Groveton High School - Tigerama Yearbook (Alexandria, VA)

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I pictured it to he. i Members of the Giinston I District orkshop decided j to start a county wide stu- I dent exchange program. Students from every school in the Gnnstoii Dis¬ trict spent a day visiting at another school. The Tfger Ra had fi¬ nancial problems this year. Luckily, they were solved and the Ti er Ra didiiT 11118 S an issue::.r. The Groveton-Brvant i conversion finally got I passed this year hut with a big cut in funds. Construc¬ tion should start this summer. Groveton returned to the Fifties during Home¬ coming week. Girls eame to school with dresses be¬ low their knees and hoys tried out the Met look. The Meek ended Mith Sandra Smith being c r o m ii e d Homeeoming Queen dur¬ ing half time of the Home¬ eoming football game. The gas shortage hit Groveton this year as Mell as the rest of the nation. Students Ment out during classes, contrary to school policy, to battle the long gas lines. Novemher 29 Mas open¬ ing night for the drama production You CaiYt Take It W ith You. There was a great turnout. The Chil- dreii’s Theatre Troupe completed another good year bv touring seven ele¬ mentary schools. The first production Mas The Ter¬ rible, Horrible, No Good J er Bad Day. This pro¬ duction Mas also presented at the One Act Play Festi¬ val and reeeived the high¬ est rating of superior. The hand traveled to Anaheim, California on Mareh 21 for the Musie Educators National Con¬ ference. They attended a Morkshop and a concert in Mhich eighty other choral orchestral and symphonic groups participated. The football team had a iieM coaeh. Phil Turner tried to instill the hoys Mith a Minning attitude as they Ment on to a tMo and eight season. Not exactly a Minning season hut there ' s alMavs next year. Cross Country ended leaving the hoys Mith some elose hut nnsnccessful raees. That should he hoys and girls. For the first time in Grove- ton’s history a girl ran on a team. Congratulations Cindy Kane—the female athletes applaud you. Basketball team’s efforts proved fruitless. They mou only one game the Mhole season hut at least they Mon the right one. The vic¬ tory came against Ft. Hunt. Due to the forfeits and inexperience the Mrestling team Masn’t able to Min any team mate lies. Al¬ though the Minter track teams as a Mhole Mas un- suceessful, a feM individ¬ uals did quite Mell. Mark BlaekMell, Fred Lees, W il¬ liam Thomas and Larry Daly Ment to the State meet. Mark diil Mell, tak¬ ing third place in the sixty yard high hurdles and a fifth place in the sixty yard dash. The girl’s tennis team ended the season in a three May tie for first place. Mimi Hoffman Ment on to Min the Gunston Distriet Tennis Tournament. Al¬ though the girls’ basket¬ ball teams got off to a sIom start, the iieM coaches, Ms. Estes and Ms. Raes, really got the teams going. And the much overlooked Gym¬ nastics team finally aehieved varsity status. Brad Shipp, from Her- nodon High, this year’s student inemher of the sehool hoard Mas pleased by the May he Mas received by the other Sehool Board memhers, especially after the eontroversv that raged at the time of the nomination. Students missed classes a feM times this year due to p r o h 1 e Ill s m i t h i n the sehool. A gas leak caused an evacuation of the school and numerous fire alarms kept the students and the fire department jumping. Problems Mith the heating caused an early closing. Most students are not aMare that the school has enough heat to cause a problem. The seniors had a huge debt to pay and they de¬ cided not to sell niiseella- neous junk to do it. The Senior Fee Mas inereased by one dollar bringing it to S8.()0. Just think—you have to pay to get out of here. Apparently not everyone Manted to get out, Iiom- ever. Some students paid a different kind of price just to run through Groveton’s halls Mithout their elothes.

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W e had a new priiieipal at Grovetoii this vear. Mr. James Knss eaiiie to us from his jol) as assistant to the Snperintendent. |{ovinjj; eounselor Kit Morris made a hig sensa¬ tion this vear. To piote kit, ’’Tin just heiiiji nivself, trviiiis to ijenerate better interaetion between the students. ’ ' ’ Alon t with kit there were numerous other new administrators and teaeiiers. The lt s Academic team of Seott Shenker, Ko j€‘r f ines and Peter Hirsehfeld eaiiie up with a win over Loudin Coiintv and Os- hourn. Thev lost the next round. It was elose though. Koj t ' r Pines hroiifjht fur¬ ther honor to the sehool hv Minnin one of the top honors in a national writ- inji eontest. The ineoniplete poliev was revised a ain. (Govern¬ ment elasses worked o n it for a while in an effort to ehange the poliev into something workable. Fi- nallv the (Committee to Re¬ evaluate the Ineoniplete Poliev eaiiie up with a solu¬ tion. The new poliev is radieallv different from the old one—for better or worse. Stan Parris, the Repnhli- ean Representative for the 8th distriet, formed a pilot student advisory eoni- mittee. In Novemher the editors from all of the hi h sehool newspapers met with Parris to jjo over the results of a ijuestionaire that was iven out in eaeh of the hi h sehools earlier this year. The R ashiu toniau ar- tiele on Groveton helped to hriiijj; the students and the administrators to- fjether in an all out effort to prove to the eomniunity that (Groveton isn ' ’t the sehool that Craijj; W aters

