That’s So SmokyMarch 4, 2016 Volume 1, Issue 22

Evan Grant Awarded NC State’s Park ScholarshipBy Brady Powell Evan Grant was awarded an all-expenses paid scholar-ship to NC State. The Park Scholarship in-cludes food, room and board, books, transportation expens-es, as well as tuition. Grant completed a lengthy application process which started at SMHS. The school nominated Grant because of his academics and extracurricular activities.

“Evan is a total package with his grades, his community service, and

his extracurricular activities,” School Counselor Kaye An-derson said. “We are proud and looking forward to seeing him represent our school.” When he progressed to the finalist level, he stayed for one weekend on campus attend-

ing different seminars and inter-views to continue the process. Grant found out that he won the award this week. The initial group

of applicants included more than 1,100 students. Forty scholarships were awarded. “I am really excited because this will eliminate the financial stress the college would have placed on my family,” Grant said. “The commu-nity of scholars that I will be living and studying with is really cool.” Grant will have additional options for college like studying abroad and extra community service opportu-nities.

Evan Grant

Go to Park on Page 3

Carpenter Helps Care for Animals at PreserveBy Destiny Barker Morgan Carpenter works at the Balsam Mountain Preserve as an animal caretaker. She works in the animal care center where they reha-bilitate animals and take care of the birds of prey and reptiles. Carpenter has been working there for a long time she is doing this for her college career to try and get into HTC. They get a lot of college in-terns, but you must have taken biol-ogy in order to help out. Carpenter said “We get a lot of calls from people that have hit animals, mostly with their cars. We have a screech owl named Rasta. He got hit by a car and is blind in one eye but he lives at the center now.”Balsam Mountain Preserve helps all kinds of animals that are in need,

Go to Preserve on Page 3

Morgan Carpenter works at Balsam Mountain Preserve rehabiltating animals. Carpenter works there to gain experince and learn about the wildlife so she can get into college.

Lunch MenuMonday: TOP: Stuffed Crust PizzaBOTTOM: Chicken ParmesanTuesday: TOP: Double Cheese-burger BOTTOM: Mini Corndogs Wednesday: TOP: Cheese Dippers BOTTOM: Ham and baked potatoThursday: TOP: Corn Dogs BOTTOM: Breaded Pork ChopFriday: TOP: Chicken Snadwich BOTTOM: Biscuit and gravy

Inside&OutBy Aleta Cody

Wyatt Gibson has been a member of the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts of America since he was in the first grade. When Gibson received the invitation he was “instantly excited” about it, and he accepted it. When the Cub Scouts was over he was promot-ed to Boy Scouts where Gibson has been ever since. The five years Gibson was in Boy Scouts he was awarded twenty awards. Some of the awards he was given was Order of the Arrow,

and Arrow of Light. This is his final year, and he

will achieve the special rank of Eagle Scout. Eagle Scout is the high-est award that can be given to Boy Scouts. This award can offer college scholarships and also job applications [in the future]. After high school, Gibbson plans to attend

a music college where he will continue to pursue music. He hopes to write music one day. Gibson likes to play his instru-ments in his free time. He plays the horn and the tenor.

Wyatt Gibson

Student Aims for Eagle Scout Award

Meet the TeacherBy Payton Dunlap

Kaye Anderson’s favorite places to go are Italy and Greece because she loves Greece’s cheese and the history of the place. “It’s absolutely beau-tiful. I can’t wait to go again,” she said. Kaye Anderson is a guidance teacher at Smoky Mountain high school. Not many know she is married to Ty Dengler, a biol-ogy teacher that also teaches at Smoky. Anderson is originally from Florida so when she moved here

and learned that we have “snow days” she was immensely sur-prised.

Anderson’s favorite activity is going to high school or college sporting events. Her favorite sport in general is football. Anderson’s favorite season is fall and winter because of the snow and being layered up and hanging out with her kids. Anderson’s biggest in-

spiration is her children because she says: “One day they will be in the situation one of our students is in, so she wants to treat students like she would want to be treated.”

