“It was a lot of fun to do it because it was like a show, but it was sped up and didn’t involve the backstage drama. It was fun to be a part of something different that most people don’t get to be a part of.”

After 40 years,English department head makes this her last year

The

HI-LINETiger

Friday, Feb. 21, 2014 Volume 53 Edition 17

Charitable CauseStudents raise money for Univer-sity of Iowa Children’s Hospital with dance marathon/page 2

Follow us on Twitter at tigerhiline,Facebook at TigerHilineOnline and on our websiteat www.hiline.cfschools.org

Playwrights typically spend weeks or months writing and perfecting their plays. They work to make every detail perfect for their au-dience’s enjoyment, but what if they only had 24 hours to make their plays satisfactory? A group of CFHS students faced this challenge when they per-formed in a Speed The-ater event on Saturday night, Feb. 15.

For $10, anyone was able to see this crazily thrown together performance at the Walker Building across from the Waterloo Community Play-house. Several CFHS students participated including sopho-mores Grace Gubbrud and Ka-tarina Walther, junior John Nicol and seniors Kyle Wiebers and

Ellen Wallingford. CFHS alum Jillian Ross also participated.

In Speed Theater, partici-pants are divided into teams of six to eight people. Each team draws a song title from a list of songs and must, within 24 hours, create a play that lasts under 12

Submitted Photo

minutes and that is related to the song. The theme of the plays for this performance was “Friends and Lovers.”

The performances were judged by local celebrities Andrea Dryer, who is a jus-tice at Black Hawk County Courthouse, and John Lu-zaieh from the Oster Re-gent Theater.

At the end of the per-formance, several CFHS students won awards. The group that included Grace Gubbrud, Ellen Walling-

ford and Kyle Wiebers won Best Original Script. Wiebers won Best Actor. John Nicol’s group won Best Use of “Speed” in Speed Theater.

-Senior Kyle

Wiebers

Sophomore Grace Gubbrud, seniors Ellen Wallingford and Kyle Wiebers and CFHS alum Jillian Ross with their group after their performance.

By Editor-in-Chief Mallory

CFHS students create speedy performance in 24 hours

VALLENTINE

Rumors are all too common in the halls of CFHS, but few ru-mors garner so much reaction or emotion as one that unraveled a few weeks ago. Putting specula-tion to rest, English teacher and department head Judy Timmins has announced her retirement at the end of this school year, after 40 years of teaching.

Timmins attended UNI, earn-ing her B.A. in a Spanish and English double major and her M.A. in English. Timmins didn’t even know she want to be a teach-er. She was set on be-ing a pe-diatrician, but her sis-ter talked her out of that, so she d e c i d e d to pursue S p a n i s h , which she had taken from eighth g r a d e through 12th grade. The logical course of action for a Spanish major was teaching, and Tim-mins double majored in English in order to be more marketable.

She started her career teaching Spanish at West High School, but after two years, the enrollment in foreign languages was so low that she could no lon-ger teach there. She then taught ninth grade English at Logan Middle School for one year be-fore coming to Cedar Falls High School where she has been ever since. At first, she missed teach-ing Spanish, but she continues to speak a little in her English classes, when the situation may arise, and English always pro-vided her with something new. Timmins particularly noted the variety of literature texts she can choose from for teaching and also experiencing the myriad ways a student can respond to one piece of literature.

After 40 years, however, Timmins acknowledges that the paper load that comes from teaching is just too much. With

teaching all day and grading papers all night and every weekend, she barely has any spare time at all.

But retirement surely won’t mean boredom for her. She looks forward to spend-ing time with her family, as she already has one grand-child “and two more on the road.” She also plans to travel and simply relax. “I’m going to read a whole lot of books for me,” Timmins said.

T immins has brought an amazing impact over the years. When stu-dents write papers, she will not award the paper a fi-nal grade un-til the student had corrected every mistake — on their own. Timmins was always willing to help

a student, but never gave answers outright, and she de-manded both punctuality and quality. Many students may recognize her mantra: “You will pay now or you will pay later, but you will pay.”

Despite her demand for excellence, students know that Timmins cares about them. “It doesn’t matter what you do, she wants you to have a nice time,” senior Taylor Horvatich said.

Timmins urges students to take advantage of their experiences and opportuni-ties, both at Cedar Falls High School and elsewhere. “Do whatever you can to prepare yourself for whatever you think you might want to do,” she said.

