Annie Backen is doing well and loving Sonoma Academy! She played volleyball in the fall and is focusing on tennis this spring. She's also very involved with the SA service organization called Schools For Kabul, which works hard at raising money and awareness for schools in Afghanistan, especially for the schoolgirls in Kabul. 
 
Gisella Carapia was selected by Georgetown University to attend their summer seminar for high school students who aspire to become physicians. She was nominated by Sonoma Academy and applied through a stringent application process. The week long seminar is held in Washington D.C. and includes students from all over the US. The seminar maps out study strategies for students moving into their junior year and speaks to college course work along with "what does it take to become a doctor?"

 

Chris Darrin is continuing to enjoy straight A's in Italian II during his sophomore year.  He chose to work at the Napa Animal Shelter for his community service and his ice hockey team won their MLK weekend game championships!  Chris is also on the lacrosse team, the honor role and is getting an academic award at the end of the school year.  
 
Julia Duncan is now attending The Putney School in Vermont.  It is  an actual working dairy farm with 200 cows, turkeys, sheep and horses.  She reports that she loves her school and the snow. 
 
Alec Faulkner just finished his lacrosse season, playing attack for the Napa Force Junior Varsity High School boys team.  The junior varsity team's 10-6 record earned them a spot in the semi-finals for the Northern California Junior Lacrosse Association.  Alec will participate in resident lacrosse camps at Stanford University & Sonoma State during the summer. 

 

Carlee Flynn's fall semester at Justin-Siena was busy; a successful season on the freshman volleyball team, where she took the skills she learned as a Bobcat to new levels, she enjoyed a great team experience while earning the "All-Around Player of the Year" award, achieved a cumulative GPA of 4.3 and made new friends and really enjoyed her instructors. Carlee won an academic excellence award from J-S for highest GPA at the freshman level and with awards for Social Studies, Biology, Spanish, English, Religious Studies and for earning straight-A's. Carlee is a Social Media Intern for NapaStyle, and continues to play Club Volleyball with Evolve.

 
Christina Franzino is enjoying high school; she is involved in the theatre department (stage design) and is on the lacrosse team again. She is earning good grades (a 4.2 last semester) and enjoys most of her classes and continues to do art outside of school. 
 
Cole Gevurtz is receiving an academic achievement award from New Tech High this year and has been accepted into the Stanford High School Student College residential program for 8 weeks this summer.  She will be taking Chemistry. 
 
Hannah Green was honored by Justin-Siena for her straight-A academic achievements. 

 

Giovanna Grigsby-Rocca

continues to thrive at the Thacher School in Ojai, California. She applied to, and was accepted into a semester away program at Chewonki School in Maine for the fall semester. Chewonki accepts a very small class of students each semester, who travel from all across the US to attend a semester there with a large focus on outdoor environmental education. 

 

Adele Hennigar was honored by Justin-Siena with Junior Year Mathematics, Spanish, English and Chemistry awards.

Ben Hoffman has had a good first year at Marin Academy, where he is sampling HS life a bite at a time and finding some interesting niches.  On top of the academic challenge for which BOS equipped him well, it's been a year of physical challenge too:  water polo team in the fall, taiko drumming, aikido, and he finished the year on the swim team (they were undefeated in their league). 

 
Sammy Hurwitz is enjoying Justin-Siena. Sammy was voted MVP by his water polo team mates and was the leading scorer on the JV team. He also has begun baseball season and loves the coaches at school.  
 
Caroline Hynote was honored by Justin-Siena with a Visual and Performing Arts award. She has also won awards for best vocal in two Jazz Vocal competitions in the last few months. 
 
Alex Jankiewicz made the A honor roll and is participating on the Justin-Siena varsity swim team.  She also gave her first alum donation to Blue Oak School, which was hard-earned at babysitting.

 
Susannah Jennings has had a positive freshman year experience at Justin-Siena, where she earned straight A's and enjoys being part of a larger school body, which includes many of her classmates from BOS. She has found that the more clubs and teams she joins, the more fun she has in high school. Building on her valuable experience playing on the BOS team with Claudia Luna-Morales, Susannah played on the freshman girls basketball team with Claudia as a teammate. Susannah will continue her basketball involvement in J-S's summer league, playing in the Summer Basketball Camp, St. Mary's College Overnight Team Camp and Sonoma County Shootout and in the fall on the J-S Junior Varsity team. This spring, she joined the swim team with fellow BOS grads Hannah Green, Alex Jankiewicz and Chloe Lattin. She continues her piano studies and is currently practicing for the National Piano Playing Guild auditions to be a year-long member of the National Fraternity of Student Musicians. Susannah and several of her friends from BOS are hoping to chaperone at the BOS middle school dance and if any graduating eighth graders who are entering J-S in the fall would like to talk to Susannah about her experience or ask her questions about high school, she would welcome hearing from them.  If you are interested please contact Caryl Chakerian for her email address. 
 
Karen Johnson was Junior Varsity cheer captain for the football season, played on the JV basketball team, and made honor role for her first semester of sophomore year. 

 
Dom Lefever is enjoying Justin-Siena.  He had a great fall season playing Water Polo.  He just started playing lacrosse again this season with the club Napa Force and will be on the Junior Varsity team. 
 
