Google made its way to the Lower School this morning to a special surprise announcement.  Marcus Zheng '29 has been awarded the Doodle 4 Google winner of Michigan.  The contest is open to student's K-12.  His design will go on to be voted on at the national level.  You can help him win by voting using the link below. You will not be required to submit information but just verify you are not a robot. The winning design will be animated and featured on Google's Homepage in the future.

Vote for Marcus to win the national competition at https://doodles.google.com/d4g/

Congratulations to Rishuv Mehta for winning the Best in Category in Digital Arts for the Cleveland Institute of Art's 2D3D National Art + Design Competition.  All winners receive cash prizes and scholarship money to attend the Institute if they choose. The winning artworks were selected by a panel of Cleveland Institute of Arts faculty, from entries by 1,064 students representing over 420 American high schools in 39 states. Overall there were 11 winners. Below are Rishuv's winning pieces.

Congratulations to the following students for the performance results at the recent Solo & Ensemble Festival for Middle School students

Jacquelyn Yoo '22 - Division II rating
Maria Cheriyan '21 - Division I rating
Grade Redman '21 - Division II rating
Myles Mathews '21 - Division I rating
Sabrina Carson '21 - Division I rating
Meredith Kosch '21 - Division II rating

Also, Choral-Aires performed at High School Solo & Ensemble Festival at the end of January and earned a solid Division II rating. 

Lifetime Achievement Award On Tuesday, February 22 the women's varsity basketball team had their final home game for the season and not only were five seniors honored, but Coach O received a Lifetime Achievement Award for his 50 years of coaching and his contributions to the many young athletes whose lives he has influenced. He was also featured as one of Anne Marie's All Stars on WXYZ Detroit. Congratulations to Coach O! Also congratulations to our five seniors: CeCe Batts, Sheldon Bochenek, Tylar Bennett, Sydney Parker, Destiny Pitts. The team closed out there final home game of the season with a 85-63 win over Detroit Renaissance.

The WordMasters Challenge™ is an exercise in critical thinking that first encourages students to become familiar with a set of interesting new words (considerably harder than grade level), and then challenges them to use those words to complete analogies expressing various kinds of logical relationships. Working to solve the analogies helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically. Although most vocabulary enrichment and analogy-solving programs are designed for use by high school students, WordMasters Challenge™ materials have been specifically created for younger students in grades three through eight. They are particularly well suited for children who are motivated by the challenge of learning new words and enjoy the logical puzzles posed by analogies.

Top WordMasters scores for second meet:

3rd grade:

• 1st place: Ashrita Reddy (18/20)
• 2nd place: Harsha Narayan, Julia Berghea (14/20)
• 3rd place: Jenna Shaban, Andy Oakes (13/20)

4th grade:

• 1st place: Navade Haq (17/20)
• 2nd place: John Draper, Ella Kalczynski, Devan Thompson, Michael (Jiale) Wang (15/20)
• 3rd place: Reed Chaudhary, Sriram Nallapaneni, Marc Farah (14/20)

5th grade:

• 1st place: Vikram Goddla (20/20)
• 2nd place: Trinity Chen/Nishan Inampudi (19/20)
• 3rd place: Gracie Bleiberg (18/20)

All games are single elimination.  MHSAA charges admission for all playoff games.  

Stay tuned for results as the month progresses or visit www.mhsaa.com for more details. – GO YELLOWJACKETS!!

Women’s Basketball

District Round #1 – Monday, February 27th  DCDS vs Notre Dame Prep @ NDP –  6:00 PM – Won 72-38
District Semi Final – March 1st DCDS vs Luthern North 4:00PM @ Lutheran North HS – Won 76-55
District Final –  March 3rd DCDS vs Clawson  6:00 PM @ Lutheran North – Won 78-23
Regional Semi Final –  DCDS vs Croswell-Lexington March 7th 6:00 PM @ Yale HS
Regional Final – March 9th 7:00 PM @ Yale HS
State Quarter Final – March 14th  7:00 PM @ Marysville HS
State Semi Final – March 17th @ Breslin Center East Lansing 6:00 PM
State Final – March 18th @ Breslin Center East Lansing 6:00 PM

Men’s Basketball

District Round #1 – DCDS vs Notre Dame Prep – March 6th @ NDP 6:00 PM 
District Semifinal - DCDS vs winner of Clintondale vs Lutheran North @ Notre Dame Prep –March 8th 7:00 PM
District Final – March 10th @ Notre Dame Prep 6:00 PM
Regional Semi Final - March 13th @ North Branch HS 6:00 PM
Regional Final - March 15th @ North Branch HS 7:00 PM
State Quarter Final - March 21st @ Marysville HS 7:00 PM
State Semi Final - March 24th @ Breslin Center East Lansing 6:00 PM
State Final - March 25th @ Breslin Center East Lansing 6:30 PM

