This week’s Maple Mountain High Prep of the Week is Aleksa Gappmayer. Aleksa, sophomore, is the starting point guard for the Lady Golden Eagles.  Aleksa is Maple Mountain’s leading scorer with 12.7 points per game.  Aleksa likes to play basketball because it is really fun to play, it’s a team effort, and she is on a really good team with her best friends.  The team and Aleksa’s goals are to make it to the state tournament and have a good placing. So far this season the Lady Golden Eagles are 8-2 starting region play on January 11.

This year is Maple Mountain’s first year to host a Sub-for-Santa fundraiser.  The fundraiser was sponsored by all the service clubs and student council. This includes National Honor Society, PTSA, and Key club. The goal was to raise $5,000 to help out families in our schools and surrounding community this holiday season. We surpassed our goal by raising $5,044.50 with the help of a parent who made a generous donation of a little more than $2,000.

While half of the Maple Mountain High student body is asleep in their beds, the swim team is hard at work practicing for their next meet. They sacrifice a lot by going to practice every morning at 5 a.m. and perfecting their skills for an hour at a time.

This hard work has paid off because they did really well on their first meet in October. Their best in distance is 200-500. They have one more meet before they go to region in Venta.

The Maple Mountain wrestling team is composed of forty five members, each with a determination to get to the top; literally, pinning their way through the other teams in the state, beating the Payson Lions 35-30 and now competing in a nation-wide meet in Reno. The whole team shares a sense of brotherhood and are willing to look out for each other. They have an immense sense of determination and are one hundred percent set on taking state and doing the best that they can.

Just before Thanksgiving, students from Maple Mountain High School traveled to Washington, DC. Students visited the National Archives, Washington Monument, Library of Congress, Capitol Building, Lincoln Memorial, Gettysburg, Arlington Cemetery, Iwo Jima, Jefferson Monument, Mount Vernon, Smithsonian, WW2 Memorial, and The Wall.

Students commented on the most impactful places they toured.

“Holocaust Museum, to see what they had to go through and that some got through it,” said Rose Gashler.

On Saturday, December 11, students enjoyed a Holiday "Yule" Dance.

Maple Mountain High School had many students who participated in the 2010 Reflections contest. This year’s theme was “Together We Can.”  Students submitted work in the following categories:  3-D Art, Photography, Dance, Theater, Music, Literature, and Visual Art.

Jamie Farley, a senior at Maple Mountain High School, interns at Revolution Manufacturing, a snowboard factory. Farley is faced with many tasks including researching on the computer and even helping produce snowboards in the factory.

Farley says, “I love snowboarding and that is the line of business that I want to go into in the future. I’m more interested in the fashion and clothing side of the snowboarding business though. I am still really interested in this line of work. It’s something I’m really passionate about, and I know that it’s what I want to do in the future.”

Maple Mountain junior Tyler Clement is working an internship at IO Stream Solutions. IO Stream Solutions is a website development company in Provo. Tyler says that web designing is a fun and exciting field of work that comes easily to him.

“For the first couple of weeks I worked in marketing. This was fun because it was new and I hadn’t done it before. Now, I’m coding different websites, like Mod Bod and others,” said Tyler.

Tori Nielsen, a senior at Maple Mountain, is currently interning at Mapleton Junior High School. While at MJHS, Nielsen observes the teacher, Mrs. Gleave, teaching math to her students. Some of her duties as an intern are to help students with their math problems when they have questions or don’t understand.

Nielsen says she is interested in this line of work because, “I have been around amazing teachers my whole life. They have had such an impact on my life, and I would love to do that for someone else.”