All Local, All The Time
All Local, All The Time
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The annual St. Vrain All-District meet marks the midway point of the girls swim season, and after an energetic performance by her top swimmers at this year's event, Niwot head coach Sarah Stamp is renewing her hopes for another top finish at the upcoming Class 4A state championships. "We've been building steadily every week," she said after the friendly but competitive meet, held Jan. 18 at Mountain View Aquatic Center. "Today, there were lots of time drops, and best times across the board. By...
The Niwot girls swim team lost nearly 20 swimmers to last year's graduation, so heading into the 2019-20 season, head coach Sarah Stamp had some holes to fill in the lineup. Much to her delight, junior Emiley Yie has been willing and able to help fill more than a few of them. So far this season, the talented swimmer has qualified to compete for Niwot in all but one individual event at the upcoming Class 4A state championships, and she is hitting her fastest times as the post-season approaches....
As graduation quickly approaches -136 days to be exact-life after high school seems not just scary, but scarily expensive, as paying for any higher education looms over graduating seniors and their parents. Colleges may offer up some money, but a full-ride is unlikely. For many families, the hunt for scholarships is on. There are thousands of scholarships large and small up for grabs across the country, and narrowing the field can be a trick for many students. Applying for scholarships tailored...
Following the 2013 flood, the state-funded Colorado Hazard Mapping Program (CHAMP) has been re-mapping the regulatory floodplain of the most affected waterways in Colorado. In 2017 and 2018, Boulder County adopted comprehensive zoning map amendments to the Floodplain Overlay Zoning District based on draft CHAMP mapping for unincorporated Boulder County. The draft data were also submitted to FEMA, which released Preliminary Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) for CHAMP-studied stream reaches in September 2019. Boulder County adopted the...
Davita Bird has always been interested in how things work, so at the suggestion of her mother, an engineer at Seagate, she started exploring the world of computer programming as a curious seventh grader at Flagstaff Academy. Now in her senior year at Niwot High, that curiosity has blossomed into a passion that has her expanding the frontiers of technology. "Computers were always the maximum 'how is this doing anything?' for me," she said. "Without the programming, it's just a hunk of metal. We...
Every year starting in August, school districts across the state start analyzing enrollment numbers and other demographic data from their students. They track things such as building activity, socioeconomic trends, and more. This wealth of data then allows the planning department create projections in the spring. These projections, which largely focus around how many students are anticipated to be in various school feeder systems, will affect decisions such as open enrollment quotas. Paula...
It's 6 p.m. on a Friday night in late October, and the unseasonably warm afternoon is quickly giving way to an autumnal chill as the sun slips behind Longs Peak to the west. At Everly Montgomery Field in Longmont, Niwot High Game Manager Sue Prahl grips her handheld radio as she scans the grounds, looking for the game's officials, or "black and whites," as she calls them, due to their striped uniforms. There's still an hour to go before kickoff in the upcoming football game between Niwot and...
Public speaking comes naturally to Cougars football announcer Joe Bartko, who seemed destined for a life behind the microphone even from a young age. Now he is using those talents to give back to the communities that meant so much to him as a student at Niwot High School. “I have a hobby that I get paid for,” the former Cougar percussionist said before a recent home game at Everly Montgomery field. Bartko is also the public address announcer for the Colorado State University marching band. “I...
It's been a whirlwind fall for second-year drum major Cole Toothaker and the Cougar marching band, but a scary moment over the summer almost had the talented musician and natural leader watching it all from the sidelines. "I was on a rafting trip in Idaho, and I did a backflip on the beach-I have a gymnastics background and do flips a lot," he recalled. "But I landed on an incline, and put my hands down to break my fall, and ended up breaking both of my wrists, which was a little inconvenient."...
On Saturday, Sept. 28, Niwot's Left Hand Watershed Center is partnering with three other local watershed groups for Front Range Watershed Days, a day-long event to celebrate our area waterways and learn more about the efforts to restore and protect their health. "Watershed Days is really just to inspire people to connect to their watersheds and understand what the term is and that it's a resource that they should care about," LHWC Executive Director Jessie Olson said. Joining her group as co-hos...