For students who think they may want to go into teaching, Timmins advised, “You need to have a sense of humor.”

By Editor-in-Chief Ellen

WALLINGFORD

The CFHS Tiger Den has of-ficially opened and is ready to house students during their re-leases, lunch shifts and before and after school. The Tiger Den is located right beside the library in the library’s old and retired computer lab from 7:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. and can hold up to 50 students.

“[The Tiger Den] gives stu-dents another positive option for free periods,” Associate Principal Troy Becker said.

The hang-out space pro-vides a new place for students to go and relax while eating some food or drinking some pop or sports drink, and it

will soon be serving food and drinks of its own in the near fu-ture.

Katie Walsworth is the teacher in charge of the new Ti-ger Den and said, “It gets kids out of the hall and a chance to hangout.”

As far as rules and regula-tions go, there are no major rules for the new Tiger Den ex-cept to show respect to those inside and to make sure the volume is still softer than that of the cafeteria.

There are also some advan-tages to having a Tiger Den. Becker said, “It’s a place that students in good standings

can sign out of study hall and the commons to go and hang out in. It’s [also] a place for stu-dents to collaborate and visit during the day.”

The Tiger Den is place to go for other things besides hanging out, such as eating lunch and eventually for buy-ing food and coffee and drinks. It will also be a place for stu-dents to go and take tests dur-ing release and before school depending on the volume and amount of people in the Tiger Den.

By Staff Writer MacKenzieDALLENBACH

Submitted Photo

Tiger Den open for business

English teacher Judy Timmins will retire at the end of the year.

Friday, Feb. 21, 2014 HI-LINETiger

The

CAPTURED2Dance Marathon

Students raise money for hospital

The dance marathon raised $1,500 with the help of Student Sen-ate. The money will be donated to the Iowa Children’s Hospital. Starting at top left, senior Kayla Dowell holds a child. Middle left: Students play dodgeball. Botton left: Jude Corkery is held by his father. Jude was was diagnosed with epilepsy. Top right: sopho-more Annebeth Ahrenholz gets ready to throw the ball. Middle right: juniors Kaitlyn Bown and Olivia Hall. Bottom row, left to right: Student senate president, senior Alyssa Vuong, and junior Becky Mujica hang out. Junior Catherine Wei-lein and sophomores Conrad Nichols, Andrew Hager and Trevor Benson cheer dodgeball players on.

Agatha Fenech photos

Friday, Feb. 21, 2014HI-LINETiger

The

OPINION3

Our ViewThe Tiger Hi-Line is a weekly publication of the journalism classes at

Cedar Falls High School, 1015 Division Street, Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613. Our website is www.hiline.cfschools.org. The Hi-Line is distributed to CFHS students on Fridays to read during their fifth period classes.

Columns and letters do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hi-Line staff or Cedar Falls Schools. The Hi-Line editorial is presented weekly in the editorial labeled Our View, and it is the view of the major-ity of the editors listed below.

Reader opinions on any topic are welcome and should be sent to The Tiger Hi-Line staff or delivered to room 208. All letters must be signed. Letters must be submitted by 3 p.m. on Monday for publication in the following Friday edition. Letters may not exceed 300 words and may be edited to meet space limitations. Writers should include their contact information for verification.

Editors-in-Chief: Austin Anderson, Martha Hall, Mallory Vallen-tine and Ellen Wallingford Staff: Zuhayr Alam, Kaleb Bengston, Kaitlyn Brocka, Macken-zie Dallenbach and Abby Young

Contact UsCFHS is home to amaz-

ing students and staff, even some who are willing to go above and beyond to put forth exceptional effort to helping others. Each month you can go to the high school website and nominate a stu-dent for each grade level and staff member(s) for the Exceptional Efforts Award to thank them for all they’ve done. Nominations are due on the 25th of each month, and the awards are given out on the 30th. This month six very exceptional women won the award. During the

holiday season, sophomore Ol-ivia Mickey convinced her Eng-lish class to help out someone in need by raising money to give them gift cards. Junior Re-becca Lyman never backs away from a challenge or meeting new people. She is a member of the Girl Leadership Group and MVP. She’s always cheer-ful and friendly to people while keeping a smile on her face. Senior Catherine Isley’s warm heart showed as she led and coordinated an effort to create and make blankets for children staying at a local hospital. Her effort touched many people in

the community’s hearts with her kindness. Staff media specialists Kim Traw, Kristi Anhalt and Lori Nelson gave over 100 percent as they put a lot of their time into pre-paring and distributing all of the CFHS Chromebooks. The task took weeks of unpacking and labeling the thousand of Chromebooks distributed among the students just last month.