K.C. Markovich, currently a Junior at Napa High School, was recently elected by her teammates to be one of two captains of next year's Varsity Girls Tennis team for Fall, 2010.  As a member of the Napa High Chamber Choir (along with other BOS alums, Tyler Suh and Connor Maple) K.C. travelled to France in March, performing at the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Normandy War Memorial.  Undertaking the "college" search is on K.C.'s agenda this summer.  

 
Rose Martin of '08 got her driving license on her 16th birthday.  She loves Sonoma Academy and enjoys her dance classes in Ballet, Tap and Jazz. 
 
Will Mattei ran Varsity Cross Country last fall and was given the "Most Improved" award. He had a photography exhibit of his photos from his India trip on display at "Hair Sanctuary" a local (Blue Oak parent owned) business and donated the proceeds to charity and he earned a 4.0 GPA the first semester.  He is also working on original music in a garage band. Will went with a small Justin Siena contingency to NYC to visit the United Nations and learned more about "The Rights of the Child."  They toured the UN, visited various embassies, and attended various sessions on such topics as child soldiers, poverty in America, trafficking in children and similar topics.  The group also visited Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, The Met, Radio City Music Hall, Grand Central Station, Times Square and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Will's current photo work can be seen on display at Downtown Pilates which is right next to the Blue Oak Lower School and a smaller collection at David Magna's Workshop salon out on Coombsville Road. Will won first prize for poetry at the EdRev event held in AT&T Park and his poem was on display there. He wrote the poem in a moment of inspiration when he was 13. 
 
Both Claudia and JC Morales made the honor roll at Justin-Siena. Claudia played basketball on the freshmen girls team, and just concluded the Junior Varsity girls soccer season. JC played soccer in the fall, and is still playing baseball.

Christophe Rimann has had a busy second half of the year. After graduating from Blue Oak School he moved on to the International School of Geneva (Ecolint), La Chataigneraie campus. It took him the first semester to adjust to the new culture, new language and new school. It was challenging for him to adapt to the size of his class. From 24 kids in the 8th grade, there are now over 100. The school has over 1,300 students. He made great friends from within the diverse group of students and he has good friends from Kenya, the U.K., Switzerland, Turkey, France, Germany and Indonesia. He was chosen to be part of the India group, along with 10 other 10th year (Freshman) students from his campus. The International school sponsors many humanitarian projects world-wide. One of them is located in Kodaikanal, near the Chennai (Madras) region in India. There, they are involved with the running of 3 pre-school nurseries (creches) for children up to 5 years old. The creches take in the poorest children so they would not be left alone when the parents go to work, and so the older siblings can go to school. More often than not, the lunch provided is their only meal of the day. The Ecolint students start fund raising in October. Teachers are not involved in the process. The group must plan and get permission to hold events such as bake-sales, dances etc., in order to raise funds.They sold things from brownies to croque-monsieur and Christophe even had his dad bring along "Air-Heads" candy from the States. All in all, they raised close to 30,000 francs.

Camille Sacristan is involved in theater at Justin-Siena.  She started the year performing in Singing in the Rain and in the winter joined the cast of Dead Man Walking.  In preparation for the performance, the cast went to San Quentin prison to see the death chambers. Justin-Siena also hosted Sister Helen Prejean, the nun who wrote the book Dead Man Walking.  Camille continues club soccer and began Justin Soccer in January.  Camille continues to play piano and is very busy keeping up with her studies at J-S.  Camille is singing at the Veterans' Home once a month as volunteer work in the community and she continues to play for the Napa Fusion girls U-16 club soccer. This summer, she will be attending Perry Mansfield, a performing arts camp in Steamboat Springs Colorado. Camille was honored by J-S this year with a Health Education award.
 
Pablo Skaff loves Cardinal Newman, football, basketball and friends. He's headed to Spain with a group after Sacramento Football training camp.   
 

Patrick Walsh's first year at Napa High went very well.  He maintained Honor Roll the whole year, and achieved an A in Honor's Spanish II - something that he is very proud of. He was a member of the Mens Chorus, under the direction of Mr. Butler and Mr. Rogers and he performed a short solo in the Fall Choir concert.  Over Memorial weekend he is traveling with the choir to Southern California  for a competition in Fullerton and a ceremony in Disneyland. He was a freshman member of the Napa High Mens Junior Varsity Waterpolo team in the fall and swam for the men's JV swim team in the spring.  He will be training for waterpolo with the Grizzlies at Napa College this summer to prepare him to be the Junior Varsity Goalie next fall. 

Max Wilkinson has been a busy guy: academically, his grades for the first semester at Justin-Siena were excellent, 4.14 to be exact. He is taking school very seriously and now enjoying high school athletics as well.  He plays on the freshman boys basketball team, and is frequently the high scorer in the games.  In January, on his 15th birthday, he scored the winning basket in an incredibly close game against Tamalpias High School in Marin. After Basketball season he started in on lacrosse season where he was asked to play on the varsity team. 
 
Daniel Wong is enjoying his high school experience at Justin-Siena although he is looking forward to summer and getting his driving permit.   
 
Molly Wyman continues to thrive at the Thacher School where she is completing her sophomore year. She applied for a program through Thacher and a national organization called School Year Abroad to spend the first trimester of her junior year studying in Vietnam. She was one of a handful of students accepted into the program. She will live with a Vietnamese family and go to an International school in Hanoi along with students from prep schools all over the United States. She attended her sister's college graduation in May and will be attending her brother's graduation from the Thacher School in June.