STATE CHAMPS!!

HCA added another state championship when our Varsity Volleyball team won it's first title, sweeping to a KSHSAA 2A Championship with at stirring victory over defending champion Claflin-Central Plains.  HCA began the day by knocking off the #1 seed Flint Hills (25-20, 25-20) before dominating Central Plains in the final (25-12, 25-15), avenging a loss in the 2015 final.

Charger Nation congratulates coaches Tom Slaughter and Kelley Bulger and the entire HCA Varsity Volleyball Team.  You made us proud!!! Soli Deo Gloria!!

 

HCA Welcome the new Charger Bus!!

At last year's Block Party fundraiser, God provided the funds for a beautiful new bus through the generous donations of HCA supporters.  And that new bus arrived just in time for school!!

HCA Becomes 1st KC Area Christian School to Offer PLTW

The U.S. Department of Commerce estimates that jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) will grow 17 percent by 2018—nearly double the growth for non-STEM fields. By 2018, the U.S. will have more than 1.2 million unfilled STEM jobs because there will not be enough qualified workers to fill them. STEM is where jobs are today and where the job growth will be in the future.

In the fall of 2014, HCA began the development of a new STEM diploma with a new elective course offering, Intro to STEM Topics.  In this course, students were introduced to 3D design through Autodesk Inventor, designing a variety of 3D objects including an F1 race car model.  Students then explored programming and robotics while designing and building robots to compete in a FTC style robotics challenge.  The course finished with an electronics module with students building a variety of electronics projects using the Raspberry Pi, a credit card sized Linux computer.  In the 2015 version of Intro to STEM Topics, students will print their race cars on our 3D printers and race them on our new 75', electronically-timed track.

This course was designed to introduce students to STEM topics in preparation for the introduction of the PLTW Engineering curriculum.  PLTW is the nation's largest provider of K-12 STEM solutions with over 8,000 schools in the US using their curriculum.  In August of 2015, when HCA began offering Introduction to Engineering Design, one of the foundational courses in the PLTW engineering track, it became the only parochial school in the Kansas City area offering the PLTW curriculum.

STEM @ HCA

HCA Cheerleaders Receive the Rock Chalk Spirit Award

The last weekend in July the Heritage Christian Academy cheerleaders attended spirit camp at the University of Kansas. This 3-day overnight camp consisted of 13 hours a day of learning cheers and chants, dancing, stunting, and team-building exercises.

Our HCA cheerleadering squad not only performed a high scoring routine; they were also voted as the sole high school squad to win the "Rock Chalk Spirit Award". This award is given to the team that excelled, was supportive, was always listening to camp instruction and was positive to all campers and KU staff.  In addition, Senior Brookie Reymond was awarded the individual Rock Chalk Award for her leadership skills.

CONGRATULATIONS to this group of ladies!

HCA @ State

Heritage just completed a successfully spring athletics season, participating in KSHSAA state competition in three different sports.



GOLF - The boys' golf team qualified for state for the second straight year at regionals, finishing third in our region with both Parker Allen and Jonathan Edmondson medaling as one of the top 10 finishers.  The next week they ventured to the state competition in Emporia where Parker finished with a 3rd place medal after a tiebreaker for second shooting a 73 in soggy conditions.







BASEBALL - The baseball team qualified for state for the second time in the last three years,
defeating rival Maranatha in an exciting regional final.  The next week they traveled to Great Bend where they lost a tough 3-0 game to state runner-up Medicine Lodge.









TRACK & FIELD - Freshman Kate Allen was HCA's first ever representative at the KSHSAA state track meet.  Kate qualified by winning three events at regionals - long jump, triple jump, and 300M hurdles.  At the state meet in Wichita, Kate medaled in all three events, finishing 5th in the long jump and 6th in the other two events.




CONGRATULATIONS to all of these athletes!!  We are proud of the way you represented HCA at state.

Radical Leadership

"But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." Mark 10:43-45

The passage above has been my "go to" passage whenever addressing leadership.  In these verses, Jesus succinctly presents a counter-cultural view of leadership.  The disciples had been arguing about who would get to sit on which side of Jesus in the Kingdom.  James and John started it, and we read that the other ten were indignant when they found out that James and John were talking about this, probably because they hadn't thought of it first!  It was in that context that Jesus taught them the difference between "lording" and "leading".  Lording involves exercising authority over others, leading involves serving others.

J Oswald Sanders in his classic volume Spiritual Leadership said this about this passage:  "Jesus is teaching us that that worldly conceptions of greatness and leadership cannot be carried over into His spiritual kingdom.  In that kingdom there is compete reversal of earth's values.  In heaven, gold is used for road-metal ....Not the number of one's servants, but the number whom one serves, is the heavenly criterion of greatness and the real preparation for leadership.  Greatness of exaltation is in proportion to greatness of service humbly rendered."

It was with delight that I observed HCA JrHi students recently partner with YouthFront to pack meals for their Something to Eat campaign, a crisis response meal-packaging plan that binds together the privileged and the poor.   Since 2009, this initiative has involved more than 20,000 people packaging more than a half-million meals to orphans in Haiti and Africa.  One afternoon in December, over 40 HCA students served together to package 4,160 meals for this effort, practicing the servant leadership that Jesus was talking about.  Service to the "least of these" is true leadership.

True Leadership in Action

When HCA was established four years ago, one of the academy’s first priorities was to develop
opportunities for students to be actively involved in service outside the school itself. Toward that end, Steve Adams, the Dean of Spiritual Life and Technology, met regularly with several parents who were passionate about this topic. It quickly became evident that they wanted to find a way for the students to develop long-term discipleship relationships through service rather than involvement in a series of one-and-done projects.

Simultaneously, in God's providence, a new ministry was starting in Johnson County focused on reaching out to unreached people in our community ... a ministry with a "neighbor's heart" - taking Jesus to people in need by extending help and hope. As HCA representatives talked with the leadership of this new ministry, Mission Southside, it became obvious that a partnership would be mutually beneficial.  In the spring of 2011, HCA began a student-led discipleship ministry to a group of elementary students in a local community.

"My passion is to see the kids respond to the message of Jesus for the first time. It's powerful to think that we can be a part of that,” said junior Adam Asselta.

Every Wednesday afternoon for the past four years, HCA students travel through this community on one of the HCA buses and pick up kids as they arrive home from school. After arriving at a local church, which has generously provided their facility, HCA students lead a Bible study and activity time for these elementary students.

This is truly a student-led ministry. HCA students prepare the weekly Bible studies, plan the activities, promote special events, and basically show love and compassion to the neighborhood kids each week. In addition, they recruit succeeding leadership from the student body for the sustainability of the ministry.

"More than anything else, I love seeing the smiling faces on the students as they see our bus arrive; they are so excited to see us,” said senior Emily Hocker. “It is so gratifying when we can see them grasping the Bible story, asking questions, being involved ... it makes it worth going every week.”