By Violet Oliver, 8th grade Flagstaff student Special to the Courier Flagstaff Academy received some well-deserved recognition on Sept. 11 at the St. Vrain Valley School District board meeting for its recent Colorado Trailblazer award. The Longmont-based charter school received the Schools to Watch Colorado Trailblazer award in late spring of 2019. Schools can apply for this award through the Middle Grades Forum website, and if the application is approved, teams of administrators personally...
Last year, Mwebaza Foundation set the goal of outfitting Niwot Elementary’s sister school, Mwebaza Infant Primary School in Kyengera, Uganda, with two shipping container classrooms to help with overcrowding. When students reach age 10, they usually drop out of school, because there isn’t a physical place to go anymore. The Mwebaza Infant Primary School tries to hold on to these students for as long as possible, even construction card-board partitions to increase individual classrooms, but thi...
The Aug. 22 Rock & Rails Tip Jar recipient is The Mwebaza Foundation, founded right here in Niwot. The Mwebaza Foundation seeks to unite Colorado students from four elementary schools with students in Uganda to foster a better understanding of each group’s culture. Before he started The Mwebaza Foundation, Dale Peterson, first-grade teacher at Niwot Elementary, fostered cultural exchange through a pen pal program. He knew this type of exchange gave children the opportunity to learn about o...
Full-day kindergarten programs have been available in the local school districts for more than a decade, but often came with a steep monthly tuition fee. Starting this school year, those programs will be free to families in all Colorado public schools, thanks to a bill signed into law last May by governor Jared Polis that funds kindergarten at the same per-pupil rate as the other grades. For principals at Heatherwood and Niwot Elementary Schools, the move to make full-day schooling available to...
In an effort to help area families save some money, Niwot High is teaming up with Gunbarrel Family Medicine to provide free sports physicals to students participating in athletics in the upcoming 2019-20 school year. “Sports are expensive, from buying equipment, to fees, and everything else that goes with it,” new Cougars athletic director Joe Brown said. “So any opportunity we have to reach out to our community and find scholarship ways to help lower barriers for kids to participate, we want...
It’s not a mid-life crisis, but Niwot Youth Sports is hoping to have a little work done after turning the big 5-0 earlier this year. In the coming weeks, the non-profit organization, formerly known as Gunbarrel Lefthand Valley Recreation Association (GLVRA), plans to launch a capital campaign to fund some much-needed improvements to its largest field complex, Hangge Fields at Monarch Park, according to Executive Director Patrick Longseth. “We’re going to raise funds this year to put a build...
After floods ravaged Boulder County in 2013, the Left Hand Watershed Center (formerly the Lefthand Watershed Oversight Group) spearheaded efforts to rebuild its namesake waterway with a series of long-term restoration projects designed and implemented using a science-based approach. Now the 76-square mile system is on its way to a healthier and more resilient future, and the center is hoping to foster a “stewardship ethic” among neighboring communities and the public at large. “We’re at a prett...
Niwot High principal Eric Rauschkolb wasn’t expecting to need a second replacement for Chase McBride, but putative hire Kevin Clark got an offer he couldn’t refuse. Earlier this month, the former Loveland High administrator announced that he will be assuming the role of full-time district athletic director for the Thompson Valley Schools, a move that allows him to stay in the town he and his family have called home for more than a decade. That left Rauschkolb with an empty spot on the 201...
Debbie Lammers is this month’s Left Hand Laurel recipient because of her dedication to St. Vrain Valley School District (SVVSD) and schools throughout Colorado. Lammers spent her formative years in Las Vegas where her father was a hotel executive. She was in seventh grade when her father passed away. Her family relocated to Northern California a year later. She attended California State University - Chico and then worked as a legal assistant and a paralegal for many years. She and Chris, her h...
The skies over the Innovation Center were buzzing on Saturday, June 1 as dozens of remote controlled planes and drones took to the air during the first annual AeroFest, an open flight and competitive racing event hosted by students in the St. Vrain Valley School District’s aeronautics program. “As far as I know, this is the largest youth program that we’ve ever put together,” said Richard McCaskill of the Academy of Model Aeronautics, a co-sponsor of the event. “It was all put together...
