In the March/April issue of Evansville Living, we caught up with 10 area kids who were doing spectacular things, from winning state swimming competitions to the world’s largest pre-college science competition, in the feature story “Cool Kids.” Since profiling them earlier this year, these students (a few now high school graduates) haven’t lost steam and are making even cooler achievements.
Deven Lockett, a ballet dancer with the Children’s Center for Dance Education and an incoming senior at Castle High School, will participate in the NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO), a yearlong achievement program to encourage high academic and cultural achievement among African American high school students.
Since being named a Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship recipient and the first-place winner in the 50-yard freestyle during the IHSAA state swimming championship earlier this year, recent Reitz Memorial High School graduate Elizabeth Broshears has continued to receive accolades. On May 1, she was named the SIAC Female Most Outstanding Athlete of the Year.
Only 161 students across the country were recognized in this year’s class of U.S. Presidential Scholars, and recent Signature School graduate Ankush Dhawan was one of them. He also was one of four winners of the 2020 Indiana Governor’s STEM Team Awards for his research into water contamination and arsenic detection.
Khristian Lander will wear the Hoosier red earlier than expected after announcing he has reclassified to the F.J. Reitz High School class of 2020 to join Indiana University’s men’s basketball team for the 2020-21 season. Finishing with a 3.8 GPA, Lander was able to add two extra classes that allowed him to graduate and begin training early.
Incoming Evansville Day School fourth grader Elliott Piekos continues working toward his goal of becoming a chess grandmaster, sharing a series of videos on Facebook to teach the basics of chess with the help of his mother Lauren Piekos.
