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Patterson wins state championship

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Coach Martin and the basketball team celebrating their State Championship win (Photo: Patterson High School)

By Christian Pietrowski

and Lionell Green

Patterson’s varsity boys basketball team defeated Century High School on March 11th in the Division 2A State Championship. It was a hard-fought game and our own Patterson Clippers came out strong with the win. With a final score of 49-43, the Clippers finish the season with the 2A championship title.

The whole season has been hard but the Clippers fought their way through and put their heart into the game to win the championship. Century High School was winning with six minutes to go until Patterson stepped up their game up to win the State Championship.

“You come down here and they don’t give away state championships,” Coach Martin said. “It’s not easy. You have to battle and fight. We battled and did enough.”

The Patterson basketball team made nine free throws in the last 1:38 to secure the title and Gerard Mungo hit six of them.

Darrion Pitts, a Junior on the basketball team said ” It felt amazing to win the State Championship. Its great to be known as a person that won. The hard work, practices and close games [all paid off].”

Pitts described how the team felt during the game. “Every game we took it step by step, getting inches closer to it and when we where playing the game, looking at the scoreboard every time making sure we had the lead was like [having] a heart attack. When the clock struck zero, joy, happiness and excitement just spread to the floor. Getting that gold medal, taking the picture with my team, holding up the state title, is a memory and forever will be a memory.”

Always put your heart into everything you do. That’s what the Patterson basketball team did to win the State Championship.

The team roster consists of

#        Name                   Position   Grade

1 Daesean Jones Guard So.
2 Harrison Brandon Guard Sr.
3 Marvin Price (C) Guard So.
5 Gerard Mungo Guard So.
12 John Thomas Guard Sr.
15 Rico Lang Forward Fr.
20 Byron Easter Wing So.
23 Christion Adams Forward Sr.
24 Isaiah Clemons (C) Guard Sr.
30 Darrion Pitts Forward Jr.

 

Lacrosse team defeats Reginald Lewis 6-1

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By Alvaro Flores-Villegas

The varsity boys Lacrosse team defeated Reginald Lewis High School on March 30, 2017 with a final score of 6-1, achieving their first win of the season. The goals scored against Reginald Lewis were made by John Thomas with three goals, Alvaro Flores-Villegas with one goal, Jonathan Amaya with one goal, and Antonio Laster with one goal. During the game, there was an altercation between a player from Patterson and a player from Reginald, but ultimately, the Clippers helped focus their teammate, and motivated him to keep playing, resulting in a win. The team fought their hearts out and worked hard to get their win. Hopefully there will be more wins in the near future, and Patterson will finally have a successful season and bring home a City Championship.

Is keeping animals in zoos a good thing?

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By Sartre Ndebaneza,

The San Diego Zoo contains animals from around the world, including this giant panda named Bai Yun. (Photo: Matthew Field)

The San Diego Zoo contains animals from around the world, including this giant panda named Bai Yun. (Photo: Matthew Field)

We are all familiar with taking a short walk in a park, visiting zoos, and even taking some food to feed those poor animals. How about giving your loved ones a visit to a Sea World show? How about protecting animals and providing them with good healthcare and feeding them? There are a lot of significant reasons to consider in order to keep these animals behind bars. But what is the purpose if we do all these things for our own interest?

It has been said that we need to protect the environment, but we still hear some leaders say that climate change is hoax. Big corporations polluted the air but noone can point fingers at them. Government agencies and private organizations seem to care about nature but many people do not. So why do we really keep animals in captivity?

First, people started the open parks for wild animals. Then, so sea animals were not left behind, people took them from their world in order to keep them in pools. Is pool water better than ocean water? Were the jungles where those zoo animals used to live worse than those little shelters people enclosed them in?

If you are a true world-saver think about this: An African elephant covers about 80 kilometers (around 50 miles) a day. Is there any comparison that we can make with these elephants locked in zoos? It is better to take care of animals and love them but why do we deny them the right to live naturally?

For instance, at the San Diego Zoo, trainers trained animals, including dolphins, to do tricks. Trainers make animals do tricks by rewarding them with food. It sounds good but this is a technique to change animals’ psychology, and when animals act differently trainers call it rebelling or bad behavior. We know that when those animals lived in jungles or in oceans they ate when they were hungry, not when they did tricks. And they got food by hunting, not by being fed by people’s hands. What would you do if you found out someone was changing your lifestyle in a way you don’t like?

There may sometimes be good reasons to keep animals in captivity, such as helping endangered species to breed, but most of the time wild animals are better off in their natural environment, not locked up for our entertainment.

Investigating Patterson’s rodent problem

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Photo: National Institutes of Health (public domain)

By Christian Pietrowski, Lionell Green and Jessica Branch,

Patterson is known for the roaches and mice that can be found all throughout the school. A lot of classrooms have mice living in the walls and sometimes during the day they make an appearance. So why does Patterson have this rodent and insect problem if the janitors clean every day–both after the students leave and during the day?

Ms.Rivera, head custodian at Patterson High, told the Patterson Press, ”I honestly have no clue why there is a rodent problem in Patterson because I work like crazy and so do the other custodians.”

