Colleen Fontana

I’ve already made plans to do laundry at my brother’s house and take turns intruding on my aunts and uncles in Seattle for an occasional homecooked meal.
Whoever said college means time away from family didn’t know my family. I will actually be surrounded by more family members at college in Seattle that I am here at home in Yakima.
However, I know there will definitely be a disconnect. I will wake up to my two roommates instead of my parents.
I will still hear from my siblings every so often even though we’ll be in the same city. I will be too engulfed in college life and homework to talk to my parents every night and tell them about my day as I would when I was at home.
Oddly enough, as much as I love my family and enjoy being home, I wouldn’t consider myself a home body.
When I left for a week to stay with my cousins as a kid, I never got homesick. When I slept over at a friend’s house for birthday parties and the other girls were eager to go home the next day to meet their parents, I was always the last to leave because I was simply having too much fun.
When I went on a two-week trip to the east coast last summer to visit friends and attend a service camp, I didn’t call my parents until a few days before I came home and that was just to confirm my flight time. It’s not that I never missed them; it’s just that I kept myself too busy to feel lonely without them.
However, I don’t think college will have the same effect. Once the excitement of the initial freedom wears off, I will hit a lull in which I will miss my parents and my home. The thing is that, with college, where you go home to at night isn’t where they are anymore.
Suddenly, you can’t escape from your friends when they’re annoying you because they constantly surround you. You don’t have someone telling you what movies you can watch or which friends you can drive with.
When you leave home, there is no one to catch you when you inevitably trip and stumble. College brings an incredible change into one’s life.
I don’t do well with such change; I never have.
The transition from small-town life to big-city life will be drastic for me, and there are so many aspects of this life that I treasure and that I will miss.
For one, I will miss the sun. Rumor has it that it rarely makes an appearance on the west side of this state.
I will miss not having to pay for parking, and the fact that 10 cars at a stoplight is “traffic.” The hills will be rough, and factoring in 20 minutes for travel time will take some getting used to.
I will miss being wedged safely in a valley, and I will long for snow instead of the dreary drizzle Seattle has in January. I will miss Davis High School and the teachers and volleyball and dances and football games, even though we lost.
I will not, however, miss International Baccalaureate. Nor will I miss having six classes a day and a zero period. I will miss writing for Unleashed, and I will miss my piano students.
But the encouraging thing about leaving a place you love is you always get to come back. Christmas break will find me sledding at Franklin Park. Spring break will find me with a hot tea at Northtown Coffeehouse surrounded by old high school friends.
And with the end of my freshman year of college, I will find myself back home where all the things I missed will be waiting for me.
I think the reason I never got homesick as a child or never needed to call my parents on long trips was not because I didn’t miss them, but simply because I knew I would always come back home and everything would be waiting for me, just how I left it.
I am ecstatic to go to college, don’t get me wrong. But for someone who doesn’t do well with change, knowing I can always come home is a comforting thought.

— Colleen Fontana is a 2010 Davis High School graduate and a former member of the Herald-Republic’s Unleashed journalism program for high school students. She will attend Seattle University this fall.

Laura Aguilera-Flemming

It’s finally here, my final year of high school.
I’ve been looking forward to this year ever since I was a shy little freshman. This will be my last chance to cheer at the Eisenhower football games, dance at prom, and see my best friends every day.
And it’ll be the year I’m waiting for an acceptance letter from my dream college, The Art Institute of Seattle.
I have senior pictures and graduation parties to look forward too as well. The decisions I make regarding college and school will affect me for the rest of my life.
Not only do I have exciting events to look forward to, but also time-consuming responsibilities. This year I’ll have to come up with an idea for a senior project, which I will have to spend a certain amount of hours working on in order to be able to graduate high school on time.
The beginning portion of my senior year will be spent working on college applications and searching for scholarships for which to apply.
It will not be an easy year, but everything I get done will be very rewarding in the long run.
This is my last year to really be a teenager. As a senior, it’s my last year to enjoy simplicity before I become a college student and an independent adult.
I’m looking forward to the end of high school, but more than that I’m eager to experience the unforgettable memories of this year that will follow through out the rest of my life.