Women’s Hockey

State Quarter Finals – March 8th DCDS vs Northville @ Novi Ice Arena 5:45 PM
State Semi Final – March 9th DCDS vs TBD @ Novi Ice Arena 5:30 PM
State Final – March 11th DCDS vs TBD @ Novi Ice Arena 3:45 PM

Men’s Hockey

Pre-Regional – March 2nd DCDS vs winner of Farmington @ Farmington Ice Arena (Founders Sports Park) 7:10 PM – Won 4-0
Regional Final – March 4th DCDS vs Allen Park @ Farmington Ice Arena (Founders Sports Park) 1:45 PM – Won 2-1
State Quarter Finals - March 8th DCDS vs Warren DeLasalle @ Farmington Ice Arena (Founders Sports Park) 7:10 PM
State Semi Finals - March 10th @ USA Hockey Arena (Plymouth) 11:00 AM
State Final - March 11th @ USA Hockey Arena (Plymouth) 2:00 PM

Men’s Swimming and Dive

State Final – March 10-11 @ Holland Aquatic Center 10:00 AM

Men’s and Women’s Ski

State Finals – February 25-27 Boyne Highland Resort 9:00 AM
Men’s and Women’s Teams did not qualify for State Finals.  INDIVIDUAL RESULTS

Coed Figure Skating

Team and Individual State Final – March 25th and March 26th @ Onyx Arena (Rochester)  8:00 AM

Men’s and Women’s Bowling

Regional Final – February 24th and 25th @ Oak Lanes (Westland) MENS RESULTS  WOMENS RESULTS
State Final – March 3rd and 4th @ Super Bowl (Canton)
No bowlers qualified for the state meet, however, congratulations on a great season.

Men’s and Women’s Snowboard

State Finals – Feb 17th @ Alpine Valley 8:00AM
No boarders qualified for the state meet, however, congratulations on a great season.

Competitive Cheer

District – February 17th @ Ladywood HS
Did not qualify for Regional / State Tournament.  Congratulations on a great season

Two of our outstanding Upper School students participated in the Michigan History Day Regional competition at the Detroit Historical Society. Michigan History Day is a year-long educational program where students choose a topic related to an annual theme, research and analyze their findings, and draw conclusions about their topics’ significance in history.

This year’s theme was Taking a Stand. Ruhi Nayak '19 won for her research paper entitled, Vaclav Havel vs. Communism, and Erin Brennan '19 for her individual exhibit, Cambodia's Silent Heroes: Taking an Emotional Stand Against a Regime of Suppression. These two award winners have now qualified for the Michigan History Day State Final Event to be held on Saturday, April 29, at Bay City High School, Bay City, MI.

Congratulations to the following students! Their research projects have been selected for the finalist category in the MIT Inspire Competition. The competition consists of submissions of research projects from all over the country. The projects are judged on the following: 

• Clarity of problem statement and implications to your field
• Originality and creativity
• Analytical depth
• Abstract and report including good writing style
• Poster, presentation, and oral Q & A 

Many of our Middle School art students have artwork hanging in the children’s section of the Baldwin Library in Birmingham. Be sure to stop by and see the display from now until the end of March.

Congratulations to the following students:

8^th Grade

Kendall Belanger, Saborn Campbell, Maria Cheriyan, Michaela Cooney, Maddison Coopes, Jonathon Fowkes, Gianna (GiGi) Gallete, Ava Heppard, Jack Ignatowski, Gabriel Nazelli, Niederhofer, Sreelakshmi Panicker, Pratha Rattan, Katherine (Katie) Rinke, Azeem Saifee, Ellie Sarda, Arnav Shah, Anna Stockreef, Jiayi (Jenny) Tian, Julia Wang, Elena Wu, Sarina Yu

7^th  Grade

Sofia Balanay, Grace Degazio, Ana Dougherty, Anthony Ge, Mariya Khan, Alex Matthews, Noah Michaelson, Maria Nona, Chiara Sessa, Julia Williams, Margaret Yang, Jacquelyn Yoo, Raha Zaman

6^th Grade

Ben Aaron, Amina Alkhafaji, Hiba Asadulla, Adil Bahrainwala, Charlotte Bernard, Charlie Chen, Alexis Corrigan, Chloe Holter, Rachel Jackson, Snigdha Kondur, Sophie Liu, Dylan Lepkowski, Vijval Nandigala, Kate Parambo, Leilani Parks, Sagar Rau, Lily Shaman, Aaryn Sherman, Cam Sims, Amara Tariq, Himani Yarlagadda, Yesh Yerneni, Alexander Zarghami

Both Middle School quiz bowl teams won their matches against high school competition at the Grand Finale League held at the beginning of March. Congratulations to the following students:

• Sreelakshmi Panicker '21
• Dylan Shefman '21
• Zaid Siddiqui '21
• Jack Linn '21
• Ramzi Nassif '22
• Arvin Pandiyan '22

The students will have the state competition in March before getting the opportunity to test their skills at the national level in May.