Morgan McCafity, a senior at Patterson High, said, ”The rodent problem is sad and scary.” She doesn’t want rodents running across her feet when they could possibly have a disease.

Honestly, the rodent problem at Patterson is sad because Patterson is a really nice school and is actually cleaned on a regular basis. So if Patterson is cleaned regularly, why is there a rodent problem? To discover he answer to this question, we went around the school and asked questions to random students and teachers in school. Here are the questions we asked and a random sample of some of the answers we received:

  1. Why is Patterson so dirty? (Because students leave trash everywhere, not caring about trashcans.)
  2. Why are there so many rodents in Patterson? (They are smart creatures and they find their way in no matter what.)
  3. If the custodians clean, WHY is it so dirty? (Because students throw trash wherever they can and whenever they can even if there is a trashcan 5 feet away.)
  4. What makes Patterson so dirty? (The students.)
  5. Why haven’t we gotten an exterminator? (We have a couple times but it doesn’t work.)
  6. Where are they coming from? (The outside of the school.)
  7. Why haven’t we stopped this? (Patterson has tried numerous times.)
  8. What is causing the rodents to come out? (The cold and the trash and food crumbs that are on the ground.)
  9. How many rodents have you seen in a day? (About 8 or 10.)
  10. How can we stop them from coming in? (Block all the small holes and ways that they come in.)

As an experiment, two of us walked around the school to see how many mice and rodents we could each find in just 5 minutes (for a combined total of 10 minutes between the two reporters). Here is what we found, broken down minute by minute:

pietrowski- Lionell-Branch (1)

All in all, Patterson has a really bad rodent problem. Patterson might be one of the worst schools with a rodent problem. Part of the problem is because the school has small holes in the floors and walls and the animals are small so they can come in through the holes. The custodians clean as often as they can, but as long as students continue to throw trash everywhere the rodent problem will not get any better.

RYP students visit National Geographic Headquarters

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Students who participate in RYP program with National Geographic staffs in Washington DC. (Photo: Ms. Kursten Pickup)

by Sartre Ndebaneza,

Students who participate in the Refugee Youth Project program went on a field trip to Washington DC on March 17 . The trip featured a tour of the headquarters of the National Geographic Society where students learned how experts in different fields use photos to express their messages.

National Geographic’s employees who work in the studio showed RYP students how they take some incredible pictures to illustrate ideas in magazines or to break down myths. One experience students benefited from was an explanation of the meaning behind a broken glass that contains water. The information that the broken glass with water gives is to tell people that the concept of drinking eight glasses of water a day is wrong. There is not any scientific proof that drinking eight glasses of water a day is beneficial.

After that, students took a tour of a building where they went to see the archives. Because all RYP students are from different countries, everyone got a chance to observe some historic photos taken in their countries. Another thing students got the opportunity to visit was National Geographic museum.

This field trip was a great experience for all the students who participated in it.

 

Code Baltimore teaches students how to program apps for Apple products

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(Image: Jonathan Bradley)

 

By Faran Nadeem,

Code Baltimore is an after school program at Patterson High School. The program is about learning the Apple’s official language, “SWIFT”.

The teacher is not from the our school. His name is Ian Han and he is a technology officer at Iron Forge. He teaches us how to code our own apps for Apple iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers. He brings a MacBook Pro for every student, because of the fact that we can only code SWIFT on Apple products.  The program takes place every Wednesday after-school from around 4:00 to 6:00 PM.

So far we have made 3 apps in total with the assistance of Mr. Han. These apps we made were somewhat difficult to make but it did not take long to make them and they are useful. Then we were given 3 weeks to complete one app on our own by doing research. When the app is complete we will upload it to the Apple Store.

It is really interesting to have our own app on the app store where everyone can download it. I am working on an app with Amadou Bah and Yamen Khalil and I really want our app to be on the app store. Our app is a sticker pack in which there are different emojis and text and most interestingly we three have our own face emoji. Hopefully it will be done next week.

Coding is always fun when you know what to do and how to do it. I remember when I used to code for website development. I sat down in one spot and keep coding all day long because I knew what to do. Wednesday, March 29 is the last day of Code Baltimore, but there is another session that is starting about one week after the end of this session. Anyone who is interested in coding can join this program. It is free of cost and also you will get a certificate after you are done making your own app.

EDITORIAL: Immigration ban is illegal and wrong

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Protest at BWI Airport Over Trump's Executive Order on Immigrants, Refugees. (By Deb Belt) Patch.com

Protest at BWI Airport Over Trump’s Executive Order on Immigrants, Refugees. (By Deb Belt 0

By Sartre Ndebaneza and Amadou Bah,

Most Americans are questioning if President Trump’s executive order restricting immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries is legal or illegal. The order appears to be illegal because it puts limits on a particular group of people. Trump’s order is unconstitutional because it targets only one religion. The editors of the Patterson Press believe that everyone should be welcomed and treated fairly in the U.S. regardless of their religion, ethnicity and national origin. The beauty of the U.S. is its diversity. Immigrants also contribute a lot to America’s economy. What is still not understandable is why Trump kept people from those seven Muslim countries from re-entering the country when they were legal residents who already had green cards and had not done anything wrong.

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