Former Mount Si student wins award
Published 5:18 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
Megan Kowalski, a 2003 Mount Si High School graduate, just finished her associate of arts and sciences transfer degree from Bellevue Community College (BCC) last week, complete with honors and a grade point average of 3.6.
The local unicycling champion was named the college’s “Student of the Year” and leaves BCC as the managing editor of the school newspaper, The Jibsheet. Kowalski, 20, has worked two jobs and taken a full load of college credits over the past year, graduating in two year’s time without having to take summer classes, an achievement few students of similar circumstance can match.
Kowalski moved to North Bend from Michigan with her family in 1997 after her father, Tom, got a job as a test technician for Boeing.
“I didn’t want to move at first,” she said, “but after being here a couple years, we figured out that it was much better.” The Kowalskis soon found their niche. “We were more integrated into the community through our unicycling group and that made a big difference,” Kowalski said.
Her mother, a kindergarten teacher’s aide at North Bend Montessori, was a big part of that by getting involved herself with the unicyclers. “She is the organizer, bookkeeper, secretary … she runs the show behind the scenes and is still involved with that now,” said Kowalski. “The following school year we got right into it … my sister first at North Bend Elementary. I went to pick her up from practice with my mom and the coach there, Alan Tepper, was like ‘you should try’ and I said, ‘OK.’ So then I got stuck on it. Two weeks later I was riding.” Her sister Kristin, 17, goes to Mount Si High School.
Kowalski later advanced to become captain of the demo team, setting up routines and helping younger riders learn to ride. Even though college and working forced her to give it up, after seven years of riding she was a level-seven unicyclist. There are 10 levels.
Her team, Panther Pride, is one of only a handful of such teams on the West Coast and regularly competes at national and international levels through the Unicycling Society of America, Inc. “I would say that we are the second best team in the country … there’s not many larger practicing teams,” Kowalski said. “I was the oldest on the team for a while.” As an older unicyclist, however, she never felt awkward or silly.
“When I was in the unicycle team, everyone thought like, ‘Oh, that’s such an elementary school thing to do.’ But since I was never in elementary school and did the unicycling thing, I didn’t have that mind frame, so that’s why I was OK to do unicycling throughout the [high school] years,” Kowalski said.
Her hobby came to a close last summer after she attended the nationals in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the International Unicycle Convention and World Championships (UNICON) in Tokyo, Japan, from July 23 to Aug. 1. At UNICON, she placed first in her age group in the individual artistic category, a noteworthy win considering the stiff competition she faced.
“I got on a plane to Japan without my parents, without my team, just me,” she said. “It felt good to finish Japan with a first-place medal. I think I really reached what I wanted.”
She had the chance to act as an event judge, too. “I got front-row seats and I got a free Coke every hour and I got free lunches every day. So that was good, since I didn’t really have any friends to sit with or anyone to really hang out with, I was able to judge.” It took patience to sit through the all-day events though.
“The Japanese riding style is so fluid and so artistic that it almost looks identical, so it was hard to tell routines from one another,” said Kowalski.
After returning from Japan, she entered her sophomore year at a fast pace, taking a full academic load and starting a new job working at the office of Dr. Cynthia Delano, a local Valley dentist.
“That was a temporary position that ended today,” she joked. Dr. Kelly Garwood started her own practice that October, taking over Delano’s practice. Kowalski, to her surprise, was asked to stay on and work as receptionist, taking phone calls, filing charts and confirming appointments.
“It actually worked out really well for my schedule all year,” she said. “I was able to go to school in the mornings, work in the afternoons for the dentist office and then work [at] The Jibsheet [later] in the afternoons … but this also meant that I had no time for unicycling, so after Japan, that was about it,” she said.
As the managing editor for the second-largest school paper in Washington, Kowalski was in charge of the day-to-operation and management of student journalists and editors. She started working for the paper in February 2004 as the assistant features editor, and later moved to the sports editor position. “I had no feel for sports, but I did help integrate the new [BCC] mascot,” she said. “There was a vote and we changed the name from the ‘Helmsmen’ to the ‘Bulldogs.’ So that was pretty exciting for my few weeks as sports editor.” She then moved into the arts editor spot for summer quarter of last year, and arranged for movie screenings for the paper. She was promoted to the managing editor position early last fall.
“I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to do it, but I knew I would get paid more and I wouldn’t have to do layouts as much, so I was really excited that that would work out for me. I liked the tasks that were involved better, like the content managing and managing the section editors, [but] still knowing how to do layout. It was a step up, but it was a change of pace and it required more time throughout the week.”
She also received the prestigious Colleen Demaris Writing Scholarship, which has paid for her tuition for the past school year. Based on two writing samples, this award is given out by the BCC Foundation and is based solely on merit. Partly as recognition for her hard work for the school and as a student, she was nominated and received the award for BCC “Student of the Year.”
“As for deserving the award, I can’t think of another student at BCC who’s put in as much work as Megan in the last year,” said Robert Baldino, editor in chief of The Jibsheet. “She graduated on time, excelled in a difficult position at The Jibsheet and worked a part-time job outside of school. It’s certainly more than I could have managed. Megan tries hard and wants to do good things with her life, so I hope this award helps her achieve her goals. I think she really found herself in that position and made her greatest contribution to the paper as managing editor … we were just a really great team, which isn’t always the case with two people who work together in difficult positions.”
In the fall she will be attending Western Washington University in Bellingham, where she’ll be majoring in English and education. Her eventual goal is to be either a high-school or community college instructor.
“I’m looking forward to it … [but] … this is going to be my first move away from my family. I’ve been living at home [while] going to BCC. So that’s a big change for me. “
She will miss the Valley and the people who live here. “You get to know a lot of people,” she said. “I’m surprised at how many people I’ve met … working at the dentist’s office and through meeting all the parents and kids through the unicycling group, and now all the people I’ve interviewed for the Jibsheet and everybody there … I’m really familiar with them, so I think I’ll miss the familiar faces.”
