as the District’s Teacher of the Year.
“It was a little embarrassing that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be,” Mickler laughs.
Mickler is a 14-year teaching veteran who commutes to work from Meadow Pointe each day. Although she lives in Wesley Chapel, she has spent her entire teaching career at Pasco Middle School.
Mickler is hugged by her classmates after finding out she was named Teacher of the Year.
She has taught exceptional education and language arts, and then served as the graduation enhancement and dropout prevention teacher before launching the school’s AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program about four years ago. As AVID coordinator, Mickler teaches students who choose to take the AVID elective class and coaches teachers on how to teach strategies for college, career and life readiness in their classrooms.
“Holly is a great example of what I look for in a teacher,” says Pasco MS principal Dee Dee Johnson, who was previously the principal at Wesley Chapel High. “She cares about her students, gets to know them, and believes in each of them. I’m extremely proud to have Holly as a teacher at Pasco Middle School, because she always goes above and beyond for our students, sets high expectations, and provides students with the resources needed to meet those expectations.”
Mickler says she thought long and hard about whether or not to complete the application for Pasco’s Teacher of the Year after being chosen as her school’s nominee.
“Once you’re selected at the school level, you’re given the option of deciding whether or not to take it to district level,” she says. “I don’t like bragging on myself, and that’s what it feels like, so I almost didn’t do it.”
But, Mickler says she also thought about her school’s reputation in the community, including things such as the recent removal of its previous principal, prompting Johnson’s move to the school.
“People need to recognize that we have incredible things going on here,” Mickler says. “I thought my application was a way to showcase that for others to see. I tried to respond in a way that people would see how awesome our kids are and how dedicated our staff members are.”
Ever humble, Mickler says she’s really no different than nearly all of the teachers in Pasco County, most of whom, she says, have great things happening in their classrooms, too.
“All of us are really working hard and are dedicated,” she says. “What we have in common and share is just a passion and a love for the kids.”
Mickler doesn’t have children of her own, so she calls her students her “babies,” making an emotional connection with them.
“They rely on me for academics, but also to help them through social issues and issues at home,” she says. “They trust me.”
Mickler is now Pasco’s nominee for the statewide Teacher of the Year, competition. That winner will be announced this spring.
