Students of all ages are invited to Reston Community Center’s Back to School Bash on Saturday, Aug. 13.

This free event will feature information from all kinds of family resources, including information about community agencies, resources and programs.

There will also be hands-on activities for kids, as well as  free vision screening, haircuts, raffles, and Fairfax County Public Library card registration.

Notes: This is a different event than the South Lakes High School Block Party, which takes place on Sept. 2.

RCC can still use volunteers for the bash. Sign up is available online.

The free event is at South Lakes High School, 11400 South Lakes Drive, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Initiative for Public Art Reston (IPAR), scheduled to formally dedicate this year’s South Lakes High School public art work, “Simon,” has canceled tonight’s unveiling due to the extreme heat. The dedication of the work had been scheduled for 7 p.m. No word on when new ceremony will take place.

This is the third year in a row SLHS students’ — the STEAM team — have merged art and science to turn a concrete slab into a temporary work of art. The sculpture is expected to remain for several months.

The students said they wanted to honor Reston founder Robert Simon, a supporter of public art, who died last year at 101. The students’ mission statement said “Inspired by Robert E. Simon’s Seven Principles of Community, the temporary public artwork shows that beauty, both structural and natural, is a necessity of a good life and should be fostered.”

“The house structure represents how the hospitality of Reston draws people into the community, its warm colors creating an inviting atmosphere, and the curtain and window illustrating Reston’s welcoming nature. Reston is our home, and the house serves as a representation of such.”

The students worked with SLHS art teach Marco Rando on the project for a year, presenting design concepts to the Initiative for Public Art Reston (IPAR) Public Art Committee for recommendation on the design to develop for the spillway, as well as presenting and receiving approval from the Reston Association Design and Review Board (DRB).

The sculpture was first fabricated by students in the school parking lot to formalize the engineering process. It was then deconstructed and given to RA construction staff to reconstruct on the concrete spillway of Lake Thoreau.

Residents of homes near South Lakes High School have been asking this week: what’s that noise?

It seems the loudspeakers at SLHS have been blaring in the middle of the night, causing some concern — and irritation — in the neighborhood.

“It sounded like a didgeridoo,” one neighbor wrote to Reston Now. Neighbors have said the PA system was blaring as late as 3 a.m. earlier this week.

A SLHS official says the school is looking into a possible break-in at the football stadium press box. The administrator said there were two incidents this week, the most recent one being Wednesday night. She did not provide more details.

Meanwhile, Fairfax County Police said they have not been notified of any potential crime at the school.

Public art is returning to the spillway on Lake Thoreau.

For the third straight year, South Lakes High School art students have created a structure that will decorate the lake for several months. The project has become an annual one after a local resident thought the concrete platform would be an ideal place for artwork, he worked with — and helped fund — the South Lakes students.

The students have incorporated elements of physics and engineering in all three works, thereby taking on the name “the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math).

The SLHS STEAM Team’s 2016 sculpture is titled “Simon.” It pays tribute to Reston’s founder, Bob Simon, who died last year at age 101.

From the project’s mission statement:

Inspired by Robert E. Simon’s Seven Principles of Community, Simon shows that beauty, both structural and natural, is a necessity of a good life and should be fostered. The house structure represents how the hospitality of Reston draws people into the community, its warm colors creating an inviting atmosphere, and the curtain + window illustrating Reston’s welcoming nature.

Reston is our home, and the house serves as a representation of such. The pieces radiating out from the center express an organic shape that changes the way the structure is viewed to communicate something that is less industrial and more attune to nature and the form it takes, like roots of a tree.

The gradient emphasizes the diversity of the people within our community, who come from many different walks of life but still intend to be part of one single entity. The white accents draws the eye towards the structure and represents the bright impression of the inside view.

The project installation began Wednesday and will continue Thursday. The sculpture will have special evening lighting that will make it visible in the dark, said SLHS art teacher Marco Rando.

There will be an opening reception/dedication of the project on Monday, July 25.

South Lakes High School senior Carlos Lenz won two top awards at last week’s second annual Virginia High School League (VHSL) Film Festival.

Lenz won Best Documentary chosen by the Grand Jury for his six-minute film, Papa Fred, which follows Lenz’s grandfather, Fred Gedrich, a runner who has completed hundreds of races, as he faces cancer treatment.

“What’s remarkable to me is he never lost his passion for running, or his spirit, despite being diagnosed with Stage IV lymphoma/leukemia just a few months earlier,” Lenz narrates in the film.

Gedrich ran everyday for 32 years. Watch the short film (above) to see what happened when cancer broke his streak.

“It was like a combination of me looking for an idea and my grandfather recently being diagnosed with leukemia,” says Lenz. “He wanted to have his story kind of told. … It was an interesting task to undertake and very challenging. I believe everything worked out as a result.”

