Students excel in academics, sports, vocabulary

Intermountain Catholic

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Jugde Memorial Catholic High School co-valedictorian Kaitlyn Kelley receives congratulations from Rick Bartman, principal, after receiving her diploma. She will attend Worcester Polytechnic Institute.IC photo by Christopher Gray

SALT LAKE CITY — Noel Hollingsworth, a 6’9"senior, played center on the 2008 Judge Memorial Catholic High School State Championship basketball team. Hollingsworth was also a member of Judge Memorial’s 2006 State Championship basketball team.

"This is the first time in the history of Judge Memorial to have two state titles in basketball within such a short time, and it means a lot to me," said Hollingsworth. "The Bulldogs also went undefeated in Region 10 for the third straight year.

Kaitlyn Kelley, Judge Memorial Catholic High School’s co-valedictorian, qualified for the National Vocabulary Championship competition in Burbank, Calif., which was held March 11.

Hollingsworth said the two state championships were exciting and a nice feeling. He will attend Brown University this fall.

"Hollingsworth was recruited on his academic ability as well as his ability to play basketball," said James Yerkovich, Judge Memorial head basketball coach and vice principal. "He is brilliant. He is off the charts on test scores. He carries a 3.96 grade point average, and he is an outstanding player. Some people forget the fact that Hollingsworth was very instrumental as a sophomore on the 2006 state championship team. He came in many times and picked up the level of play. In his senior year, he was certainly the hub of our team. Everybody had to be so concerned about him that it opened up things for other players.

"Hollingsworth played the best her ever played at the ACIT tournament in Cumberland, Md.," said Yerkovich. "He played great. Hollingsworth played against two big time recruits from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in one game, and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in the next game, and he dominated both of them. He more than doubled their scoring, and doubled them in rebounding. I think of all the awards he has received, in my mind, the most prestigious is his First Team All ACIT award. He was one of the first five members of the All ACIT team. It is the most prestigious award because it is such a big tournament.

"For a combination of athletic talent and academic talent, he is about as good as it gets," said Yerkovich.

"I have had a great career here at Judge Memorial and accomplished most of my goals," said Hollingsworth. "I am really happy that I will be in the state record books for three separate rebounding records. In my senior night I have 27 rebounds in a game, which is sixth all time; in my career record, I am seventh all time in rebounds, and this season I was eighth best season all time."

Hollingsworth earned these records as the center by rebounding and playing post defense and preventing players from getting easy baskets. He also scored down low in the block.

Hollingsworth received a scholarship based on a combination of extremely good academics and athletics.

"Academics are really important to me," said Hollingsworth. "Being able to play in the Ivy League and play basketball at Brown University is something I have been working for my whole life. Now I am just going to keep working to have a good career there too.

"I played basketball for Salt Lake Metro, a club team, during the summer against the kind of competition I will face at Brown University because we traveled everywhere," said Hollingsworth. "We went to Las Vegas, Pittsburg, Los Angeles, and Kentucky. Everyone who plays on those teams wants to play college basketball, so it is pretty competitive. Those are the teams who receive exposure and are the teams college coaches are watching. Playing in the ACIT Conference also gave our team some good experience. I thought I played really well in that tournament. It was a good chance to play in that environment. The summer is slower, and not quite as fast a pace.

"I learned from Coach James Yerkovich, that basketball is really a team-based game. ‘We’ is printed on all our shirts. The main thing he teaches is about working with others in the community and how community is going to be important in our adult lives."

Hollingsworth also won two matches to advance to the state semi-finals of the 3A state tennis tournament, in which Judge won the state title. He plans to major in electrical engineering at Brown University.

Kelley said "Judge Memorial was involved in a school-wide on-line vocabulary test," said Kelley. "The top scores in the on-line test in the state were able to go to the Marriott Hotel in Orem for another test. There were only six people who showed up and five of them were from Judge Memorial. In that test, I qualified for the national test. As a result, I won a free trip and an opportunity to compete in the national test. My mother went with me. It would have been more interesting if we had not been there before."

Kelley said in the national vocabulary championship, there were 10 heats of five people, so 40 people were eliminated in the first round, of which she was one. It was multiple choice questions on a touch screen. You are looking at words trying to figure out what they mean.

"One of my questions was, which of the following is not a piece of armor? The questions were about a multiple of subjects, and we only had three seconds to answer," said Kelley. That was a bit stressful. The girl who won the entire competition was in my heat, and she actually missed a question, and in other heats they had gone through 20 questions with no one missing a question. So the winner of the whole contest missed a question in my heat, so I felt pretty good about that."

Kelley said in the second round, the contestants had to buzz in to answer questions. For example, which one of these three words does not belong in this category. If they answered three correctly they advanced to the next round. So 10 people advanced. There were five people in the final round, and they had to identify something about a word after hearing a long sentence, such as which word comes from a Latin root meaning something.

"It was really cool it get to go to the competition and be in the top 50 vocabulary students in the nation," said Kelley. "That was an honor."

Kelley will attend Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass.

"It is a small college, and I like the campus, and I can swim there," said Kelley, who also participated on Judge Memorial’s swim team and was president of the Latin Club.

"I swim the sprint freestyle, the 50 and 100 freestyle.

"I plan to major in aerospace engineering," said Kelley. "I like things that fly. I have always been interested in the NASA, space exploration, and the space shuttles. I had an early fascination with the stars. I liked to look at the stars. My parents would take me outside to teach me where the constellation Orion was located. I had a telescope for a while, and I remember watching a lunar eclipse when I was young."

Kelley said studying aerospace is as close as you can come to becoming an astronaut, and she plans on applying to becoming one.

"Kelley is focused and driven in swimming and in everything and anything she does," said Matt Finnigan, Judge Memorial swimming coach and director of community relations. "She has come so far in the two or three years we have worked with her. She sets goals and objectives for herself, and she trusted in me as her coach, to tell her how good she could be. She bought into that, and her improvement was fun to watch. She wants to swim in college and is excited to move forward. With a little work in college she could become a very good breast stroker, which would enhance her sprinting. She is ready for the new horizons. She is an amazing person.