Niwot’s Caleb Bishop started flying tiny remote controlled drones when he was tiny himself, and as he’s grown, so has his passion for aircraft and avionics. Now a top student in St. Vrain’s aeronautics program at the Innovation Center, Bishop has proved adept not only at piloting complex unmanned machines, but in building and fabricating them as well. The rising senior will get a chance to hone his skills even further, after he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Academy of Model Aeron...
Take one sunny Saturday morning in late spring, add a dash of pomp and circumstance, plus a handful of well-aged platitudes, then sprinkle liberally over 250 or so green cap and gown-clad teenagers, and you have all the makings of a perfect Niwot High commencement ceremony. Such was the scene on Saturday, May 25 as the Class of 2019 gathered together for a final time and marked the official end of their high school journeys. “I want to congratulate you seniors on a triumphant conclusion to y...
Barb Van Winkle, Teacher Barb Van Winkle has worked for St. Vrain Valley School District (SVVSD) for 31 years. She started at Niwot Elementary 24 years ago, where she taught fifth grade for a few years and then taught gifted and talented students for another 21 years. She said the students and parents in Niwot are wonderful. NES Principal Nancy Pitz said, “Barb has impacted thousands of lives throughout her teaching career. I will always remember her love for all students, her passion for the G...
A bear visited Niwot last Tuesday, May 14. First reported midday Monday in south Longmont, Colorado Wildlife officers weaved through the area with each report of a sighting, but were unable to locate him. Another call, at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, placed the migrating bear near Hover Road and Highway 119, but an officer didn’t set eyes on him until he’d spent some quality time hanging out in Niwot’s Overbrook neighborhood and his stopover was publicized on the Nextdoor app in the late afternoon. The b...
A teacher’s job description doesn’t fit a set list of responsibilities, chronologically checked off and completed at the end of each day. In fact, the job description is ever-changing and unique to the day. Good teachers take on a variety of roles including mentor, advocate, or even friend during difficult transitions and personal hardships. Good teachers stay late, reinventing lesson plans and tirelessly answering parent emails. Good teachers return each day, patience renewed and ready to tac...
It was a night of full of laughter, full bellies, and good cheer. The Rotary Club club of Niwot, along with over 200 guests, celebrated the ninth annual Wine, Cheese, and Chocolate Extravaganza at the Longmont Museum on Saturday, May 18. Ron Grunzweig, this year’s President of Niwot Rotary, has been coming to the group’s marquee event for nine years, and said, “It’s the most successful event that has been done. I want to thank Lucky’s Market for supporting us for the past several years for...
Niwot track and field team is sending a robust contingent of athletes to this year’s Class 4A state championships, which open at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood on Thursday, May 16. On the boys side, Niwot will have competitors in all but a handful of events, including junior Cruz Culpepper, the top seed in the 800m run. The Cougars also have the top seeded boys 4x800 relay, and Nolan Johan nabbed a pair of top-five seeds in hurdles. In field events, junior Milo Ostwald made the cut in both long a...
It might be part of the human condition--we can be surrounded by magnificence and bounty in nature, but can’t always recognize or appreciate its value. Sometimes it takes a visitor or outsider to help us appreciate and protect that which we take for granted, because it has always been part of our surroundings. And on behalf of frogs and toads in the Andes, four St. Vrain Valley students have taken on that role of educating outsider, creating an environmental comic book to help remote Peruvian v...
The Niwot girls track team continued its march towards the 2019 Class 4A title with a dominating performance at this year’s Northern Conference Championships, held May 3-4 at Everly Montgomery Field. The Cougars finished in first or second in all but a handful of events to end the day with 247 points, nearly triple that of second-place finisher Thompson Valley (95.5). Sophomore Taylor James was once again Niwot’s top point scorer, with wins in the 400 (56.40 seconds) and 800-meter (2:13.78) rac...