— Laura Aguilera-Flemming is a senior at Eisenhower High School and a member of the Herald-Republic’s Unleashed journalism program for high school students.

Hannah Souers

The grand climax of another summer has passed, and school is here. For me, this summer was about the love of softball, enjoyed with 11 other girls on our summer team, the Tigers.
Since I was 8 years old, I have played for the Tigers with my dad, Randy Souers, as the coach.
This summer, we competed in the age 16 and under, or 16U, division in six tournaments across the Pacific Northwest.
Our team lives and competes as a family during the summer. We grow attached to each other, and usually spend most of our waking hours outside of softball with other girls from the team.
Four years ago, the Tigers picked up a treasured member, Molly Rubidoux, who had recently moved here from California. Molly and I share several similarities and became immediate friends. We both have a passion for softball, art and shopping.
It became obvious early on that Molly is an exceptional pitcher. She led us to a second place finish in the 14-and-under division. And throughout the past four years since she came to the team, Molly has helped make us the strongest we have ever been.

Tigers fastpitch teammates Hannah Rumbolz, Shae Sunwold, Molly Rubidoux, Makenzie McFeeley and Nicole Schultz

Last spring, along with six other Tiger girls, I made the varsity softball team for West Valley High School. In West Valley history, the best the softball team had ever placed was eighth place in the state tournament; we took third.
A week before the state championships, however, we were struck with heart-wrenching news: Molly was going to move back to California in August.
Sorrow gripped the Tigers when we realized we would be having our last summer with Molly. So did a new vigor.
As school ended, we began another summer of traveling and tournaments. Though we didn’t place in our first two tournaments in Selah and Coeur d’Alene, we hit our streak back in Selah on June 25 to 27. That tournament, we took first place.
The Tigers took another hit when we discovered one of our newest players, Whitney Biehl, was injured in a four-wheeling accident.
Luckily, she wasn’t badly hurt and didn’t break anything, but there wasn’t a chance of her competing in the next tournament. Fortune was on her side because she had tumbled approximately 50 feet and hit her head on a rock. A mild concussion and several bruises were the worst of her injuries.
Two weekends later, we traveled to Richland for the 16U state tournament. In three days, we played seven games and took third place out of 15 teams. It was a victory we could be proud of, but there were two more tournaments that would pose an even greater challenge.
The next weekend, the regionals tournament took place in Lewiston, Idaho. Only six teams from Washington, Oregon and Idaho competed. But our fire seemed to have left us. We only took fourth place and played a mere four games.
We had two solid weekends before our final tournament, and the break wasn’t wasted on relaxation. We trained and practiced.
There was an unsaid understanding among all of the team members that we had to end the summer on a positive note.
The Tigers arrived in Hillsboro, Ore. on Aug. 3 for registration. The games didn’t start until the following day but all 34 teams had to be checked in. Seventeen teams arrived from California, 12 from Oregon, four from Washington, and one from Montana.
My dad, our coach, warned us to expect any outcome in the Western Nationals tournament. We didn’t know if we would be able to compete with any of the other teams or if we would even place. The girls accepted that the tournament was a time for fun and making memories, but we weren’t going to go down without a fight.
We fought like devils and beat the odds the next four days. Our first game was against the Valley Invasion. We beat them 15-3 in five innings. It wasn’t until after the game that we realized that they were the Southern California state champions. That same weekend, we beat the Oregon State champions, the Extreme, 4-1.
During the day, we played softball. We spent the evenings locked in one hotel room until we were ordered to bed.
Molly Rubidoux, Makenzie McFeeley, Shae Sunwold, Nicole Schultz and Hannah Rumbolz had a room to themselves and attempted to tie-dye their clothing. This included several shirts, tank-tops, sports bras and socks. The end result was brown clothing, a colorful bathtub and stained hands.
We went out with a bang, playing seven games in four days and losing to only two teams. Our last game, on Aug. 7, was played against the Strike-Force, and we lost 4-1.
The other team didn’t seem to realize the reason behind our tears. The loss was meaningless to us next to the realization that Molly Rubidoux was leaving for California the next day.
Our starting catcher, Megan Wetzel, begged us all to go out to dinner as a team one last time, and in a unanimous decision, the Tigers and all our parents went to a Shari’s Restaurant that night at 10:30 p.m.
We sat as a team and disrupted the other customers’ meals with our loud laughter. A spit-wad war broke out between the two sides of the table, ending only when Nicole Schultz took a wet wad in the face and angrily stopped the battle.
We entertained each other for more than an hour and a half with everything from YouTube video reenactments by Madison Roberts and Hannah Kivi and embarrassing stories to drawing contests with crayons and napkins between Astoria Rice, Kayla Ziegler, and Hannah Kivi’s 5-year-old sister, Gracie Kivi.
The party didn’t end when we arrived at the hotel, but continued for several hours with 12 teenage girls sitting and talking in one room. There was no bed time, so the conversations wore on into the early morning. Finally, last good-byes were in order.
An incredible summer ended with several plaques and trophies and a new long-distance friendship. The Tigers softball team won’t be the same, but we will go on.
Molly will still be a part of the team. She always will be, regardless of where she is. And we will continue with the Tigers motto: “Don’t Talk About It; Be About It.”