All six of these women put forth exceptional effort and help many people in their free time. Their awards are well deserved.

Exceptional efforts deserve glory

It seems that the 2014 Winter Olympics will be about as famous for its fail-ures as its successes. But not just in sports. The news has found a way to point out every little flaw in the the Games since before the Games began.

When one ring of the Olympic symbol failed to open during the open-ing ceremony, journalists made it sound like not only was it the end of the world, but that it was proof that Russia couldn’t handle the Olympics. There is even a Twitter account and sepa-rate hashtag established — @SochiProblems #So-chiProblems, respectively — that detail all the little problems people have encountered in Sochi. Col-ored water, locked doors, holes in walls. You name it, it’s probably a #SochiProb-lem.

Granted, there have been a lot of problems in Sochi, and in Russia as a whole. But let’s explain how and why they became problems. First of all, peo-ple have been up in arms over Russia’s anti-gay laws. Now, I support gay rights wholeheartedly, but keep in mind that these anti-gay laws as well as Russia’s po-sition on Syria do not re-flect the ideas of the whole nation. A country’s entire population should not be blamed for the actions of its government, but it seems that most people formed rock-solid opinions about Russia before the games began.

And about the con-

struction issues. Many hotels and crews were simply not ready for people to come in yet. Starting construction too late, they had to scramble to make things presentable. Of course, they should have been ready, and issues that threaten the health and safety of athletes and spectators are inexcusable, but as the whole world watches, we could make less of a deal of the things go-ing wrong and more of a deal of the sports events.

For example, one of the Olympic rings didn’t open when it was supposed to dur-ing the opening ceremony. A simple mistake, and one that could have happened to any crew in any country at any event of this grandeur. What about the other rings that did open into snowflakes? That’s pretty cool.

What about all the athletes coming together in solidar-ity and celebrating each other before the competitions? All this was lost on some people who were so hung up on little mistake.

All these problems have been meticulously hashed out by regular citizens and jour-nalists alike, who I had hoped possessed at least an ounce of journalistic integrity these days. The @SochiProblems account seems to be used by more spectators than anyone, but as I was scrolling the ac-count and the hashtag feed, I saw that news commentators and journalists were supplying pictures of their own. Seriously, what happened to respect, if only for yourself? Not only are these people embarrass-ing all Russians and everyone involved with the Olympics,

but they are making fools out of themselves. And the problem with publicizing information on social me-dia is that it finds a way to last forever. Even if the ac-count is deleted, there’s an exorbitant amount of proof that it happened. Imagine people in Russia scrolling through Twitter, to see one of their towns, and thereby their entire people, ridi-culed as the laughingstock of society. Imagine one of your children asking you why #SochiProblems ever happened. What are you going to tell them? Imag-ine the Olympians who have worked so hard to achieve their dreams, but people find the hotel water more interesting than their performance.

The United States of America, as one of the ma-jor world powers, has an opportunity to show sup-port of other nations, and to strengthen a bond that has long been unstable. Instead, we squandered it with prejudice, indif-ference and petty hang-ups. So regardless of who takes home the most Gold, who really won and lost out there? The struggling southern resort town who didn’t quite perform under pressure? Or the observing countries who acted as im-mature as possible under the circumstances? This winter, I’m proud of the athletes, but that’s about it.

It’s your junior year, and you think since it’s the middle ground of high school, the year shouldn’t be too hard. However, you’re very wrong. As a junior there are many things expected of you. There is so little time to do all of these things that you find yourself exhausted by the end of the day and have very little free time. Ask any junior in the hallway how much free time they really have, and they will tell you, if any, they don’t have much.

As a junior the first thing expected of you is to get your license and keep it. That’s not too hard as long as you don’t speed, text and drive or do other things that could cause you to lose your license.

On top of that, you’re ex-pected to get A’s or at least B’s in all of your classes. This means no slacking whatsoev-er. You have to study for every class and do all of your home-work on time. Again, this is not very hard to do unless something gets in the way of that.