Beginning in the fall of 2020, Colorado high school students will have more options for athletics, after the Colorado High School Activities Association sanctioned three new sports for the first time since 1998. At their annual meeting on April 24, CHSAA’s Legislative Council voted to approve boys volleyball, girls wrestling, and unified bowling, the first new sports since boys and girls lacrosse and girls field hockey were added 20 years ago. Niwot athletic director Chase McBride, who is a...
The Niwot Community Association did one of the things it does best at its April 17 annual meeting for members – connect NCA members with the broader Niwot area community. The group invited the principals of Niwot Elementary School, Sunset Middle School and Niwot High School to speak to meeting attendees about the academic and social achievements, strengths, school focus and infrastructure changes at each of the schools. The presentations grew from concerns from some NCA board members about e...
Renowned Colorado nature photographer John Fielder will be sharing work from his latest book, Colorado: Black on White, at the first annual Nature St. Vrain on Friday, April 12 in Longmont. Fielder, whose popular calendars and books showcase Colorado’s landscapes, will be giving a multimedia presentation featuring over 200 of his Colorado photographs, as well as sharing stories of life on the trail, photo tips and more. Nature St. Vrain, an environmental open house, was created to celebrate t...
Nevin Gilbert may still be a few weeks away from his high school graduation but the future engineer already has the resume of a seasoned professional. Between a demanding robotics internship and a collaboration with a CU professor, the Niwot High student’s precocious talent for math and computer science has created opportunities not afforded to most college students, let alone those still in secondary school. Later this month, Gilbert will get a chance to add another achievement to the g...
Boys volleyball is one of the fastest growing high school sports in America, and this spring it could be among the first new team sports to be sanctioned by the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA) since 1999. On April 24, members of CHSAA’s Legislative Council will vote on whether to add boys volleyball, girls wrestling, and unified bowling to the list of “official” Colorado high school sports, which has been static since field hockey was sanctioned 20 years ago. So far, boys vol...
Nothing energizes a project team like a last-minute and potentially catastrophic failure. So when a routine maneuver to reset their robot's climber somehow went wrong during the final round of the FIRST Robotics Colorado Regional, both students and mentors from Longmont's Up-A-Creek Robotics crew flew into action. "It was super-stressful," Niwot senior and team software lead Nevin Gilbert said of the rush to repair a snapped release lever before the decisive match. "We really thought we had it i...
The Longmont Community Foundation (LCF) will be celebrating 25 years of supporting charitable giving at its annual dinner on April 4. Since 1994, the foundation has overseen the distribution of $11 million to non-profits. This year alone the organization will allocate more than $1 million to the arts, education, animals, human services, health and environmental causes. There are only 1,900 community foundations world-wide, each honing in on a particular geographic area. LCF was originally under...
College is expensive. The average total cost of public colleges in the United States is $25,290 for in-state tuition; $40,940 for out-of-state tuition, and about $50,900 for private colleges. More than 19.9 million students are projected to attend American colleges and universities in the fall of 2019. That money has to come from somewhere. Fortunately, there are local scholarships designated for helping out students who need a boost to their college coffers. The Longmont Community Foundation...
Organizers of the 2019 Boulder Roubaix are shifting into high gear as the biennial tribute to the famed French bike race gets set to return to the area on Saturday, April 6. Modeled after the world's oldest single-day cycling competition, the local event may not have the legendary cobblestone-paved stretches of its grueling Parisian namesake, but that doesn't mean riders won't be tested by the partially-paved 18.7-mile course that winds through the hills of northern Boulder County. "It's a...
To call a snow day or to not call a snow day? That is the question that plagues St. Vrain Valley School District Superintendent Don Haddad anytime it snows in the district, and the answer to that question does not come easy for him. “If we cancel school, there will be many parents and students saying “Why are you canceling school? It’s easy to get there,’ and if you don’t cancel school you get many people saying ‘Why don’t you cancel school?’” Superintendent Haddad never makes the decision light...
March can be a tense time of the year for ambitious high school students waiting on college acceptance letters, but so far that hasn’t been the case for Niwot’s Aidan Peairs. The Rotary Student of the Month has already been accepted to two of the top schools for his intended major, so he isn’t exactly hurting for attractive options. “I applied early to Harvard and got deferred, and I’m waiting for Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Tufts, NYU, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt,” he said. “My number one is...
