Message from the Principal

Greetings Saxons,

It’s the beginning of yet another month and great things continue to happen in Saxon Country! Let’s begin this week’s shoutouts!

Congratulations to Langley Gymnastics- Liberty District Champions! We wish them well as they move on to Northern Region competition!

Cheers to Langley Track Girls 4x800 team of Elena Pesavento, Lila Pesavento, Corinne Jaggard, and Lila Waters won districts and broke the school record Thursday evening with a time of 9:31.  Way to go, team!

We are so proud of the our math students who recently competed in the annual American Mathematics Competition.  The American Mathematics Competitions are a series of examinations and curriculum materials that build problem-solving skills and mathematical knowledge in middle and high school students.  300,000 students worldwide participated in this contest and 13 of Langley students will advance to the next level-AIME.  The American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) is a challenging competition offered for those who excelled on the AMC 10 and/or AMC 12. The AIME is a 15 question, 3-hour examination, each answer is an integer number between 0 to 999.

Jenna Cai
Claire Guo
Pranav Gupta
Andrew Hwang
Bennett Huang
Danna Jia
Rachel Ku
Ian Liao
Bright Liu
Claire Mo
Phoebe Pan
Sin Kwan Xu
Muge Yang

We congratulate the following students who auditioned with over 700 other students for the District 12 High School Honor Band. In a new school record, we have THIRTY-FOUR students who were selected and are participating, along with three alternates! The students with an * qualified to audition for the All-Virginia groups in a few weeks.

Wind Ensemble
Cox, Anna (first chair!)*
Healy, Ryan
Lee, Jayden*
Lee, Kevin*
Tunasar, Kaan (Eb clarinet, first chair!)*
Wallach, Muriel (first chair!)*
Worden, Thomas*
Yeum, Jimmy (Yeo)*
Zhang, Austin*

Symphonic Band
Albolote, Aya
Chalk, Juj
Chen, Katie
Dunn, Catherine
Francis, Rhys
Ganguli, Viraj
Gladyszewski, Joseph*
Go, Jacqui
Hoang, Anderson
Hoang, Parker
Larne, Ingrid
Lee, Amelia
Lin, Henry
Matsuki, Yuto
Miller, Leah
Porter, Lucas
Pwu, Ethan
Rizvi, Anniyah
Spoto, Nick
Tokajer, Myah
Wang, Tim (Zhile)
Yo, Daniel
Yu, Triston
Zhang, Jason
Zou, Elaine

Alternates
Beeland, Wesley
Workie, Noah
Zhang, Merik

A huge shoutout the following Langley HS students who were recognized by a panel of novelists, editors, teachers, poets, librarians, journalists, and other literary professionals from more than 1,800 works submitted!

This year's Gold Key, Silver Key, and Honorable Mention recipients are invited, along with their guests, teachers, and our esteemed jurors, to a nationwide online Awards Ceremony for regional Scholastic Writing Awards recipients taking place Sun, Mar 6 at 4 pm EST. Click here to RSVP. The keynote speaker will be “Wicked” author Gregory Maguire. Gold Keys are automatically forwarded for consideration at the national level of the Scholastic Writing Awards.

Gold Key: 
Jenna Cai, Poetry: Four Glimpses of Grandpa
Tracy Gong, Short Story: Username: Crunchy Rabbit
Peyton Walcott, Critical Essay: The Killer Whale: An Economic Solution to Single-Use Plastics

Silver Key: 
Ashley Khang, Journalism: The Dual Reality of Water: How Access to Water Mirrors Society
Aliyah Majeed-Hall, Short Story: Andromeda
Phoebe Pan, Flash Fiction: The Girl Who Carried the Stars

Honorable Mention:
Bryan Choe, Critical Essay: The Truth About Plant-Based Meat
Samantha Grayer, Critical Essay: Confederate Monuments: Celebrating Anti-American History
Andrew Hwang, Critical Essay: Which Glitters is Not Always Gold
Danna Jia, Critical Essay: Are Holidays Necessary?
Phoebe Pan, Critical Essay: A Letter to Superintendent Brabrand
Phoebe Pan, Flash Fiction: Dear Dentist
Andrew Hwang, Personal Essay & Memoir: Perception
Sheoli Lele, Personal Essay & Memoir: Does one-size-fits-all apply to Education?
Kai Henryson-Gibbs, Poetry: Fight
Kalyna Vickers, Poetry: To Growth
Tracy Gong, Short Story: Autumn Leaves
Ashley Khang, Short Story: My Name

The Langley Model Judiciary Club took 6^th place in the Virginia Region A High School Mock Trial Competition last weekend. We wish them well as they advance to the Virginia State High School Mock Trial Competition.

Team Leaders
Selena Al-Shihabi (Co-President)
Ivy Chen (Co-President)
Samantha Kenney (Team Captain)

Attorneys
Selena Al-Shihabi
Ivy Chen
Travis Martin
Anh-Thu Pham

Witnesses
Lianna Hong
Samantha Kenney
Jayden Lee
Cristina Pak
Maanav Shah
Peyton Walcott

VLRE Competition Awards
Best Attorney- 5th place
Ivy Chen

Best Witness- 2^nd Place
Samantha Kenney

We wish all of our winter sports teams best of luck in their post season match-ups!

Thank you for taking time to read this very lengthy weekly message. I am continually amazed by our students; therefore, I feel it important that we recognize their accomplishments whenever possible. I so appreciate the parental and community support our students receive. Thank you for supporting our kids in each of their endeavors!

Hail Saxons,