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CRASS OF ' 74 A DEFAMATION OF FIVE AREA HIGH SCHOOLS . ... It u(is (in English cl(is.s. he S(il(L Blit the subject todny lens English! Eortiuidtelv. just doien the hull, lee found soniethinfi more interestinf;;. the teacher, an at tractile orange iconian icith fluffy black hair, sat at her desk and stared straif ;ht ahead as the tape recorder droned on about the danp:ers of drup;s. One group in her ' media class, she e.xplained. icas interested in the dramatic methods employed in portraying drug addicts on the stage. Per- haps this was icliy the students, sivefit up against the walls and into the corners of the classroom like so much human refuse, stared vacantly, their eyes and faces empty. The danger here was not drugs. These kids ice re being wasted by heterogeneous grouping. He was sixteiMi. His (“old whili ' fa(‘e and uneven shanks of dirty blonde hair halaneed preearioiisly on lop (d’ a five-loot h( ap of dirty jeans. And everybody who saw him at Groveton High Sehool knew he was stoned. ”Hey. Look at that kid. ’ Which kid? The one with the uneven shanks of dirty blonde hair bal¬ anced pn ' carionsly on top of a five-foot heap of jeans. Oh. That kid. Y( ah, him. You know what, h(“ looks kind of fimnv. almost Yon don’t mean . . . Yes, I do. He looks stoned. No! Yes! Reallv? On drugs and all? ” Amt nobody knew what to do. What should we do? ” I dunno. Waddya wanna d »? ’’I dunno. Wanna plav basketball? ” O.K. ” Oh, (h)d, was In stom ' d. Soo stoned. So incredibly, iid’initelv, indefati ' fahlv stoned. Hev man. like what did indefatigahly mean anyway? Who eared? Jesns, it felt good. Soo good. People didn ' t un¬ derstand how tiood enltin ' i English class made him f(‘el. Tri- ppin’ on Skippin’, man. Soo good. Oh, everything was heautifnl. And skippin’ school was especially heautifnl. Oh yeah! If there is a melting pot in the Washington art ' a, (yritveton is it. The sehool is proud of the mix¬ ture and feels it lends a certain vi¬ tality to life at Groveton. F ' or ex¬ ample, the selnxd spends on(“- third of its annual budget on re¬ cruiting—not athletes—hnt minor¬ ities. One English teacher proudly asserted that her department had donated half of its paperback hook fund to aid a Eithnanian dwarf in attending the sehool. Then is no one more familiar with the problems that this mix¬ ture causes than .Jim Ross, (rrov(‘- ton’s principal, who nott ' s with eharaeteristie logic that when country eluhhers. hippies, soul brothers and rednecks rnh elbows, friction is produced. Wbv, bell yes, we’ve got problems. ” said Ross in his own inimitable man¬ ner. From this line, (wbieb in¬ cludes the word bell ) we can tell wbat kind of a person be is. He was sitting in the drab einder- hloek cell that is bis office (appar¬ ently be is free to come and go as In [)h“ases), and radiated energA. a luxury in tbesi times ( f crisis. Ross is new to the school ibis V(“ar. One student, when asked bow In found bis m w j)rineij)al. replied Ob. I j( st genrallv look down about a foot or two. and there be is. The author at- tribut( d this statenn nt to the fact that Ross has sideburns wbieb make him look dat( d, not younger. I’he school faced probb ' ins. be explained, in the areas of atten¬ dance, eurrieulnm, discipline, drugs, race, and sex . . . ’’to name a few. ” The author interpreted this statement as a joke. ”A great number of stinh ' iits siinplv won’t go to class. Is it their lack of responsihilitv or is it that we have to jazz up tin instruc¬ tional program? Ross asked. ”1 think it’s sonn of both. ” be answered. Apparentlv at (iroveton it is not uneommon to have some¬ one answer bis own (piestion. as this indicates a great amount of know h dge. Ra( ial problems? ’Well. I’ll give von some eon- erete examples . . . . ' L’j white. 10 black killed in race ri(»t —Febrn- arv II. 1971. School bnrin d down in race riot —Mav 2(). 1972. Teacher tarr( d and feathered- November 197.3. Rut niueb of wbat ap[)ears to he racial isn’t. Yon find out that the Kt y (iluh owed the Afro-American (iluh five dollars. Right off, you know it’s for heroin—you just know damn well that it’s drugs. Ross estimated that one of two kids might not he on hard drugs, or something like that. Another