Andrew Jiang

Senior Graham Schmelzer embodies the Chubbies brand  

Reporters look back on Kobe Bryant's career as the 17-time all-star, best known for his tremendous impact as a star shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Name: Andrew Jiang Diagnosis: senioritis Symptoms: Laziness, procrastination, loss of motivation, constantly hanging out with friends  

After finishing first in regular league play, the Falcons’ water polo team suffered a heartbreaking loss to rival Homestead 10-9 in overtime in the league tournament finals on Nov. 7. 

Senior Miles Peng, who recently started working at Pizza Studio in downtown Los Gatos on Blossom Hill Road, works as a cashier, preps pizzas and places them in the oven at Pizza Studio in Los Gatos.

After entering the league with a racing start to the season, the boys’ water polo team is No. 1 in the El Camino League with a 9-0 record.

After struggling in the upper league and moving down to the less competitive SCVAL El Camino Division, the boys’ water polo team expects this season to go much better. With 12 returning players, the Falcons hope to win the El Camino Division and qualify for CCS.

The eight members of the ASB have been the target of hate messages like this on YikYak, an anonymous social media app that allows users to post and view “Yaks” within a 10-mile radius of their location. Although some posts relate to troubles the ASB has had with some commissions, others are unrelated except for a “#ThanksASB” at the end.

The school's Ceramics and SHS TV are facing decreases in the number of students they see in class each year, and are trying to find ways to turn their enrollment trends around.

It was exactly 4 p.m. on Dec. 16, and this was the day senior Linus Lu’s future would be determined.

The new insanely addictive app called Trivia Crack has officially swept teens and teachers across the nation, destroying free time and friendships.

As senior Nadia Younes carefully crooned the last note in her rendition of “Toxic” by Britney Spears, the crowd burst into a standing ovation. Younes was later crowned the winner of this year’s Saratoga Idol held on Dec. 1 in the McAfee Center.

Although the boys’ basketball team has begun training to prepare for its upcoming season, the Falcons have been playing short handed.

The Falcon follows senior Linus Lu through the college application season.

Students take a thrill out of chasing each other down the streets of Saratoga

The boys’ water polo team finished the season with a record of 1-11, placing sixth in the SCVAL League De Anza Division.

Walking through the hallways of Saratoga High, nearly every student pauses to give senior Claire Strickland a second glance. 

As seniors hit the peak of college application season, some are applying to more than 20 schools. 

Senior Linus Lu is the epitome of what one might call an eclectic mind. A quick online search of his name yields conflicting results: He's defending Shostakovich, a 20th-century Russian composer on ask.fm, and debating between favorite classical pieces (Mahler Symphony No. 2 or 6?) on Facebook. He's reading T.S. Eliot (not just "The Waste Land") in his spare time, and writing his fair share of poetry.

An undisclosed number of students attempted to break into the school’s office around 2 a.m. on Aug. 9, according to principal Paul Robinson. When this group of students set off an alarm, sheriff's deputies sped to the school and apprehended all involved.

The boys’ water polo team, led by junior Mason Lee and junior Graham Schmelzer, is still trying to find its strengths. They had a chance to compete against other water polo teams in the area at a tournament in Lynbrook High School on Sept. 5-6 and finished third out of 18 teams.

Sophomore Kunal Kathuria, then an 8-year-old going to school at Challenger School, sat quietly in the back of the car as his mother drove him home from school. He could tell something wasn’t quite right. After what seemed like forever, they finally arrived home. Because the blinds had broken earlier in the week, the room was dark and obscure, amplifying the already tense feeling Kathuria had. Breaking the silence, his mother said, “Kunal, we need to talk.”

A total of 19 swimmers and one diver from both the boys’ and girls’ swimming and diving teams attended CCS preliminaries on May 16. The next day, four swimmers, four relay teams and the diver returned for CCS finals.

The school should change its policies to allow underclassmen to go off campus for lunch. Since many sophomores get their license during the school year, it makes no sense for the school to prohibit them from leaving campus.

As the spring season is underway, increasingly more underclassmen are starting the college process early by visiting colleges. Because many students vacation near potential colleges, they use part of their vacation time to explore different colleges campuses.  

More than 800 high school students, most of them from the Bay Area, went to the campus of PayPal with one goal in mind on March 7-8: win one of the handful of prizes in the High School Hacks Hackathon.

The school finished painting two Falcon murals in front of the school and by the boys’ locker room at a cost of around $8,000, according to assistant principal Kevin Mount. The newly added murals and signs were finished March 10.  The school hired an artist named Steve Hosuce from the company Stoke’s Signs in Santa Cruz. Hosuce has painted murals for other schools in the past.