— Hannah Souers is a junior at West Valley High School and a member of the Herald-Republic’s Unleashed journalism program for high school students.

Georgia Gempler

Avid movie watchers will tell you picking their favorite movies of all time is impossible.
And I am no exception.
So the following nine movies are not by any means my “favorite.” Each work has elements that are both exquisite, and not.
These movies are, however, a sample of my most watched, most recommended and most loved.
• “Bagdad Café” (1987)
This is one of my favorite movies to watch alone. Its slow pace and subtle messages really require the viewer to pay full attention.
The film follows a German woman’s life and transformation while living in the American southwest. Jasmin Münchgstettner leaves her husband while on a road trip and is forced to make her way on her own. She finds lodging at the Bagdad Café, a desolate truck stop and motel, with equally desolate occupants.
As her stay wears on, she manages to bring magic to her hosts’ lives as well as her own. Starring Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder and Jack Palance, this movie is full of simple beauty.
• “The Birdcage” (1996)
This is perhaps one of the funniest movies of all time. It has created many happy moments with my family and is one of my most highly recommended films.
Armand Goldman, played by Robin Williams, is the owner of a gay night club called The Birdcage. When his son wants to get married to a girl whose family would never accept gay in-laws, Armand and his partner play it straight for the sake of their son’s happiness.
“The Birdcage” also stars Nathan Lane, Dan Futterman, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, Hank Azaria and Christine Baranski.
• “Amélie” (2001)
A girl with eclectic tastes and a complex personality, Amélie, played by Audrey Tautou, is a French girl living alone in Paris.
She creates her own whimsical world in which she loves to help others. It is when she needs to help herself that she hesitates.
I love the fact that his movie celebrates the unexpected and highlights the simple joys of life. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, “Amélie” is in French with English subtitles.
• “The Breakfast Club” (1985)
When a group of strangers are trapped together for hours on end, you never know what kind of relationships will result. This is even more true for a group of teenagers.
A classic movie chronicling the teenage experience, “The Breakfast Club” — written and directed by John Hughes — stars Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy as five teens in detention.
“The Breakfast Club” is one of the few movies I have experienced that truly captures the mind of the teenager, and accurately chronicles the stereotypical personalities of various high school cliques.
• “Down With Love” (2003)
This film takes place in the 1960s, a time when the movies were all about having fun in bright colors with amazing hair-dos. This movie, staring Rene Zellweger and Ewan McGregor, was made in that style with cheesy pick-up lines, suave playboys and New York apartments the size of warehouses.
The movie chronicles the lives of its two main characters, Catcher Block and Barbara Novak, as they spin devious plans to make each other fall in love with them. It’s perhaps one of the funniest movies I have ever seen staring Zellweger or McGregor.
• “The Thin Man” (1934)
William Powell and Myrna Loy star in “The Thin Man,” the first movie in a popular and thrilling series.
Former detective Nick Charles and his wife Nora are visiting New York when Nick is swept up into a murder case involving family friends. Witty lines and the constant guzzling of cocktails perfectly complement the suspenseful plot.
I love the fact that this movie fully embodies the spirit of the time in which it was made, the 1930s.
• “The Science of Sleep” (2006)
After seeing this movie only once, it is already one of my favorites.
Gael Garcia Bernal stars in this sweet movie about a man who dreams as often as he is awake. He lives in an apartment in France and often confuses his dreams with his real life, especially when it comes to love, and his beautiful next-door neighbor.
“The Science of Sleep” is a slow-paced, whimsical film with inspiring stop-animation and tons of creativity, in English, Spanish and French (with English subtitles).
• “An Affair to Remember” (1957)
This is perhaps one of the most beloved old movies of all time.
The classic love story, made popular again by its integral inclusion in Nora Ephron’s “Sleepless In Seattle,” combines 1950s charm with the timeless “will they, won’t they” plot.
My favorite scene in this movie takes place in an Italian villa, where Nickie and Terry, played by Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, visit Nickie’s grandmother. In my opinion, it is one of the most romantic scenes in this desperately romantic classic.
• “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” (2008)
This is a whimsical, flirtatious interpretation of London life just before the Second World War.
Miss Pettigrew is an unsuccessful governess living on the streets of London. Through determination and extraordinary common sense, she meets Delysia Lafosse, a bubbly show girl, and teaches her to follow her heart.
Starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams, “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” is perfectly suited to cheer you up after a bad day.

