Payson spring sports are upon us!

The entire Student Council has now been selected for the 2010-2011 school year, and all those who have been elected into the class councils are freaking excited for the upcoming year. In fact, this is what they had to say: Trever Gneiting, Sr. Class President: “I’m really excited for the feeling of belonging and finally having a purpose in life. The brotherhood amongst our council will make next year super dope!” Aaron Ethridge, Sr.

All I can say about the Dance Company tour is that it was BOO BOP! (Meaning fantastic, very fun, and exciting). On the week of Feb. 24-27th the Dance Company girls packed up their bags (about a month’s worth of baggage) to go to St. George Utah for about three days. It was a really long drive there because of the bad weather and once we got there it was about nine thirty so we just all went to sleep.   The next morning we put on our tie die shirts and sweats and headed over to Zion’s National Park where we filmed our dances on our hike to the three different levels of waterfalls.

On March 13, seven beautiful girls took the stage in hopes of becoming the next Miss Payson. They had been preparing since January for this one big night.

Anyone else love ethnical music? If so this African Drumming class, taught by Connie Ericson (my favorite band lady), Acrama Cofie, and Clit Crawford, is something for you! Just finding out taught the class made me have to go, no matter what, nothing was stopping me. I showed up Wednesday night at 8:00 at Payson Jr. High, ready to do some stellar drumming, dragging Jonathan Bird along with me. After setting up the drums Connie sat in front of the class and started drumming, inviting us to join in.

This year some of the Close-Up students got an amazing opportunity to go up to the state legislator. On February 25, 2010, the students arrived at the State Capitol to listen to a senate and house session, tour the Capitol building, and talk to some of the representatives. Katelyn Rowley said, “The atmosphere there at the State Capitol was laid back at first, we went and listened to some debates.

Payson Youth City Council members Marianne Carpenter, Corinna Michaelis, Sarah Webber, Teal Penrod, Kaitlyn Thomas, Stephanie Dimond, Kevin Saunders, Nikki, Chase Michaelis, and their Amazing Advisor Wendy Dimond attended the Annual Youth City Council Leadership Institute held at Utah State University march 18-20th. They spent an inspiring weekend learning what it takes to be a great effective leader, and growing together to become a better-serving Payson Youth Council. At their conference there was the world renowned keynote speaker Dan Clark who talked about the power of influence

With their Stethoscopes in hand Payson HOSA went up to Layton to compete in the HOSA state convention the 18th and 19th of March. Payson’s HOSA placed so much! Who would have thought that there so many events to compete in?! “You can compete in Nursing, First aid events, speaking, presentations, Medical Assisting and Medical Photography. There are so many events you can compete in, it’s awesome” said Ashley Byington. Speaking of the Devil, Ashley took second in her Extemporaneous Speaking event!

  By: Rachelle Whatcott This year I had the chance to run for Miss Payson. I decided to choose helping out a third world country as my platform and my catch phrase, “Every SOLE worth saving”. So I’m putting on a shoe drive to help the people in Ethiopia. About three years ago my parents made it possible for my whole family to go back to Ethiopia and visit where we came from. One thing I noticed was that no one had shoes and they would be running on sharp rocks and hard surfaces and it made me feel bad. I thought to myself, one day I want to help out over there.