|
"RIDGEDALE'S MAT PROGRAM GROWING IN NUMBERS OF WRESTLERS, FANS, WINS"
(students' names can't be listed for safety reasons, they will be replaced with an X)
FLORHAM PARK - The Ridgedale Middle School's wrestling program is young - in just its second year- but it is growing and
proving popular with athletes and fans alike.
"It is fairly new," said X, one of the team captains at the Florham Park school.
"It is very fun, but very aggressive and competitive," X noted. "As a captain, it is my job to make sure
that all the team members do the right thing, in and out of practice. Wrestling teaches cooperation. It's almost like a family."
In addition to X, the squad's captains are X,X,X.
The program is extra-curricular, offered to students to improve their strength, and to have fun with their peers. There
were only seven students on the team last year; now there are 28.
Coach Steven Caponegro's practices are physically strenuous and well-organized. Wrestling requires discipline, mental
strength and preparedness, which all of the young wrestlers seem to have.
Said seventh grader X, "The program has given me a lot of strength after all the practices we've had."
Caponegro, the seventh grade's social studies teacher, is the new head coach.
X, a sixth grader remarked, "This is my fifth year wrestling. It's my first year at RMS and I definitely like the
way Coach Caponegro teachers wrestling. A lot of kids are new and Coach Caponegro is doing a good teaching job."
Even a novice to the sport of wrestling can learn, as X did. "Even though I am an eighth grader, it's my first year
wrestling," he said. "I like it a lot. Coach Caponegro is doing a great job teaching me."
Caponegro recruited more than 20 students who had never wrestled from his classes and from Ridgedale's soccer team, which
he also coaches.
One of the highlights of the wrestling program is that a girl is on the team this year, sixth grader X.
"It feels a little weird being the only girl on the team, but it doesn't bother me too much. I think girls are able
to wrestle as well as boys," she said.
The Florham Park Panthers of the Ridgedale Middle School finished the season with an impressive 7-1 mark, and placed eighth
in the Morris County Junior Wrestling Tournament. Individual awards went to [2 eighth graders], who both placed second in
their weight class, as well as [a 6th Grader], who placed fourth in his class.
Homework Pass
One thing that attracts many students to these matches as fans, is a "lottery system" devised by Caponegro,
who created it to increase school spirit and attendance. Every Ridgedale student who is not on the wrestling team gets a ticket
on entering the match. After the match, Caponegro draws a ticket from each of three buckets, labeled for the sixth, seventh
and eighth grades. The prize is a homework pass, shaped as a star, that a student can use for any teacher in his or her grade.
This "lottery system" strategy seems to have worked. There were more than 90 people in attendance at the team's
first home wrestling match.
Throughout the season, each home game averaged an attendance of more than 50 people.
©Recorder Newspapers 2003
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7040115&BRD=1918&PAG=461&dept_id=506560&rfi=6
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"STUDENTS INTERRUPT VACATIONS TO PAINT WORLD FLAGS"
08/12/2004
FLORHAM PARK - In the middle of their summer vacations, 22 students who will be eighth graders at the Ridgedale Middle
School this fall spent the afternoon Tuesday, Aug. 3, on a world history project.
All the students who volunteered for this project were chosen,said Ridgedale teacher Steven Caponegro. As an extra credit
summer project, student volunteers colored the flags of nations covered in the seventh grade world history curriculum.
After they were painted on the tiles in the school gymnasium, the 24 flags will be placed in the ceiling of the first-floor
Ridgedale classroom where Caponegro teaches. The room formerly housed the school's computer lab.
The majority of students today are visual learners, Caponegro said of the educational value of the flags on the ceiling.
These flags will act as the visual stimulation needed to gradually instill and connect these national symbols to class discussions.
The teacher expressed gratitude to the Florham Park Board of Education, for providing funds for the markers used to create
the flags, and to the Home Depot store of East Hanover, which donated the ceiling tiles.
The students who participated in the project were [students from the 2005 graduating class]
Starting his third year on the Ridgedale staff, Caponegro teaches four world history classes and one in communication
arts. He also serves as the activities director at the grades 6-8 school.
World Flags
Ridgedale Middle School student X of Florham Park volunteers to color a ceiling tile with the Russian flag on Aug. 3 for
installation in the world history room at the Florham Park school, where he will enter the eighth grade in a few weeks.
© 2004 A PARKER PUBLICATION NEWSPAPER
©Recorder Newspapers 2004
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12703775&BRD=1918&PAG=461&dept_id=506526&rfi=6
|