In the past few years, the NFL has introduced several rules to improve player safety. Although these rules have undoubtedly increased the safety of the game, they have also made the game less fun to watch

Stroke after stroke. Breath after breath. Flip turn after flip turn. Sophomore Bradley Newton’s legs were burning on his second to last lap of the 500-yard freestyle race at the March 13 swimming meet between Saratoga and Monta Vista.

“And the second place winner of Homecoming decorations is...” the announcer at the Homecoming football game began. The sea of sophomores clasped each other’s hands in anticipation of the announcement. They had been working on their decorations since summer, and this was the moment they had all been waiting for.

Recently, Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist who helped fund Tesla and Yahoo, proposed a plan to split California into six states. The six new states would be called Jefferson, North California, Central California, Silicon Valley, West California and South California. According to Draper, this division would be more beneficial to the government because it would be dealing with smaller states. 

Building spirit and conference at schools was the topic of a leadership conference attended by Leadership class students on Jan 31. The 11-member group was chaperoned by assistant principal Kerry Mohnike and teacher Arnaldo Rodriguex. 

I have a new addiction and I’m not too flappy about it. 

With the season coming to a close in a few weeks, the undersized boys’ varsity basketball team has continued to struggle in the De Anza League, compiling a league record of 1-7, last in the league, as of Feb. 5. The team fell to Los Gatos at an away game 51-55 on Jan. 31, even as junior guard Michael Cole led the team with 21 points. Junior guard Alvin Kim came away disappointed with the loss. 

On Jan. 1, Snapchat, a popular photo messaging app, was hacked. The hackers released the usernames and phone numbers of approximately 4.6 million members onto the website SnapchatDB.info.  This security breach happened just a few days after Snapchat acknowledged a possible security vulnerability in which someone could potentially compile a database of Snapchat usernames and phone numbers. The anonymous hackers said the hack was intended to urge Snapchat to tighten its security measures.

On Feb. 5, senior Mady Fagan committed to the University of Georgia, a Division I (D1) school, for track and field and became the first student to sign to a D1 school for any sport in years.

After practices since the beginning of the year, the newly created dance team had the chance to participate in its first dance competition in Fair Oaks, a city near Sacramento, on Feb 1. The results of the competition weren’t available when the Falcon went to press.

Every year around the middle of February, I sit down and watch the NBA All-Star weekend. Out of all the events during the weekend, my favorite is the skills challenge where players have to shoot layups, dribble past obstacles, make difficult passes and make a 3-pointer.  As a result, when I was offered the chance to to participate in a replica of the NBA skills challenge for newspaper (with alterations in equipment, of course, because we can’t afford all the fancy stuff), I immediately agreed. 

Boys' swimming season starting

I’m not exactly what most people would call a player. Although I’m part of the water polo team and, according to multiple sources, have an “amazing body,” I do not go out of my way to flirt with girls.

This school year, the Glendale School District, located in suburban Los Angeles, hired a firm to monitor middle and high school students’ public postings on social media. The firm was hired to search for possible bullying, drug use, violence and suicidal threats. 

Playing against Monta Vista for the championship game for the Prospect tournament last December, the boys’ varsity basketball team was up by two with 5 seconds left in the game in the fourth quarter. 

In early September, the boiler that heats the school’s pool broke, forcing the use of the backup solar heating system. The heating system, however, couldn’t keep the pool warm enough and forced water polo teams to relocate games and practices until the system was recently fixed, according to plant operations supervisor Brian Moran.

The boys’ water polo team continues to win. And win. And win. 

What is this magical “curving” that saves grades from plummeting after a hard test and even boosts some students’ grades above the 100 percent mark? Curving is the distribution of grades among a class to form a bell curve, but to students, it means a whole lot more. 

It’s Monday tutorial and freshmen sluggishly walk into classrooms for Freshman Focus, a monthly meeting with teachers and Link Crew leaders that is mandatory for them. They are sadly aware that their entire tutorial will be spent answering questions from Link leaders such as, “How was your week?” and “How’s freshman year?” 

School-themed T-shirts, sweatshirts and lanyards will be among the items soon to be available on the school’s online ASB student store.

Alumnus Jackie Gu walked onto Brown University’s campus for the first time during orientation on the first week of September, meeting new people from different high school backgrounds — and with different SAT scores. Despite these differences, they all share a united passion for learning, their SAT scores simply remnants of the past as they move on to a new chapter in their life.

The score was tied 6-6. One minute and 30 seconds were left on the clock. Playing press defense against the other team, sophomore Mason Lee anticipated Sleepy Hollow Aquatic’s shot and immediately started sprinting to the other side of the pool.