— Georgia Gempler is a junior at Davis High School and a member of the Herald-Republic’s Unleashed journalism program for high school students.

Applications are due Aug. 31.

We’re looking for students in grades nine through 12 who are interested in writing, reporting, journalism and photojournalism.

Students from the following participating public school districts are invited to apply: Yakima, West Valley, East Valley, Ellensburg, Grandview, Highland, Mabton, Naches Valley, Wahluke, Selah, Sunnyside, Toppenish, White Swan and Zillah.

Students from the following participating private schools are also invited to apply: La Salle and Riverside Christian.

The award-winning teen journalism program at the Yakima Herald-Republic is run in partnership with Educational Service District 105.

Unleashed is published every other Sunday in the Herald-Republic and is about to begin its twelfth year.

Questions? Contact Adriana Janovich at the Yakima Herald-Republic at 509-577-7653 or ajanovich@yakimaherald.com.

Kateri Town

She’ll use the scholarship at Seattle University, where she’ll be a freshman in the fall.
Town spent a week on the campus in 2007 when she participated in the Journalism Summer Workshop, taking photographs for publications such as the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Last summer, she participated in Project Phoenix, sponsored by NAJA and hosted by the University of New Mexico. She worked on the project’s student publication, Rising Voices.
She plans on becoming a photojournalist.

Sean Nagle-McNaughton

Whenever you visit your family, you wind up eating a lot.
At least, that’s true in my family, especially when we visit my dad’s parents in Brooklyn, Mich. Every time we go, I think we manage to set some sort of a record.
My dad has six older sisters, so I have a lot of cousins. And we are all about the same age.
That means there are usually about 10 teenagers wanting to be fed at every meal, plus their parents and any neighbors or friends who want to join in. All this adds up to mean that we eat a lot of food, individually and collectively.
Among the Yakima members of the family, there’s a long-running joke that we probably eat our own body weight’s worth of food whenever we spend time in Michigan.
So this year I decided to make a list of everything I ate in hopes of seeing if I did actually equal my body weight.
The whole totaling up the weight thing didn’t quite work. But I did end up with an extensive list of what I ate while I was there July 1 to 10.
Beverages
• 23 glasses of assorted types of pop.
• 6 glasses of milk.
• 3 glasses of water.
The reason I prefer pop over water is that all of the water where we stay comes from a well. I really don’t like the taste of all the minerals in the well water. Hence, all the pop.

Fruit
• 25 slices of watermelon.
That totals up to at least one, maybe two, small watermelons eaten entirely by me.
• 4 cups of miscellaneous fruit salad.
We only had fruit salad one night. That should tell you how much fruit I prefer to eat with my meals.
• 2 cups of cherries.

Vegetables
• 1 cup of broccoli.
• 1 corncob.
• 5 carrots.
• 3 slices of cucumber.
My (weak) excuse for not eating that many vegetables is that mostly the veggie choice at meals is salad, and I don’t much like the salad.