Most juniors are turning 16 or 17, and that means it’s time for a job. Depending on how long you work and how many days you work, a job can make it incredibly hard to keep up with schoolwork. If you wake up, go to school, go to work after school and only have an hour, maybe two, to study and do homework, how are you expected to get such good grades?

Another big thing that is

constantly on your mind as a junior is the enormous pres-sure of figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life. Most people think this is what seniors do, but that is in-correct. As a junior you need to take the ACT or the SAT, and you need to pick classes to take as a senior to prepare you for your future. You need to start thinking of what col-lege you want to go to, what you want to major in and when you can tour these colleges. You also have to make sure to reach the requirements for all of the possible colleges just in case you can’t get into the one you wanted.

With all of these things on your mind, how are you able to have any time for re-laxation, let alone hanging out with your friends? This is something expected of you, too. Adults stress all of these things upon you and then ask why you don’t have many friends or why you’re never out of the house. It’s because there’s no time for any of that.

Junior year, in my opinion, is the most difficult school year and the most exhaust-ing. However, once you get through your junior year, the summer will probably end up being your time to get some real sleep, reconnect with your friends and get ready for se-nior year to come.

#SochiProblems? More like #US ProblemsCoverage, attitudes toward Olympics embarrassing

Too much stress placed on juniors

Staff Writer Kaitlyn

BrockaEditor-in-Chief Ellen

Wallingford

Friday, Feb. 21, 2014 HI-LINETiger

The

Sports4

ALAM By Staff Writer Zuhayr

AthleteWeekof

the

Junior Drew Marchesani is the Tigers’ leading three-point shooter and is preparing to start the playoffs against Metro rival Waterloo West, who they have split the season series with.

How are you wrapping up the season and preparing for the playoffs?

We kind of hit a rough spot later in the year, but our last game against Kennedy, we played really well and are start-ing to turn it around and have some really good practices. Hopefully we can peak at the right time on Monday for West.

Having split the season series against Waterloo West, how are you game planning to beat them?

Last time we played West was at home. We didn’t have our leading scorer, Keeon [Johnson], which really hurt us offensively and defensively because we had to play zone. With Keeon back, we can play man to man, and he can cover their best man Lincoln Conrey and hopefully shut them down.

Have you thought about col-lege at all?

I’ve definitely started to think about college. I’m going to start it off by playing a lot of AAU ball this summer and try to get on the map. I’ll work real hard and see what happens and play my hardest every game, and let it be done.

Drew MarchesaniBasketball

TigersActionin

Men’s Basketball (6-14)

Feb. 24 Home vs. Waterloo West

Women’s Basketball

(10-11)Feb. 22

@ Mason City

WrestlingState QualifiersDan Kelly-138

Drew Langel-170Devon Davis-220

World Cup captures global focusAfter Sochi,

The FIFA World Cup will be the biggest sporting event in the world this year. The final tournament, whose qualifying rounds began in June of 2011, will take place in Brazil starting June 12, and run until July 13, with billions upon billions of people tuning in from all cor-ners of the world to watch.

The groups for the tour-nament were chosen just a few months ago. There are 8 groups, each represented by a letter such as “Group A.” In group play, every team faces each team once. Teams get three points for winning, one point for tying, and no points for losing. The top two teams will advance to the knockout stages.

The United States will have a tough time getting out of its group, however. America was drawn into Group G with Ghana, who had knocked the United States out each of the past two World Cups; Portugal, who have one of the best play-ers in the world at the moment in Cristiano Ronaldo; and Ger-many, who are one of the favor-ites to win the tournament.

Brazil goes into the tourna-ment as another one of the fa-vorites, mainly because of home field advantage. The whole country of Brazil is looking to-wards 21-year-old Neymar da Silva Santos Junior, commonly known as Neymar, to lead the country to its sixth World Cup victory. Some other favorites are Germany, who have not won a World Cup since 1990, and Spain, who won the last World Cup in South Africa. Ar-gentina go into the tournament as contenders as well, led by 26-year-old Lionel Messi, who many people call the best play-er the world has ever seen.

With a mere four months

left until the World Cup starts, Brazil is having problems get-ting all of its stadiums ready in time. There have already been multiple fatalities while build-ing the stadia, the last of which happened last Saturday. Many of the stadiums have not been completed, and most of the newly planned hotels have not even begun construction.

