Anthony Green

     


     Rather than spend time on campus, Anthony has earned the right to be employed while at Woodward Academy. He works at Madrid Home, a local assisted living environment for the elderly. This is not just any job, it was one that will help prepare him for the future.
     Anthony earned his Hi-SET high school equivalent in the fall of 2018. Shortly after that, he applied for an opening at the Madrid Home. It was an entry level position where he worked as an assistant to the staff there; passing out snacks, playing games, and just spending time with the residents. This part of the job was not Anthony’s favorite but he found it rewarding. He found that he wanted more out of his job and asked how to advance. His boss told Anthony to study to receive his CNA. The Madrid Home offered free classes and paid for Anthony to take his test. After three months of classes, Anthony earned his CNA from DMACC in Ankeny, IA. 
     

Anthony stated, “It means a lot to me that I have the opportunity to go off campus for 12 hours a day and am given the chance to conduct myself like a young man. I wanted to be more involved so I pushed myself to receive my CNA. I could see that residents there wanted someone to take care of them and I wanted to make a difference. Being a CNA allows me to have more resposibility and to provide more care for the residents. My favorite part of my job is building realtionships with them and hearing their stories from their past. I have learned a lot from them and their advice has helped me to view life differently. Hearing stories from when they were my age has made me realize that I want to help people instead of be selfish like I was in the past. The best advice one resident gave me is to understand that life is bigger than myself. I need to make something of myself and want more for myself than a life of crime. When I leave the Academy I have plans to continue to work as a CNA and go on to receive my LPN. Being given this opportunity has helped me to decide a future for myself, instead of having my future decided for me.”

       Anthony is a great example of taking an opportunity and making it his own. He was given the chance to apply for this job, and once he was accepted and experienced what it takes to work in this field, his dreams unfolded in front of him. He was not simply content with this current, entry level role, and took the initiative to change his situation for the better. He worked hard at his job, did what was asked and expected of him, he never complained, and formed a positive relationship with his supervisor. Once he established that he was a trustworthy and honest worker, he earned the opportunity to further his career and become a Certified Nursing Assistant. This allowed him to earn money while bettering himself. This opportunity has helped Anthony to plan for 

his future and has given him a direction to go when he goes home. 

Makaiah Baumgart

   

      For the first time in Woodward Academy history there is a coed Powerlifting team. This team is already breaking records and setting new standards for teams to come. They earned 1st place Best Equipped Coed Team at the Capital City Clash in Lincoln, Nebraska in February. Makaiah Baumgart is one of the first Woodward Academy female powerlifters to set records and make history. Makaiah competes in squats, bench press, and dead lift. She set her records squatting 265lbs, benching 140lbs, and dead lifting 265lbs. When Makaiah first came to the Academy she had never lifted weights or even heard of Powerlifting as a sport. Her Program Director on her dorm, Mr. Rives, saw her determination and thought she would be a good addition to the powerlifting team. Makaiah’s hard work paid off in practice and she saw results at the two meets she participated in, earning 1st place gold medals at both. To Makaiah powerlifting is more than a sport, it is a coping skill. Alongside her teammates and coaches she puts everything she has into her practice and meets. Powerlifting is a tough mental sport as much as it is a challenge physically. The team often has long practices and make sure to push each other through the pain.

