On Friday September 4, 2015, HBA’s high school student council held its annual Skatie Hawkins event at the Ice Palace. This year, there was more than 100 students and chaperones in attendance.

Named after the Sadie Hawkins dance, Skatie Hawkins is an event where girls get to ask boys out. While many HBA girls took the opportunity to take their male friends to the event, there were many that went without dates too.

Senior Chambre Mangiarelli, Treasurer of the high school student council, took the lead in planning the event and found the experience to be a challenging one, especially when it came to finding chaperones.” It’s hard to get teachers to answer their emails so I had to go talk to many of them face to face. At the moment when I was organizing it, everything felt rushed and stressed me out. But looking back on it, the event was fun to organize. It took a lot of communication,” she says.

The Skatie Hawkins event gave students a chance to just relax with friends at the end of a busy week. Sophomore Madison Moku said, “I had so much fun because my friends and I dressed in onesies and had a bomb hanging out with each other.”

Several teachers chaperoned at Skaties to make sure that everything was going well. English teacher Dawson Vorderbruegge says, “[I] skated with my wife and made sure everything was ‘cool.’”

Physics teacher Andrew Vitek, who brought his wife to the event, says that he had a good time. However, he admitted, “I did accidentally throw my wife into the boards within the first 10 seconds of our skating together though. She took a pretty nasty fall from it. I felt horrible.”

Students also enjoyed being able to see teachers outside of the classroom. Mangiarelli says, “I enjoyed Skaties very much, although my knees did not. I didn’t know how to skate at all and I must’ve fallen about forty times. The most memorable part of Skaties was probably watching all the teachers skate so flawlessly. I had no clue that they even knew how to skate!”

Junior Auahi Au went with his brother and a group of friends to the event. This was his first time at Skaties. He had a wonderful time and said, “I would definitely like to go again next year.”

Photographs by Logan Takeda (’16)