Fourteen year old senior excels in chemistry olympiad

By Abby Drake Staff Writer Raghu Achukola is 14 and has already accomplished more than half of the Coppell High School senior class. “I do not regret skipping ahead so many grades, it just happened and I just kept learning,” Achukola said. At 10, Achukola found his passion for chemistry during his freshman and sophomore year with. Chemistry Sally Urquhart. “I knew by his sophomore year that he had a lot of talent and that he is good at chemistry,” Urquhart said. Achukola’s most recent accomplishment is his success in the National Chemistry Olympiad were he scored high enough to advance to the next round. The National Chemistry Olympiad is a multi-leveled competition that was created…

Academic Decathlon team makes great strides at state competition

by Divya Kumar News Editor The Coppell High School Academic Decathlon team has performed excellently within the span of this school year, practicing steadfastly throughout the beginning semester in order to compete at the state competition. All this hard work, it appears, has paid off in the end for the AcDec team, who was able to present itself, and Coppell as a whole, wonderfully at their state meet in Houston. Out of the 40 teams competing, the CHS AcDec team placed 18th. This position was a huge improvement from last year’s rank of 24. Though all members performed exceptionally, the two who stood out the most were juniors Mitu Bhattatiry and Raghu Achukola. Bhattatiry medalled…

CHS finds magical new sport in Muggle Quidditch

by Divya Kumar News Editor With the imminent arrival of a new Harry Potter theme in Universal Studios in Orlando and the separation of the final movie into two parts, it appears that a desire to cling onto the magical phenomenon continues to prolong the end of its existence in pop culture. The relatively recent morphing of the well-known Quidditch game into a sport playable by non-magic folk, or “Muggles”, can be noted as yet another way Harry Potter is being transformed from something simply on paper to part of daily life. The origins of Muggle Quidditch are traced back to Middlebury College in Connecticut, where the first team was formed in 2005. The following…

Coppell AcDec teams attends mock competition

By Divya Kumar News Editor This weekend, the Academic Decathalon team at Coppell High School traveled to Rockwall High School in order to participate in a mock competition. This competition was held in order to give the newer AcDec students experience before their first time, and served as an opportunity for the older students to hone their skills. This year, Rockwall was home to 14 teams preparing to compete later in the regional compeition in January, one being from Arizona and the other 13 from various regions in Texas. Out of all the AcDec students, junior Raghu Achukola took first place in math and science, third place in music, and fourth place overall in the…