      Makaiah said, “I never knew I’d be on the powerlifting team before attending
Woodward Academy. I never cared about anything. I always quit and I never believed in myself. My coaches, especially Mr. Rives, kept me going even when I did not want to. Mr. Rives never let me quit my program, on the dorm, in school, or in Powerlifting, My teammates were there motivating one another and encouraging me, they made me believe in myself. It took tears, determination, commitment, blood, smashed fingers, sweat, and hard work to even qualify for Nationals. When I qualified for Nationals I was just satisfied with qualifying, but Mr. Rives didn’t let us just be satisfied with qualifying. He made it clear we had so much more we could do before we could be considered to be the best in the Nation. If that meant 600 reps of squats and 600 reps of bench and stairs, that is what it meant. We put in 2-4 hours a day of hard work, sacrificing and pushing through the pain. There were days I just wanted to give up but we push each other through every second, every minute, every hour, and every challenge. After we qualified we went to Nebraska to compete against adult National Qualifiers. All 11 of us placed between 1st, 2nd, or 3rd. All 4 of us female lifters received 1st place medals. It means a lot to be one of the participants qualifying for Nationals and representing Woodward Academy and my Knight’s Club. When looking back on this experience I’m reminded of one of our favorite quotes that we say in the gym, “We work for it, others wish for it.”

Makaiah and her teammates will travel to Appleton, Wisconsin to compete at the 2018 Powerlifting Nationals in March. Woodward Academy’s Powerlifting Team is 12 time National Champions, hoping to make it 13 this year and be Woodward’s first coed National Champions.



     
     

Knightly Knews Vol. 42 is now online!

The latest edition of our award-winning publication, the Knightly Knews, is now online and you can access it by clicking here. As a .pdf document, you can view or download the quarterly publication to your computer, iPad, or smartphone for easy reading. This Track & Field edition includes:

- Neiko Morris Scholarship
- High School Commencement Ceremony
- The Class of 2017
- Edgenuity
- Historic Track & Field Season
- Fishing Club
- Open House and Golf Tournament
- Community Service Opportunities
- Drumline
- Communication Awards

We hope you have a chance to check it out and enjoy the read.

Campus Events // Open House and Golf Tournament

On June 1, Woodward Academy hosted it’s annual Open House celebration that is hands down the most colorful event of the year. The day kicks off with an epic 5K run that asks participants to navigate a wooded trail with fallen trees, wade through a waist deep crick, and climb the “Iron Man,” a steep, muddy incline that can only be accomplished with the use of a rope. As a dorm, students and staff theme their outfits. This year, Navigator Hall came through with one of the most inventive in recent memory, with their runners dressing as Pac-Man characters. The winner of the race was staff member Josh Pauley from the dorm Delta Company.
   
Each event throughout the day is a part of a larger competition with students on each dorm strategically participating in events. After the race, a 3 on 3 basketball tournament occured next to a muddy tug of war contest, at the same time as students participated in a bag toss competition. Each awarded points to the dorms, with this year’s overall winner being Navigator Hall.
   
Beyond the student events, guests of the Open House can get tours of the campus, and can meet with their students. The weather was beautiful and the day went off flawlessly. Special thanks to teacher Justin Schmauss and Educational Liaison Aric Rush for organizing the day. You can see images from the day on your Knight Pics website.

The 8th annual Knight’s Scholarhip Golf Outing was held for the first time at the Honey Creek Golf Course in Boone, Iowa. This year, 71 golfers participated in the event that helped raise money for the Lifetime Commitment Fund that annually helps Woodward Academy alumni as they move into the next stage of their life. Over the past 7 years, this fund has paid for college tuition, apartment furnishings, and even travel expenses for one alum who participated in the USA Track & Field Indoor
National Championships.
   
This year, over $5,800 was raised for the fund with an additional $1,000 being donated by Aureon,
a local technology company that offers customizable technology, HR, and contact center solutions. To date, this annual tournament has raised $45,800, all of which has gone toward helping students achieve their post-Woodward Academy goals. 

Fishing Club

Many of the great Woodward Academy activities originated from the passion of a particular staff member. The historic powerlifting program began as a weight lifting club, and the well-dressed drumline was started in a general music class. One of the next great things to happen at Woodward Academy could be the Fishing Club.
   
Woodward Academy is surrounded by rural land, including some small creeks. Luke Corrick, a Group Leader on campus, started taking some of his primary students fishing to help generate a relationship with them, spend time outdoors, and to teach them about a passion of his that he was first exposed to as a youth. He decided to take this casual weekend activity with students on his dorm, and open it up to more students in the form of the Fishing Club.
   
