School

Canadian High School senior Leslie Villa was crowned 2021 Homecoming Queen in a ceremony held during halftime of Friday night’s game, pitting the Canadian Wildcats against the Bushland Falcons. Villa was escorted by her father, Gabriel Reyes, during the ceremony.

The Canadian Wildcats (2-0) will meet the Bushland Falcons (0-2) in Friday evening’s CHS Homecoming matchup, and at halftime, the CHS Homecoming Court will be presented and the Homecoming Queen announced.

Students of CHS/CMS Art Instructor Karol Michelsen will be displaying their work from the 2020-21 school year at Canadian’s River Valley Pioneer Museum this month. The exhibit will open Wednesday, Sept. 8 and will be on display through Friday, Sept. 24. A reception for the students and their families will be held at the museum on Tuesday, Sept. 14, from 5-7 pm. PHOTO BY KAROL MICHELSEN

The first monarch butterflies arrived this week. The orange beauties will keep passing through until late October on their way to Mexico for the winter. Some hummingbirds have already left, heading south of the border. We are still enjoying what everyone is calling The Green Summer when it rained on West Texas for three months. The native lantana are in full bloom along with purple sage. The wild yellow snapdragons on my place have bloomed three times instead of the usual once in May. The pastures and roadsides are unseasonably green and we are still getting showers and thunderstorms out of season. Days and nights have been unseasonably cool. It’s been sublime.

Last Saturday, Abi Black (CHS Class of 2021) played trumpet for the Purdue All-American Band in the Boilermakers’ football season opener against Oregon State. Abi has already earned distinction as a freshman in the nearly 400-member band as the only female member of the elite, prestigious Section One trumpet players. In addition to marching with the All- American Band, Abi has also played trumpet for the volleyball team’s Boiler Box Band and pursued her interests in aerospace engineering with the Purdue Space Program. Abi is proud to continue representing the black and gold of both Canadian and Purdue. PHOTO PROVIDED

The Canadian Community Center was excited to welcome the newest member of the Canadian community this week, Cody Johnson. Cody hails from Livingston, Scotland, and is a foreign exchange student at Canadian High School, being hosted by David and Dusty Witcher. A youth membership was presented to her by the CCC staff as a welcome to Canadian. “We wish her the best of luck on her Texas adventure this year,” said CCC Director Ike Julian, who also took the opportunity to remind the public that the center has funding set aside for memberships for any youth in need. Applications for financial assistance in both English and Spanish are available at the front desk. Anyone wishing to contribute to this fund is welcome to give Julian a call at 806.323.5254.

CHS Class of 2018 graduate Caroline Cook was recently awarded a $4,000 Tracey Waterfield Neilson Memorial Endowed Scholarship through Oklahoma State University’s College of Education and Human Sciences. Cook is a senior at OSU in Stillwater, majoring in nutritional science, with the goal of attending a physician assistant program following her graduation in the spring of 2022. She is the daughter of Molly and Michael Kerrigan of Canadian.

AUSTIN—The Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) and the Texas Cultural Trust are accepting applications for the 2022 class of Young Masters, a joint initiative that provides exemplary Texas-based arts students in grades 8-11 with the financial help they need to pursue advanced study in the areas of visual arts, literary arts, music, theatre, dance, musical theatre, folk arts, and media arts.

CHS Sophomore Xander Gasparlin has already made a little Wildcat history this year by being the first Willie the Wildcat to be named All-American Mascot at the National Cheerleaders Association cheer camp in Abilene’s Hardin Simmons University this summer.