Kaye Anderson

Athletic Schedule March 7-11

March 4, 2016 That’s So Smoky Page 2

Monday: Soccer @ Tullulah Falls @ 4:30Tuesday: Baseball vs Erwin @ home @ 4:30/5Wednesday: Softball @ Madison @ 4Baseball vs Enka @ home @ 4:30/5Track and Field vs Franklin @ WCU @ 4Soccer @ Tuscola @ 6Thursday: Golf @ Waynesville Inn and Golf @ 2Friday: Baseball @ Tuscola @ 4:30/7Softball @ Tuscola @ 4

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Grant participates in cross county, indoor track, track and field, soccer, and swimming. He is the president of National Honor Society and is a member of Mustang Ambassadors and Hosa. Grant is the third Park Scholar in the past four years. The other stu-dents receiving the scholarship are current NC State students Maggie DeWeese and Rusty Mau.

Park from Page 1

and they try their best to bring them back to health so that they can be released back into the wild again. “I like the animals, the owls are re-ally cool. I guess they are my favor-ite, they are pretty birds” Carpenter says. “I would recommend people to come and work here it is a lot of fun; you get to handle the animals. It’s very different. You get to take them places and educate people. We do the bird shows at Dollywood and we have taken them to Smoky Moun-tain [High School] before to show them in biology classes before,” Car-penter says.

Preserve from Page 1 Colby Reddin’s Honors American History Class creates an assem-bly line with Hershey kisses. The class was learning about how the assembly line was used to help make factory work faster. SMHS photo by Callie Ledford

American History Students Create Assembly Line

Trooper Shawn Blanton’s LegacyBy Taylor Moranda

Shawn Blanton was a gradu-ate from Smoky Mountain High School in 2002. Blanton played many sports such as football, track, baseball, and wrestling. Blanton was a North Carolina highway pa-trol man. He later coached our girls JV softball team. “He was an amaz-ing coach and all of the girls loved him,” history teacher Angela Cham-bers said, who coached alongside him at the time. Blanton later lost his life on the job on June 17, 2008. Before he passed away he was married and four months later his wife lost their baby too. Trooper Blanton was di-recting traffic on I-40 and was shot and killed. “He was a good man that died doing the right thing,” Avery Brown said.

Blanton was a much respected man. The Department of Transpor-tation named a bridge near where it happened after him, and our own Shawn Blanton Memorial batting Cages are so his memory lives on through our softball teams. This batting cage was built by many volunteers. “There was no ques-tion they wanted to dedicate it in his honor,” Chambers said. All the money came from donations.

Trooper Shawn Blanton’s football jersey resting in old gym trophy case. SMHS photo by Taylor Mo-randa

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Science Olympiad Team Takes WinBy Nataya Huskey

On Saturday, Feb. 27. Smoky Mountain High School students won many awards at the Science Olympiad, held at the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA). Science Olympiad is a competi-tion in which schools go against each other in different categories dealing with science, such as fo-rensics, geology, biology, etc. Some awards students won were 3rd place in the category of Geologic Map-ping and 1st place in the Wright Stuff category.

Science Olympiad students are required to have good grades and responsibility to be able to compete in these competitions. Students must sign up with Amanda Clapp to join the Sci-ence Olympiad team; any student can sign up but must meet certain requirements to be accepted. Clapp checks these students’ behavior be-fore accepting them onto the team. If they fail to meet these expecta-tions, they could be rejected from the team. Current members can be kicked from the team if they drop below these expectations.

Student Support Center News

Registration time is coming. Kaye Anderson and Paige Brooks will be doing pre- registration ad-vising by homeroom in the coming weeks. Students should be thinking about what classes they need to graduate and what classes they would be interested in taking. Tuesday March 15 at 5:30 SMHS Cafeteria Rising Seniors meeting. All juniors and their parents are invited to get information from the counselors about senior year, reg-istration, preparing for college and financial aid.Next drivers-ed class will be March 14-18 and then spring break, then it will pick back up on March 28- April 1. Monday-Friday, 3:15-6:15.

By Meredith Page

The Smoky Mountain High School Women’s Soccer team are off to a great start. The Lady Mustangs won both scrimmages in Asheville on Sat-urday February 27, 2016, against Erwin and Mitchell. The Lady Mustangs are 1-1 with

a win against Swain County High School the final score 3-1 and one loss against Madison County High School with a final score of 7-1. There are 20 girls on this year’s Women’s Varsity Soccer Team. “It’s my first year playing soccer since I was six. I am really look-ing forward to playing as a team,” sophomore Caitlyn King said.

Chicks With Kicks Stick a Good Start

Business SpotlightPastor Avery Brown says “I love this place. It’s where I went to school and I love every part about it. It made me who I am today.”