Lenz has acted in plays at SLHS, but says his real passion is film. He has taught himself the basics of filmmaking and has been making movies since he was young, he said. He will study film at George Mason University next year.

Lenz also won the top honor in the Best Commercial-Public Service Announcement chosen by the Grand Jury for Be the Difference, about suicide prevention.

Other winners from Fairfax County Public Schools included  Shaun Saleih and Sam Sikora of Robinson Secondary School, Audience Choice Documentary for Ram Pride, and Shank Rai of Annandale High School, Audience Choice Commercial-Public Service Announcement for McDonald’s All Day Breakfast.

Former NBA star Grant Hill stopped by his alma mater, South Lakes High School, on Tuesday.

SLHS girls basketball coach Christy Winters-Scott, a longtime friend of Hill’s since they both played at South Lakes in the late 1980s, tweeted this picture of Hill and some of the current SLHS girls basketball players.

GREAT to see @realgranthill33 today at southlakeshs What a fabulous surprise!!! #GoSeahawks… https://t.co/w9HVoatEmL

— ChristyWintersScott (@ChristyWScott51) June 7, 2016

Hill grew up on Lirio Court in Reston and attended Terraset Elementary, Hughes Middle and South Lakes. He was two-time All-American at Duke and played for four teams during his 19-year pro career. Hill retired last year and is a basketball announced for CBS and Turner Sports. He also is an investor in the Atlanta Hawks.

Photo Courtesy Christy Winters-Scott

The nearly 500 members of South Lakes High School’s Class of 2016 are heading for dozens of colleges, as well as military service and the workforce next fall.

While the greatest number of college students will attend universities in Virginia, there will also be former Seahawks studying from coast to coast.

Below is a list of where students are enrolled, courtesy of SLHS’ career services office.

Want to see how some of the numbers compare to the Class of 2015? Revisit this list from last year on Reston Now. Note: We plan to have numbers from Herndon High School next week.

South Lakes College Matriculation, Class of 2016

South Lakes High School’s theater department has earned six Cappie award nominations for its production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

The Cappies, “Critics and Awards Program,” is a program where high school theater and journalism students are trained as critics. Students attend shows at other schools, write reviews, and publish those reviews in local newspapers. The nominees are selected by the vote of high school critics from 57 schools around the Washington, DC area.

South Lakes nominees include: Comic Actress in a Musical (Mely Megahed); Comic Actor in a Musical (Jalen Robinson); Featured Actor in a Musical (Jacob Kemp); Female Featured Dancer (Izzy Edgerton); Set Design; and Orchestra.

Two Herndon High performers were nominated for their roles in Legally Blonde: The Musical. Allie Lytle earned a nod for Lead Actress in a Musical for her performance as Elle Woods. Isatu Fofanah was nominated for Comic Actress in a Musical for her performance of Enid Haupt.

The 16th Annual Cappies Gala will take place on Sunday, June 12 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Photo: SLHS’ production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”/Courtesy SLHS 

Seniors Skander Ballard and Golden Kumi-Darfour’s record-setting performances paced the South Lakes High School track teams to Liberty Conference 6 titles.

Seahawks scored in 33 of 34 events in leading the girls team to its sixth consecutive title and the boys team to its third straight and eight out of the past nine. The SLHS track and field program now has 26 conference/district titles over the past eight years. Read More

J.C. Sipher scored five goals on Thursday to lead the South Lakes boys lacrosse team to a 10-4 regional quarterfinal victory over Centreville and seal a spot in the Virginia 6A state tournament.

The win was the 14th straight for the Seahawks (15-1), who are enjoying a historic run. The team has not lost since March 31, and in the last two weeks won its first Liberty Conference title, its first Northern Regional games, and now, a place at states.

First the Seahawks must play two more regional games, however. The way Virginia High School League brackets are set up, the top four teams in the region earn spots in the state tournament, which will be held June 6-11.

South Lakes next plays Woodson (which beat Langley on Thursday) at home on May 25, 7 p.m. The regional finals will be May 31 at the highest seed’s school. Robinson and Madison will play in the other Northern Region semifinal

Thursday’s game started out close, with the game tied at 1-1 in the first quarter. South Lakes then scored five straight and held the Wildcats scoreless until late in the third quarter to lead 7-3 by the end of the third.

South Lakes’ Nate Campbell also scored twice for the Seahawks. Goalie John Hughes had eight saves.

The South Lakes boys lacrosse team continued its run through the post season with a 15-7 victory over Stonewall Jackson in the Virginia 6A Northern Region tournament at Herndon High School Tuesday.