Farm Bureau Insurance company has completed the judging of our school’s entries for this years America and Me Essay Contest. I am pleased to announce our top three finishers:

• 1st place - Maria Cheriyan '21
• 2nd place - Maria Sicilia '21
• 3rd place - Selia Rendon '21

Maria Cheriyan’s first place essay will now advance to the statewide competition from which the top ten entries in the state will be selected. The statewide winners will be announced in April.

This past January, thousands of students in the U.S. and Canada participated in the first round of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. Three of our students have reached the top 160 and have been invited to compete in the second round to determine which eight will represent the U.S. at the International Linguistics Olympiad in Dublin this summer.

Congratulations to the following:

• Chris Gilmer-Hill (22^nd overall, 2^nd in Michigan)
• Arnav Mahajan (34^th overall, 3^rd in Michigan)
• Omer Siddiqui (138^th overall, 10^th in Michigan)

The four-hour test that comprises the second round will be given in March.

On Saturday, February 25 ten middle school mathletes represented DCDS in the Oakland County MATHCOUNTS Chapter competition against some tough opponents. Congratulations to the following students for the hours of hard work they put in and representing our school admirably:

• Christopher Bernitsas '22
• Jordan Dong '22
• Yiou Jiang '21
• Nathan Schechter '21
• Connor Shi '21
• Zaid Siddiqui '21
• Adam Sun '21
• Jeffrey Yang '21
• Margie Yang '21
• Himani Yarlagadda '23

Our top performers will advance to the state competition on March 11 at the GM Technical Center - congratulations to: Zaid Siddiqui (7th place) and Yiou Jiang (10th place).

Two Middle School teams competing in the Oakland County Science Olympiad tournament. The primary team competed for points and the alternate team competed for practice. Our primary team earned seventh place in the county and the alternate team earned sixth in their alternate category.

Congratulations to the following:

Primary Team

• Sunny Challa '22: 5th place, “Fast Facts,” 7th place, “Hovercraft”
• Maria Cheriyan '21: 2nd place, “Write It Do It,” 5th place, “Ecology,” 6th place, “Road Scholar”
• Allen Gu '21: 1st place, “Source Code,” 5th place, “Bottle Rocket,” 7th place, “Meteorology”
• Yiou Jiang '21: 5th place, “Reach for the Stars,” 5th place, “Bottle Rocket”
• Arjun Janakan '20: 1st place, “Source Code,” 5th place, “Microbe Mission”
• Abhinav Reddy '22: 5th place, “Microbe Mission,” 6th place, “Food Science,” 7th place, “Hovercraft”
• Arnav Shah '21: 7th place, “Crime Busters”
• Maria Sicilia '21: 5th place, “Ecology,” 8th place, “Optics”
• Zaid Siddiqui '21: 5th place, “Fast Facts,” 7th place, “Meteorology,” 8th place, “Rocks & Minerals”
• Jenny Tian '21: 5th place, “Reach for the Stars,”7th place, “Crime Busters”
• Brian Yang '20: 2nd place, “Scrambler,” 3rd place, “Wright Stuff,” 5th place, “Dynamic Planet,” 8th place, “Optics”
• Jeffrey Yang '21:2nd place, “Scrambler,” 3rd place, “Wright Stuff”
• Raha Zaman '22: 2nd place, “Write It Do It,” 6th place, “Road Scholar”
• Razeen Zaman '22: 7th place, “Towers,” 8th place, “Rocks & Minerals”
• Yurui Zhang '20: 5th place, “Dynamic Planet,” 6th place, “Food Science,” 7th place, “Towers”

