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Page 7 Conestoga High School, Berwyn PA, 19312
Volume 76 No. 2
November 3, 2025
Girls ice hockey plays in Blind Hockey event
PagE 9
Page 10
www.spoke.news
Working on wellness
Conestoga addresses mental health concerns, students respond Nolan Talley/The SPOKE
Mental mindfulness: Seniors and Hope and Beyond club leaders Venu Dhanabal (left) and Krtin Ashokkumar (right) pet Fia, a member of the Tri-State Canine Response Team, to destress. They wore pink to participate in Wellness Wednesday’s spirit day theme.
By Sophia Cui, Rajan Saha and Nolan Talley, Co-Design Editor, Co-T/E Life Editor and Webmaster Throughout the weeks leading up to this school year’s second monthly “Wellness Wednesday” on Oct. 29, senior Krtin Ashokkumar, vice president of mental health club Hope and Beyond, helped plan the day. He collaborated with representatives from other mental health clubs and
school administrators to craft a day with activities focused on promoting student mental health, during which wellness clubs organize events and teachers avoid giving out tests or quizzes. “I think that mental health is extremely important for Conestoga students because the school is known for its academic rigor and competitiveness, which can lead to high levels of stress, and students often balance multiple responsibilities,” Ashokkumar said. “When that pressure builds, I think mental health can really suffer.” Recently, Conestoga administration has addressed students’
mental health in various ways, such as altering the bell schedule, creating a mental health committee with the school’s mental health clubs, adding a wellness day at the end of each month and hiring more school counselors. Last year, the district introduced the new mixed-model schedule, which implemented block scheduling and an hourlong “Lunch and Learn” period on Wednesdays and Thursdays. According to principal Dr. Amy Meisinger, one way Lunch and Learn aims to help alleviate stress is by creating a time for students to relax, study, meet
with teachers or friends, and attend club meetings. “Lunch and Learn is something that we put into place so that students (have) more opportunities for interaction and to get things and needs addressed, or to combat some of the stress that we saw because kids couldn’t meet with teachers because (they) didn’t have the same free period,” Meisinger said. Based on a survey The Spoke published on Oct. 16, 36% of student respondents listed Lunch and Learn as their first choice when asked to rank school initiatives on how beneficial they were
to their mental well-being. (see Fig. 2 on page 3). “On a block day, we have Lunch and Learn to do activities (related to mental health) within the classroom,” said student activities administrator Dr. Nicole Jolly. “Utilizing the block day is really helping the students (and is) giving them that time in the middle just to breathe, reset and move forward.” In 2023, the school administration implemented a day to focus on student mental health on the last Wednesday of each month. Last year, the day occurred on the last Tuesday of each month, due to it being the first year of the
mixed-model schedule. For this year, the school administration decided to move the day back to the last Wednesday of the month. The addition of the longer periods from the new block schedule allowed Wellness Wednesday schoolwide activities to occur during the 80-minute classes and Lunch and Learn. October’s Wellness Wednesday included a pink spirit day, mental health activities during homeroom and Lunch and Learn, and free stress balls and candy in the student services department. Behind many of these changes were larger national efforts to
increase mental health awareness for high school students. Counselor Jennifer Kratsa feels that Conestoga students’ mental health is part of a larger issue and the school aims to help students by providing resources to aid them if needed. “Mental health is not a problem at Conestoga only. This is a national problem that T/E is addressing,” Kratsa said. “And with the resources that we have, we’re able to have a lot of resources in place to help students, which is ultimately what we want.” Continued on page 3.
Athletic Fields Project set to open for spring 2026 sports season Vanessa Chen, Aanya Gandi and Ella Peng Business Manager and Staff Reporters
For the 2025-26 spring sports season, Conestoga will officially open all of the sports facilities included in its more than $28.7 million Athletic Fields Project. A ribbon-cutting ceremony occurred on Sept. 24 for the opening of the first turf field, which has since hosted several practices and games. Besides a newly resurfaced track, the rest of the facilities are still at varying stages of construction, and all are expected to open in the coming months prior to the start of the spring sports season. The completed project will include two new turf fields, one grass field, one softball field and batting cage, five tennis courts, and an athletic field house that will include locker rooms and training facilities. Although not part of the original project, the resurfaced track will also open. “It’s going to be a really great luxury for our kids to be able to walk out of school, walk out the door, just be at the field and play,” athletic director Kevin Pechin said. “In prior years, we’ve had to rent facilities. Now we’re on site, we’re on turf, we have the best surface available. Everything (will be) a one-stop shop.” The project’s planning process began in 2020, after the district conducted studies on comparably-sized schools’ athletic facilities and solicited feedback from Conestoga’s student athletes. From its research, the school board determined a sports facilities update was necessary and
received preliminary approval for the project in 2021. Members then worked with the athletic department and district-hired architectural firm to acquire land, get township permits and complete other logistics before officially beginning construction in April 2024. According to Pechin, the school originally expected to complete the project in time for the fall 2025 sports season, but the
timeline for opening was pushed back due to delays. “ There’s always delays when you have that many contractors on a site that are all contingent upon each other’s trades getting done on time,” Pechin said. “We’re fortunate enough that we’re finally up to speed, but that was sort of a challenge because it wasn’t just one company (but) a lot of different companies trying to piece
together this whole project so it becomes one solid puzzle.” Following the first field’s opening in September, the field hockey, soccer and football teams have held practices and games on the new turf. While the varsity teams’ games continue to take place on Teamer Field, junior varsity and freshmen teams have hosted games on the new field.
However, the athletic department has still scheduled various fall sports teams’ practices to take place on existing older fields or off campus. Junior and varsity football captain Brian Ford feels the new field is a welcomed upgrade to the current facilities and hopes to use it more often. “We’ve been practicing on the grass field near the student parking lot (and) it’s getting kind of old
because the grass is never really grown and there are a lot of dirt patches, so that can get annoying,” Ford said. “I wish we were able to practice more on the turf field that they just made and we’re not always able to do that, (but) I think it’s really cool and I’m glad that we finally are able to start using some of them.” In addition to the fall sports teams, the marching band will
Jeffrey Heng/The SPOKE
First of the fields: Student athletes join district officials to open the first field of the Athletic Fields Project. The ribbon-cutting ceremony occurred on Sept. 24 and the field hockey team practiced on the turf after.
move its practices, which are currently held in the student parking lot, to one of the new turf fields next year. In the spring, all of the fields will be accessible to athletes, and teams will continue to practice and play non-varsity games on them. Additionally, the school will be able to host meets and practices on the resurfaced track, as well as on-site practices and games for the tennis teams. “I’m really excited about the new tennis courts. I think that they’ll be really helpful in the sense that we’ll get to start practice earlier and it’ll just be easier for games overall,” said freshman Vivienne Eagleson, a member of the junior varsity girls tennis team. “Right now, varsity and JV play their games at the YMCA, but in the future, varsity will just play at the school and JV will play at the (YMCA).” According to Pechin, the completed project will also make scheduling practices and games significantly easier for the athletic department. Currently, the school transports many athletes, trainers and equipment offsite, but in the spring, there will be immediate access to on-campus facilities. “It was scary in the beginning, when this whole thing started, because it was a really, really big (project),” Pechin said. “What’s been the most rewarding is seeing it come to fruition. Seeing it go from all those trees and everything to the actual designing, the implementation, the putting down the turf. It’s been really impressive to see what it’s become. And knowing that our kids are going to have one of the best athletic facilities in District 1, if not the state, makes me feel very proud.”