It was the Seahawks 13th straight victory. The only defeat for the 14-1 team this season was March 31 (a 12-6 loss to Stone Bridge). The Seahawks defeated Yorktown 8-5 last week for its first ever Liberty Conference title.

The Seahawks move on to play Centreville (11-5) Thursday night at South Lakes, 7 p.m.

Read more about the team’s turnround from last year’s 5-7 squad in this Washington Post story.

Thursday is opening night for the South Lakes High School’s interpretation of the classic comedy A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

The show, which features music by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, is about a slave’s pursuit of freedom. The slave, Psuedolus, has been offered his freedom on one condition — that he get his young master “the girl.”

Unfortunately, “the girl” has already been bought by an army captain, so Psuedolus is forced to do some very quick thinking. It’s a show of disguises, mistaken identities, long-lost children, and much more.

The musical, directed by longtime SLHS Theatre Arts teacher Maria Harris, will run for two weekends – April 28, 29, 30 and May 5, 6, 7.

Performances begin at 7 p.m. in the South Lakes HS Little Theatre. Presale price:  $8, student/senior; $10,adult.  Box Office price:  $10, student/senior; $12, adult.

Save $2/ticket by purchasing tickets in advance online. 

Photo courtesy of SLHS Theatre Arts

Kat Vlasova, a senior at South Lakes High School, is an emerging artist musician and photographer. She is also a self-proclaimed “avid Snapchatter and procrastinator.”

The latter skills got Vlasova a spot in the Tribeca Film Festival, which wrapped up Sunday in New York City. Vlasova’s short film, Pencils, composed using Snapchat, of course, was chosen as one of the winners.

The Tribeca Film Festival this year teamed up with the mobile app Snapchat on a competition to find “the best Snapchat Stories across the U.S.”

Ten winners were chosen, and the work will be featured in a special Discover channel within Snapchat.

The winners were chosen by a jury of  storytellers and avid Snapchatters, and the short films were screened during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Three will be featured on Snapchat.

Here’s Vlasova’s synopsis:

You know that time when you’re trying your best to study but you just keep getting distracted? And then you get so preoccupied with doing a random simple thing just to procrastinate on your homework such as looking for a pencil?

And then before you know it, you’ve chased a man out into space but your calculus is still unresolved and it’s already 10 p.m? Yeah, me too.

Tribeca says that this first-of-its-kind competition “casts a spotlight on the imagination and creativity of Snapchat users, while also touting the ephemeral messaging app as more than just something young people use to chat with one another. Snapchat wants to expand the way people approach it, similar to what happened with YouTube.”

Vlasova said in a YouTube interview she thought she was being pranked when the Snapchat folks tried to call her last month to tell her she was among the top 10.

“I was in shock,” she said.

When she finally realized it was no joke, she got to enjoy the perks of a filmmaker life, including a trip to the Tribeca Film Festival last week and the use of a new state-of-the-art Samsung camera to make another film in New York City.

“It is pretty surreal to be an 18-year-old girl being driven around in a black Escalade all over New York City to make a short film,” Vlasova said (see You Tube clip above to fill interview). “Making something in short amount of time, was definitely intense.”

Vlasova will have lots more New york experiences starting later this year. She plans to attend New York University in the fall.

Snapchat did not say how many entries it received or to provide any additional information beyond revealing that the winners will appear on the app starting today.

For more info on Vlsaova, follow her on Snapchat: alienpinecone;
Instagram: katalexvlasova; Tumblr: katvlasova.tumblr.com; and Twitter: AlienPinecone.

The SingStrong a Cappella Festival gets underway Friday at South Lakes High School, where there will be concerts, workshops, classes and more.

Among the pros at the 13th annual event: 10-time Grammy Winners, Take 6, innovators of the jazz gospel style; Diana Preisler, star of TV’s Pitch Slapped on Lifetime; Vivid Voices, the award winning contemporary choir from Germany, and winners at both the German Choral Competition and the Aarhus Vocal Festival in Denmark; Julia Easterlin,  the indie live-looper featured at Lollapalooza; MAXX Factor, International Barbershop Champion Quartet featured on NBC’s The Sing-Off; and Kaila Mullady, Current World Champion Beatboxer.

The event, which runs through Sunday, consists of five concerts, an auction, and over a dozen classes and coachings. Event profits support the fight against Alzheimer’s Disease, as well as local music programs. Fans can attend single concerts, or purchase discount weekend passes which offer savings of up to 50 percent.

Visit the SingStrong website to:

See the concert schedule

See the list of classes on such topics as recording techniques, stage presence, forming and directing an a cappella group, beatboxing, copyright law, and musical arranging.

Get tickets, which range from $15 to $35. Discounted passes are available for Seniors, Students and groups of 10 or more.

See lots more info on www.SingStrong.org.