There have also been securi-ty concerns for Brazil. Last year, during the Confederations Cup, which is sort of like a mini World Cup, there were riots over cor-ruption and spending so much money on the World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games when the country’s economy is not doing well and much of the

country is in poverty. Also, dur-ing Pope Francis’s visit to Brazil during the summer, there were security concerns when people came to see the Pope as he halted his car and people got close enough to touch him.

Sophomore soccer player Nathan Shull is enthusiastic about the World Cup, despite the safety concerns.

“I like to watch the world’s best players and their teams competing against each other. You can tell that the players get really passionate, and that makes for a great atmosphere.

As for who would win the coveted trophy, Shull said, “I think Spain will win again. Spain is still a very talented team, and

In 2014 and 2016, Brazil will be hosting the biggest sporting events the world will have ever seen: the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 summer Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro.

These mega-huge events will cost the country billions upon billions of dollars, and that is not going over too well with some of its citizens.

According to National Public Radio, the World Cup will cost an estimated $10-20 billion for the country. That price comes from the building of new stadiums, renovating transportation systems and housing and just overall tidying up before the spotlight falls on the country.

A Wall Street Journal sto-ry reports that the Olympics will tack an estimated $15 billion to Brazil’s investment in sports. That price comes from building a whole new

Olympic park and transforming Rio de Janeiro into a modern metropolis.

An estimated 40 million people in Brazil live under the poverty line, so spending many billions of dollars on these two events is not going over well with a large portion of Brazil’s citizens. Many citizens want the federal and state govern-ments of Brazil to spend $30 or so billion on education or food. Just last year during the Confederations Cup, sort of like a mini World Cup, there were riots all over the country during the games. Some of them turned violent, and there were many injuries. During the final between Brazil and Spain; however, the riots stopped, and everyone seemingly qui-eted down to watch the game.

Many citizens of Brazil have warmed up to the idea of host-ing the World Cup in their country, but they are still op-

posed to hosting the Olym-pics.

Brazil’s Olympic Com-mittee has a grand scheme in the works to completely change one part of Rio de Janeiro in order to build the athletes’ village among oth-er Olympic attractions. The committee is also looking to revamp the older trans-portation systems of the city along with adding more tourist attractions in the cit-ies like museums.

The poorer people of Rio think that this is an atrocity because they feel that they are being completely over-looked.

There will undoubtedly be violence and riots during both sets of games, so this begs the question: Should Brazil be hosting these events?

Brazilians wrestle with costs of hosting

I can’t see them not making a deep run. There is a special kind of atmosphere there.”

Junior Hiram Marquez can hardly wait for the World Cup to begin as well.

“I enjoy watching the World Cup and soccer in general be-cause it is really intense. You can feel the passion coming from the field and the fans,” Marquez said. “The World Cup is especially good because the best of the best play there, and every game is life and death.”

Marquez thinks that Brazil will win their sixth World Cup in 2014.

ALAM By Staff Writer Zuhayr

Women’s basketball team readies for playoffs

YOUNG By Staff Writer Abby

The CFHS women’s bas-ketball team is just two games away from being able to go to the state basketball tourna-ment.

This Saturday, they will be traveling down to Mason City for their first playoff game. Al-though Mason City has a better record, 15-6, than Cedar Falls’ record of 11-10, Cedar Falls pulled off a win last time they played them in a close game 66-59.

“We want to respect our

opponents but not fear them,” head coach Dan List said.

Many players on the team have said that a big reason for their success is their team chemistry. Whether it’s playing basketball, having a team meal or just hanging out, they all get along well. They are like one big basketball family.

“My favorite part of coach-ing is to see the tremendous chemistry the team has. They respect and pull for each other and have really come together

as a team,” List said. If the Tigers are able to pull

off another win at Mason City, the girls would travel to Ames to battle against one of the top teams in the state of Iowa, Des Moines East.

If they are able to upset the Des Moines East Scarletts, the Lady Tigers would advance to the State tournament.

There are two seniors on the team this year, Madison Wood and Symone Robinson, who are fighting to keep play-

ing as they are finishing up their high school basketball careers.

“I’ve been a part of the journey to go to State for the past four years at Cedar Falls, and this is our year. We’ve worked really hard as a team for these last games, and be-ing a senior is my last chance to help the team make it count,” Wood said.