As the Club got underway, he started having aspiration of doing with the program. In February, he started emailing different tournament organizations all over Iowa. His first response was from Steve Miller from Oxbow Bandits Bass Club in Sioux City, Iowa, who said that he’s love to have some guys come and compete in their youth tournament they hold at Blue Lake every year.
   
On June 3rd, the Woodward Academy team caught 9 total fish on that day, with two of them at the legal length of 15 inches. For their first tournament, they finished 5th out of 10 total high school teams and represented the Academy well. Corrick hopes to get the team in one more tournament this summer and already has ideas on how to expand the Fishing Club for next year.

Neiko Morris Scholarship

On May 17, two Woodward Academy graduating students received the Neiko Morris Scholarship in remembrance of the former student leader on campus. Neiko was the perfect student for Woodward Academy: he was an excellent student, involved himself in student government, being an Executive Knight on his dorm, and participated in several athletic teams including the 2015 state basketball team.
   
Months later, he left us all with more questions than answers and gave us all a stark reminder the difficulties that many teens face. The statistics point to the fact that we are living in an epidemic:

• Children aged 10 to 14, death by suicide is now more common than death from traffic accidents.
• In 2014, suicide rates were higher than homicide rates for males and females of all age groups.
• While suicide was the 10th leading cause of death among the U.S. population in 2014, it was the second leading cause of death among youth ages 15 to 24.
   
Earlier this year, Neiko’s parents reached out to Woodward Academy and offered the generous gift of a financial scholarship to a pair of high school graduates who plan to attend college. Moved by their sentiment, the Management Team at Woodward Academy decided to match that gift for those students to help pay for tuition, books, or other things they may need.
   
The questions of “why” these things happen will never go away and we all now have to live with the looming feeling that we could have done more with our time with him. These feelings are no more powerful than with his parents. His time at Woodward Academy mattered and his parents saw that in him. He was laid to rest in his Knights jacket, a sentiment that he is forever a Knight. We report a lot of student opportunities and success, and as a school we are very proud of those things. But Neiko proves to us that there is more work that can be done and we will continue to do that work.
   
This scholarship is a way to honor him and make a difference in another Knight’s life. The two recipients of the scholarship were Ammari Johnson, a standout WA athlete who plans on attending Iowa Central Community College, and Destry Johnson, who anticipates attending college in his home area of the Pacific Northwest.

The Class of 2017 // Video

On May 17, the graduating Class of 2017 was honored with a commencement ceremony in the WA gymnasium. During the 2016-2017 academic school year, 51 students either received their high school diploma or Hi-SET equivalent, which is the largest graduating class in school history. The event was the culmination of a life-changing path that the students decided to take while at Woodward Academy. Many would admit that graduating was an unattainable dream and something that was not meant for them. But now that dream is complete where no one can take it from them.

Many parents and family members were able to attend the ceremony and the gymnasium was loud. When handing out diplomas, Lead Teacher William Terry noted how it is often protocol to hold applause until the end, but said "At Woodward Academy, we don't do it that way." As he read off the list of graduates, the student section exploded as they cheered for their dorm mates, and there was more than a couple tears of joy shed from the audience.

Principal Cory Wenthe began the ceremony with an introduction, and Group Living Director, Trent Fleshner, announced that seniors Ammari Johnson and Destry Johnson were recipients of the Neiko Morris Scholarship, a generous gift from the parents of a student alum. Senior speakers included Darnell Green, who talked about when he first started contemplating his future was mid-sprint at a track meet last year, as well as seniors Casey Bynum and Destry Johnson. Keynote speaker, Mark Wills, had a great uplifting speech where he challenged students to be their best and reminded them that this day was not the last time they will graduate from something, and that committing themselves and graduating from anything is a good day.