Eggs, cheese and nuts
• 5 cups of cooked eggs.
• 19 slices of assorted cheeses.
• 3 cups of assorted nuts.

Various bread products
• 7 muffins.
• Half a loaf of banana and blueberry bread.
• Half a bag of chips.
• 9 pancakes.
• 3 rolls (with jam on them).
• Approximately 20 mixed crackers.
• Half a cup of Cheez-Its.
• 2 croissants.
According to the Food Pyramid, this is the only part of this list that may actually be nutritionally healthy.
Of all the different food groups (which is NOT how this list is organized), you should eat more bread products than anything else on the pyramid.
Not that anything on this list is particularly healthy.
The pancakes all have enthusiastic amounts of syrup, and the muffins are an especially delicious recipe that my grandma makes and includes lots of blueberries and brown sugar.

Meat
• 3 large slices of ham.
• About 2 feet of ring bologna.
• 6 ribs.
I would like to publicly claim that my grandpa’s ribs are the best in the world. He is also a master at making them since he’s usually cooking for 10 hungry teenagers and their parents.
• 2 large sausages.
• 10 pieces of bacon (in one breakfast).

Sweet treats
• 1 s’more.
Usually, I would have at least seven or eight of these, but this year it stayed hot so long during the night that it was not worth lighting the fire to cook them.
• 10 éclair thingies.
To celebrate the Tour de France, we usually have a “French Day” in which we eat a “French” meal. This consists entirely of croissants, cheese and the frozen éclair thingies with some random fruit thrown in.
• 2 giant marshmallows coated in chocolate and sprinkles.
I’ll explain how these came about in a moment.
• 10 frozen cookie dough balls dipped in chocolate.
These are awesome.
One of my aunts discovered a nonegg, cookie dough recipe and somehow made the connection to these things.
They are made by mixing the dough, freezing it, coating it with chocolate, freezing it again, then hiding it all from the teenagers so we don’t eat all of them at once.
This year, after we finished coating the frozen cookie dough with the chocolate, I decided to coat the giant marshmallows we had brought with us with the leftover chocolate. These marshmallows looked great, but weren’t especially tasty, probably since we decided to freeze them instead of leaving them in the refrigerator.
• 1 Junior Peanut Butter Cup from the Jackson dairy.
Every year, our family goes on a pilgrimage to The Parlour in Jackson, Mich.
This is the place where ice cream is served in ungodly amounts. If you take the ball formed by a normal ice cream scoop and triple the size, that is equal to one scoop from this place.
The Junior Peanut Butter Cup has two scoops of vanilla ice cream. It’s equal to about half a gallon of ice cream. The normal Peanut Butter Cup has four scoops of ice cream, plus peanut butter and chocolate syrup, of course.
But The Parlour is famous for its “Dare To Be Great” dish, a mountain of 21 scoops of ice cream, one of every flavor the place has. It’s covered, of course, by all of the toppings it carries.
If you finish this monstrosity in one hour without any help, it’s free. Plus, you get your name on a plaque on the wall.
Maybe I’ll be able to add that to my list next year.

• Sean Nagle-McNaughton is an incoming junior at Davis High School and a member of the Yakima Herald-Republic’s Unleashed journalism program for high school students.