Alternate Team

• Madison Ashby '20: 4th place, “Fast Facts,”5th place, “Food Science”
• Sofia Balanay '22: 4th place, “Fast Facts,” 5th place, “Write It Do It”
• Pranav Balasubramanian '22: 5th place, “Food Science”
• William Beachum '23: 5th place, “Write It Do It,” 6th place, “Mission Possible”
• Rosalyn Li '22: 1st place, “Microbe Mission,”3rd place, “Hovercraft,” 4th place, “Disease Detectives”
• Ruisi Ma '23: 5th place, “Experimental Design,” 6th place, “Dynamic Planet”
• Shrihan Nalamati '22: 5th place,“Meteorology”
• Aryasai Radhakrishnan '23: 1st place, “Rocks & Minerals,” 2nd place, “Invasive Species”
• Faraz Rahman '22: 3rd place, “Hovercraft”
• Akash Raman '22: 2nd place, “Anatomy”
• Sidharth Reddy '21: 5th place, “Meteorology”
• Adam Sun '21: 5th place, “Experimental Design,” 6th place, “Towers,” 6th place, “Bottle Rocket”
• Himani Yarlagadda '23: 1st place, “Rocks & Minerals,” 2nd place, “Anatomy,” 4th place, “Disease Detectives,” 2nd place, “Invasive Species”
• William Zheng '21: 1st place, “Microbe Mission,”6th place, “Mission Possible”
• Aeres Zhou '23: 5th place, “Experimental Design,” 6th place, “Dynamic Planet,” 6th place, “Bottle Rocket”

Congratulations to Sajjan Desai '18 for his award-winning essay The Role Optimism Plays in Meeting Challenges recognized by the Birmingham Optimist Club. After reading his essay to the club members at a gathering at the Birmingham Community House, Sajjan received a $500 check along with a plaque and gold medal.

Congratulations to Grant Peterson '18 for his third place finish in the same contest.

On Saturday, March 12, the Michigan Math Prize Competition (MMPC) Awards Banquet was held at Eastern Michigan University. The banquet honored all Top 100 finishers in the State. Twelve DCDS students finished in the Top 100 (a total of $2000 in scholarships were earned by the medal winners). The results are listed below and additional details can be found with the Top 100 posted results by looking for the results for the Top 100 Competitors of the 60th MMPC posted on the page. http://www.emich.edu/math/mmpc/results.php

Congratulations to the following:

• Anna Sun, '19 - 91^st place
• Collin Wang, '19 - 84^th place
• Jason Zeng, '20 - 64^th place
• Maddie Yang, '19 - 51^st place - bronze medal
• Helen Xu, '17 - 44^th place - bronze medal
• Gene Chu, '18 - 39^th place - bronze medal
• Kevin Jiang, '18 - 37^th place - bronze medal
• Arnav Mahajan, '17 - 23^rd place - bronze medal
• Sahil Suneja, '19 - 22^nd place - bronze medal
• Tony Zhao, '18 - 15^th place - bronze medal
• Justin Jingchen Lee, '18 - 14^th place - bronze medal
• Omer Siddiqui, '17 - 12^th place - bronze medal

In celebration of March is Reading Month, the Middle School is hosting a different author each week in the library’s Writers’ Lounge. Students have already worked with Kresge Literary Arts-winning poet Chace Morris, Hollywood screenwriter and novelist Holly Goldberg Sloan, and graphic novelist Jim Ottaviani. Students will learn about writing for marketing and social media in the last workshop. Additionally, students and teachers have been issued a March Reading Challenge by Mrs. Cheri Dobbs, the Middle School Librarian. There are 12 challenges, and the goal is to complete at least four of them in March.

Congratulations to the six National Scholastic Art winners! The gold medal recipients are invited to Carnegie Hall to receive their medals.

Silver Medal Portfolio

Gold Medal Individual

Silver Medal Individual

March 18, 2017 - The Upper School Model UN Club participated in the Michigan State University Model United Nations conference. The group had a terrific performance! The following students won individual recognition: Grace Endrud ’20, Best Delegate in the Special, Political and Decolonization Committee representing Niger; Brian Hu ’18, Best Delegate in the Economic and Financial Affairs Council representing Russia; Richard Li ’20, Best Delegate in the African Union representing the President of the Republic of Mali; Ruhi Nayak ’19, Best Delegate in the Crisis Committee, 1939: Land of the Rising Sun, representing the Commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service; Nick Sicilia ’19, Honorable Mention in the Crisis Committee, 2099: Survival of the Martian Colonies, representing the U.S. Director of Mining; Destiny Agomuoh ’18, Book Award in the World Health Organization representing Niger; Julie Jaipati ’19, Verbal Commendation in the Commission to Restore Detroit representing Brenda Lawrence.

In addition to the recognition of these individuals, DCDS was also awarded the honor of Best Small Delegation for the MSUMUN conference. Delegation members include: Destiny Agomuoh ’18, Ankur Bansal ’18, JaeYoung Chang ’18, Kevin Chang ’19, Grace Endrud ’20, Maheen Haq ’20, Brian Hu ’18, Julie Jaipati ’19, Nate Kim ’18, Richard Li ’20, Chaitanya Manam ’19, Ruhi Nayak ’19, Sreeram Panicker ’19, Anisa Pezeshki ’18, Milind Rao ’17, Henry Schwartz ’18, Nick Sicilia ’19, Michael Stevanovich ’19, and Ashwin Surapaneni ’19.

Congratulations to all!