It’s been the better part of a decade since teenage rocker Jackson Cloud made his St. Vrain Valley Schools debut, and now the Niwot senior will get a chance to end his school performance career the same way he started it—co-headlining with local recording artist Mojomama. “Mojomama came to my school for their music academy when I was in, I think, second grade at Niwot Elementary, and I got a chance to play with them,” Cloud said in an interview about Spectacle 2019, an upcoming concert to bene...
Niwot sophomore Misha Barrett loves two things: playing basketball and “making the fans happy.” As shooting guard for the Silver Creek unified basketball team, Barrett gets a chance to do both. “I love going out there and showing people what I’ve got,” Barrett said, his enthusiasm for the sport evident. Barrett is one of a handful of Niwot special needs students who play for the Raptors unified team, which competes weekly throughout the district. In their final game of the season on Feb. 27,...
Niwot senior Natasha Ragland recently completed a course in Emergency Medical Services (EMS) training at nearby Front Range Community College, and while it didn’t change her future plans to become a doctor, she said it was life-changing experience nevertheless. “I took a lot away from the class. It was a lot of work and sometimes the work was very challenging, especially knowing what the emergency medical services deal with. And, it kind of gave me a new perspective on life.” Ragland first...
On Feb. 11, Niwot High principal Eric Rauschkolb announced that the school has selected Loveland High’s Kevin Clark to replace outgoing assistant principal and athletic director Chase McBride, who is leaving for a position with the St. Vrain Valley School District at the end of the school year. “After an extensive search, we are pleased to inform you that a recommendation will be made to the Board of Education that Mr. Kevin Clark be hired as the new Assistant Principal and Athletic Dir...
Two years ago, Virginia Dutkin had a simple idea based on a capstone project she was working on for her master’s degree in nonprofit management. The idea was based on something called a giving circle--a fast-growing form of philanthropy where individuals come together and pool their dollars, decide together where to give the money along with other resources such as volunteer time, and learn together about their community and philanthropy. As her children grew older, and needed less time and e...
More than 800,000 federal employees are either laid off or have been working without pay for weeks. The direct consequences to those workers and their families, and the subsequent trickle-down impact to the businesses they buy goods and services from, such as their banks, credit unions, and landlords, are being felt across the nation. In the Niwot, Gunbarrel and South Longmont area, several nonprofit organizations and businesses have stepped forward to announce they would like to be a safety...
Some enterprising St. Vrain Valley business owners and entrepreneurs are trying to make a regular habit of meeting up to support each other while helping St. Vrain Valley women in need. The women, who all live within the St. Vrain Valley School District boundaries, gathered together for a pop-up shopping event at Cave Girl Coffee in the Prospect neighborhood of Longmont on Dec. 13. Selling goods and services ranging from hand-crafted natural hand creams to autism-spectrum tutoring, the...
Contributing to Niwot’s festive holiday decorations around town was on the minds of Niwot Community Association board members at their Dec. 5 meeting. The NCA put up holiday decorations this year at the Niwot Road entrance into town and board members agreed that they would like to add to that display. An informal subcommittee group, headed by Pat Murphy and Julie Breyer, are planning to hit the post-holiday sales to snap up decorations. In addition, board members expressed interest in working i...
When she was first featured in this space back in July of 2017, it was hard to imagine how Niwot student Savannah Parrot could possibly fit more on to her already overflowing plate. She was just coming off a successful week at the prestigious Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Seminar and was looking ahead to her junior year at Niwot, where she would be starting the IB diploma program and assuming leadership roles for several clubs and teams, such as student council, cheer, Interact Club, and the N...
Beginning in January 2019, Twin Peaks Charter Academy (TPCA) in Longmont will be the first school in St. Vrain Valley School District (SVVSD) to offer full-day kindergarten free of charge. Prior to this opportunity, TPCA offered either free morning or afternoon kindergarten classes. Families wanting their children in a full-day program were charged nearly $2,700 per school year, because Colorado does not provide funding beyond a half-day of instruction. According to TPCA’s director, Joseph M...