Azalea Koestler

It was 8 in the morning on a Saturday.
I was trudging lethargically into the Yakima Valley SunDome with a group of friends from Connections Church of Yakima.
We were there to volunteer at CityFest, a two-day event that was held July 17-18 featuring Christian messages and music at State Fair Park.
We signed up to serve as prayer counselors and help out during sermons, altar calls and Compassion Connect, a confluence of about 70 agencies that were giving out information on social services, financial assistance and counseling.
By the time we signed up for Compassion Connect, all the prayer partner spots were taken, and all that was left were hospitality and interpreter slots. I chose interpreter.
When people began showing up, that looked like it was going to be a bad idea.
Entire families were coming up to me, speaking very rapidly in Spanish. I didn’t know how to explain to them that I didn’t actually speak Spanish, that I was only capable of interpreting American Sign Language.
To stay away from further misunderstandings, I sat outside the doors with a friend of mine, welcoming people as they came inside. It now looked as if my job would be fairly easy because there seemed to be no hearing-impaired people around.
A half-hour later, however, there was a sudden commotion, and a woman from my church burst frantically through the double doors, yelling: “Where’s Azalea? Where is she? I need her! Now!”
She spotted me, grabbed my arm, led me back into the SunDome and proudly presented me to a group of people who were looking rather frustrated.
“I’ve found her. Here, she can talk to them! She knows how!”
Two men were signing erratically to one another and those around them. They were attempting to tell the volunteers that they didn’t need help; they just wanted to know what time the last bus left.
I began signing with them. They, and everyone else around, seemed to be relieved the language barrier had been broken.
I interpreted the mishap for them, and the crowd dispersed.
I followed them around the rest of the morning, explaining to others what they were trying to say.
Luckily, they were patient, funny and wonderful at using their facial expressions to convey meaning anyway. So, sometimes, they didn’t seem to need me at all.
I learned a lot and made several new friends who were also signers.
We parted ways after lunch, and I changed shirts from Compassion Connect into the orange Luis Palau festival shirts that the prayer counselors were given.
For a few hours, I listened to some talented worship bands, then a sermon by evangelist Andrew Palau, son of Luis Palau, whose Oregon-based ministry was sponsoring the event.
Once his sermon neared its close, he did an altar call; only a few people came forward.
So, again, I was not needed because there were many other “friends of the festival” who were there to pray with those who had stepped out. I was a little disappointed that night going home, but I was excited for the next day.
On that next day, I met new people and got to pray for several of them about the trials and tribulations happening in their lives. I heard some heart-wrenching testimonies and some joy-filled life stories, all of which prompted me to pray with them.
One woman started crying and hugged me because she had never been prayed for before.
It brought tears to my eyes to hear her talk about her struggles growing up and how much this festival had helped her and her children.
It was amazing how much people were willing to share about their lives just because someone was taking the time to listen.
That evening, after the bands had played, there was a second altar call, and this time many people responded. There were two women I prayed for and a girl I prayed with. The women were chatting happily and complaining good-naturedly about their husbands, while all the girl wanted was to get back into a relationship with God.
As I was driving home that night with a friend’s family, we discussed all the people we had met and all the stories we had heard. We agreed the CityFest experience was one we will never forget. It was powerful and moving that there were so many broken hearts that had healed.
It was also powerful and moving that so many people found a connection through volunteers who had taken time to help out strangers in need.

• Azalea Koestler is a 2010 graduate of Selah High School and a member of the Herald-Republic’s Unleashed journalism program for high school students.

Jackson Chase

Jackson Chase
University of Washington, junior, 19 (2008 Ike graduate).
Favorite activities: Cycling, playing violin.
Favorite food: Penne alla carbonara.
Favorite music: Just about everything good.
Favorite movies: “Being There,” “Platoon,” “Inglorious Basterds,” “Children of Men.”
Three words to describe yourself: Hard working student.
Greatest achievement: Getting accepted to UW.
If you could leave tonight on an all-expense paid trip, where would you go? Indonesia.
What would you do with $1 million? Buy a sailboat.
If you could meet anyone, who would you choose? Mike Rowe.
Who is your hero? My grandfather.
Biggest fear: Putting on cologne after I shave.
Greatest wish: I’m pretty content.
When and where were you the happiest? At my senior recital.
Most treasured possession: My fiddle.
Favorite place in your hometown: On my bike.
What do you like most about your school? The food.
How do you see yourself in 10 years? Building a time machine.

— Jenna Davison, Eisenhower High School

Students form a drumming circle during an African drumming workshop, part of the Power of Hope daycamp that took place at Toppenish Middle School June 28 through July 2. High school students from around the Yakima Valley took part in the five-day camp.

Beachcombers watch the surf roll in at Westport, Wash.

Storm Del Vecchio, 18, covers himself in glow-in-the-dark accessories with help from his friends before the fireworks start at State Fair Park on the Fourth of July.

Landon Wilkinson, 16, chases his brother Riley, 19, as he dives unsuccessfully for the ball in a pick-up game of volleyball July 3 at Randall Park, as Storm Del Vecchio, 18, looks on.

The Village Musicians perform July 2 at Yakima's new downtown performance park.