Valley Catholic High School students will once again get the chance to make a personal connection with families this holiday season. From mid-November through mid-December, students will collect food, purchase toys and hold fundraisers to gather enough resources to feed many local families and provide Christmas toys for their children.

This year, Valley is working with the St. Vincent de Paul branch of St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in Beaverton to help their families who need assistance. Each homeroom will sponsor one family and stock them with holiday food and hand-wrapped presents for every child in their home. Any food collected above and beyond what they set aside for each family will be given to the St. Vincent de Paul branch at St. Cecilia’s to help them feed the 160 local families that they care for throughout the year.

Students will load up cars and buses Friday, Dec. 19 and personally visit their adopted families after a morning Mass on campus.

More than 40 alumni and guests gathered Sunday, November 16th for the 4th Annual Alumni Play Reception and matinee performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In a festively decorated reception, alumni from 1955 through 2008 caught up with one another over refreshments and stories from their high school days. Many children of alumni enjoyed the craft table before heading to the auditorium for the Valley Catholic Drama Department’s fall play.

Next Alumni Event: Alumni Christmas Mass & Reception
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon Chapel
Invitations coming soon!

Christmas is coming! For the second year in a row, Valley Catholic Early Learning School participated in Operation Christmas Child. This wonderful project is sponsored by Samaritan’s Purse – a ministry led by Franklin Graham (the oldest son of Billy Graham). We believe this is a great way to demonstrate God’s love in a tangible way. Last year we collected over 70 shoe boxes filled with gifts, school supplies, and hygiene items that were sent to children in need all over the world. This year we collected 89 filled shoe boxes to donate to the program! Thank you for all the participation this year.

In mid-November, a large vehicle pulled up in the parking lot by the Athletic Center. Students arrived in small groups while medical personnel in white coats shuffled around inside. Thirty-eight high school students made their way onto the Red Cross Blood Drive van that day giving a total of 29 units of blood. According to the Red Cross, the Valley Catholic High School students were “amazing” and their generous donations of blood have the potential of saving 87 lives in the Pacific Northwest. Way to go!

One came as far away as India, another from Mexico City. Grandparents and special friends of our K-6 grade students visited Valley Catholic Elementary Nov. 10. All were treated to an assembly with their grandchildren performing outdoor school songs and their new violin techniques. Afterward, the children took their grandparents around the school to see their classrooms and the campus.

Valley Catholic’s Girls Soccer Team celebrated its best ever season, which showed promise for the program after appearing in the State Final.  You can read the full article here.

Students of all ages got the thrill of a lifetime when two-time gold medalist and Olympic women’s sabre fencer Mariel Zagunis ‘03 came to visit campus Friday, Nov. 14. Mariel attended school on the Valley Catholic campus from Kindergarten through 12^th grade graduating in 2003. She brought with her the fencing gear she used at the Games and both gold medals earned in Athens in 2004 and in Beijing in 2008.

Her first stop was to see the toddlers and preschoolers at Valley Catholic Early Learning School. Mariel went there for after-school care in the ’90s when it was called Little Flower. The children, all dressed in red, white and blue, sat cross-legged in the front lobby listening carefully to what Mariel had to say. Each student got an up-close look at the Olympic gold medals.

She told the students that they can compete in the Olympic Games if they want to when they get older. One of the little boys went to the Beijing Olympics last summer with his family and he and Mariel compared matching USA shirts. When a group of toddlers in little wagons came up to see her, they were mesmerized by the bling of the gold circles on ribbons she held before them. Mariel swung the medals hypnotically back and forth saying softly to them, “Go team!”

On the way over to the Eagle Gym to meet with some 390 K-6 students, Mariel spoke to KXL Radio for a brief interview. In the hallway in front of the gym, Mariel ran into one of her old teachers and autographed the back of someone else’s t-shirt.

