Reminder: News from the Mahopac Central School District

January 27, 2023

Mahopac's Cheer Team Champions

Mahopac Central School District staff and faculty gathered alongside students and community members earlier this week to welcome back our victorious varsity cheer team after a successful weekend at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas.

The team had a daunting task ahead of them when they arrived in Dallas and saw the size of the arena, the crowd, and the hundreds of other cheer teams present from around the country.

“It was a two-day event. We got there at noon on both days because I wanted the team to get used to the arena and to support other New York teams that we knew,” coach Jasmine DeCosmo said. “Then we performed our two-minute-and-thirty-second routine. I knew that they had it in them, I was a little nervous about the big lights and the pressure, but I knew that they were prepared and that they could do it.”

After months of practicing and working just to get an invitation to the national competition, everything culminated in two, two-and-a half-minute-long performances. When asked how the routines went, DeCosmo simply said, “No deductions, both days.”

After the first day, the pressure was on since the team knew that they were in first place in their division. When the time came for the second performance, the team sought to replicate the previous day’s success. Cheerleader Kate Conklin spoke about the moments immediately after their second performance.

“We all hugged each other and went to our coaches,” Conklin said, “and they said that we did really well. That really completed it because they’re always honest with us. The feeling of watching the recording of our performance was indescribable. I was so happy, there were so many good emotions. We really felt like we secured it.”

Some members of the team have been cheering at Mahopac for over a decade, and the national championship will be the crowning achievement for the team’s graduating seniors, like team captain Jamie Genario.

“Mahopac has always had a great environment for cheer; you always feel the love from the people around you,” Genario said. “What makes this win so special is all of the support, not only from our parents and teammates, but from the town and school as well. It was an amazing feeling to come home to an escort from police and fire and then to see so many people from the community and from all of the schools waiting for us at the high school.”

Students Impress at the Mahopac Middle School STEAM Fair

Mahopac Middle School’s future scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and artists arrived at the school gym to present their projects to their peers and the community last weekend. The gym was buzzing with students talking about the topics of their projects, which included electricity, psychology, ecology, and more.

The student-scientists at the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) Fair presented many ambitious projects. Some chose projects involving electricity, using electrometers to measure often very small differences between charges.

“The purpose of my experiment was to determine if I could make a battery out of household salt,” Mahopac Middle School student Eileen Bergerson said. “Most store-bought batteries are either alkaline or lithium. Alkaline batteries are made from a lot of harmful chemicals and are not biodegradable.”

No two projects were quite alike., Another experiment involving an electrical charge tested for electrolytes in order to compare various energy drinks.

Students were not afraid to find out that their hypotheses did not match their conclusions, as they knew that there were things to learn from their experiments either way. This was the case when Amatul Iram and Alison Ortiz tested concentration spans in various age groups.

“We thought that older people would have shorter attention spans than younger people,” Iram said, “but we discovered that older groups tended to concentrate for longer.”

Headed by middle school science teachers Margaret Fox and Kelly Kischak with the help of many other MCSD staff and faculty, this year’s STEAM Fair was a massive group effort and is the biggest in Mahopac history.

“This is a great academic outlet for many students in the same way that athletes get to take their skills and put them on display. It involves the community and makes education social,” Fox said. “They get to actually go through the scientific process themselves and present their findings.”

“Presenting in front of peers and adults is great for students’ confidence and, just like in my eighth grade fair, some students will discover a lifelong love of science this weekend,” Kischak said.

Mahopac Elementary Schools Take The Great Kindness Challenge

With the holidays and almost half of the school year behind us, Mahopac’s elementary schools remain a place where students are encouraged to be kind and engage with their teachers and fellow students.

During this week's Great Kindness Challenge, each day followed a different theme. Students dressed for a beach day on Tuesday, in their pajamas on Friday, and on Wednesday each elementary school even had unique themes.

The theme on Tuesday was Ride the Wave of Kindness, and the theme didn’t just extend to students’ attire. In Kate Legeret’s kindergarten class, students passed a beach ball around, and whoever caught it sat in a beach chair and told the class about a kind thing that they did.

Classes throughout Lakeview participated in a schoolwide activity that began with a special video message in which Principal Jen Pontillo read “The Jelly Donut Difference,” by Maria Dismondy to students. After that, Robin Clark’s kindergarten class was tasked with coming up with six different ways that they could be kind, just like the children in the story.

“I can help someone up when they fall down,” kindergartener Caroline explained.

With the help of their fifth-grade buddies from Mary Moriarty’s class, the kindergarteners wrote down the ways that they could be kind on their worksheets.

“I can share my toys with my friends,” Cassidy said. “And I can let other people join my games!”

While the kindergarteners were coming up with ways to be kind, their fifth-grade buddies guided them in putting their thoughts to paper.

“I’ve wanted to be a fifth-grade buddy since I was in kindergarten,” fifth grader Maddie said. “I remember my fifth-grade buddy, and I really like working with the little kids.”

The Great Kindness Challenge, presented by the global nonprofit, Kids for Peace, was launched in 2012 to address bullying and foster connection, inclusion, and compassion. Millions of students across the country participated in acts of kindness this week.