When she entered the gym waving to the large group of elementary schoolers, the crowd went wild. Mariel’s Kindergarten teacher Lauri Davis introduced her and spoke of Mariel’s success as one of the most amazing outcomes from her students in her 30 years teaching at Valley Catholic.

Before she took questions from the audience, Mariel answered everyone’s burning question which was that she, in fact, did not get to meet multi-medalist and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. She did however see him eating in the dining hall.

One of the students wanted to know how she felt when she won her second gold medal in August. “I felt every emotion all at once,” said Mariel, “except for sad. The biggest feeling was probably uncontrollable laughter.”

In remembering her teachers, Mariel said whenever she left for travel that they always first asked her how she did at her latest competition which was always followed by the question ‘did you do your homework?’

When preparing to compete at the Olympics, Mariel admitted that she gets “really nervous” but that it helps her to concentrate, focus and get “pumped up.”

Mariel related to the younger students. She started fencing in fourth grade at age 10 after standing on the sidelines for years watching her brother, Martin, practice and compete. Mariel set her sights on the Olympics early on and her parents were supportive all the way. Both Robert and Cathy Zagunis competed in the 1976 Olympics as rowers. Her preparation for the 2008 Olympics ran one year and five months with five hours of practice every day.

The atmosphere in the Valiant Gym was even more charged when Mariel ran out to the stage in front of an even bigger group of 600 screaming students, faculty, staff and a rousing pep band. Mariel’s introduction by Valley Catholic High School Admissions Director Claudia Thomas was poignant in that Claudia herself competed as a swimmer in the Olympics in ’60s. Claudia was a breaststroke and medley swimmer who won her first Olympic medal at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics when she was 14. It was a silver one, in the 200m breaststroke. Four years later, when Mexico City hosted the Games, Claudia ruled in the women’s individual medley, and won gold in the 200m and in the 400m. In that decade, she set numerous world records in the medley.

Middle and High School students especially enjoyed the fencing bout between Mariel and Valley’s head football coach John Perrigo. After she gave him a few pointers, they had a close match but Mariel remained on top as the undefeated fencing champion.

At the end of the assembly, several teachers from Mariel’s time at Valley gathered around her to present her with the school’s first Distinguished Alumni Award given by Valley Catholic School and the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon Foundation to graduates who excel in their life’s work, demonstrate a high standard of personal integrity, and strive for excellence to live a valiant life.

Mariel plans to compete again at the 2012 games in London. She will begin training after she graduates from Notre Dame sometime in 2010.

Read more about Mariel’s visit to campus in the Beaverton Valley Times.

Valley Catholic Middle & High School’s Director of Campus Life, Mary Donovan, felt the new Athletic Center might be missing something.  The new facility, which opened two and a half years ago, was also the new site for Masses and assemblies for the Middle and High School.  Last year, a parent approached Donovan asking why there wasn’t some form of cross or crucifix in the Valiant’s Gym.

After much research, the Parents Association decided that the best option for the school was to hang a three-foot Risen Christ statue.  The statue was then ordered from, and crafted by, a company in Italy and shipped directly to the school.

A cross on which to mount the statue was lovingly created and painted by Alex Azpeitia and his colleague Cory Richardson from Dove Tail Remodeling and Design.  Azpeitia is the father of both a Middle and Elementary School student from Valley Catholic.  Together, they mounted the statue the night before its dedication ceremony. 

The final piece was a blessing by Fr. Craig Boly, S.J. from St. Pius X Catholic Church. During a recent school Mass, Fr. Boly allowed himself to be hoisted up on a small construction lift to be able to reach the statue and bless it with holy water.  The blessing was written by Valley Catholic’s Faith in Action religion class stating:

God,
Jesus forgave us to you
By suffering on the cross
And then returned to you in glory.
May the Valley Catholic Community who have
Raised the cross as a sign of redemption
Find in it protection and strength
May we shoulder our own crosses
In the spirit of the gospel until
Our own journey ends
We ask this through Christ our lord
Amen