3 La Jolla Higher seniors strike Gold in addressing overall health issues

With graduation roughly two weeks away, 3 La Jolla Higher College seniors have accomplished a different aim they’ve been operating toward: the Girl Scout Gold Award.

Ashlyn Brunette, Sophie Hochberg and Samantha Ponticello have completed projects for the Gold Award, the highest honor in Girl Scouts, which needs every girl who attempts it to determine a challenge, strategize a program to address it and conduct 80 hours of neighborhood service to execute the program.

The 3 girls — every of whom has been in Girl Scouts given that kindergarten — also had to perform with a mentor, place collectively and lead a group and create a final report on their projects.

“There’s a lot of leadership and teamwork involved,” Hochberg mentioned.

The awards ceremony is in June.

Ashlyn Brunette

To earn her Gold Award, Brunette presented a lacrosse camp for about 50 elementary- and middle college-age girls in her neighborhood following discovering that for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, youngsters she babysat felt isolated from close friends.

“[Their] parents have been noticing these unfavorable mental overall health effects,” Brunette mentioned.

She targeted the lacrosse camp for girls close to “the age exactly where I was joining sports teams and meeting new men and women,” she mentioned. The girls have been “missing a important time [for] joining sports.”

The camp taught lacrosse fundamentals and supplied “sit-down conversations with the girls about standard elements of mental overall health, like help groups, anxiety, managing time” and additional, Brunette mentioned.

Brunette, who played lacrosse for La Jolla Higher, mentioned she received good feedback from parents and plans to repeat the camp this summer time prior to she leaves to attend UCLA.

Sophie Hochberg

Hochberg, who will attend Vanderbilt University, is interested in majoring in psychology and wanted to program her Gold Award project in that field, tying in her really like of ice skating.

The outcome was a “mental overall health boot camp” for student-athletes.

“I realized that mental illness for sports players … is not some thing that is seriously addressed as a society,” she mentioned.

Hochberg gathered a sports psychologist, a meditation instructor and a nutritionist to speak to a group of about 25 of her peers about mental illness particularly for student-athletes — which includes strategies to cope with and overcome it.

“Everyone talked about their personal experiences if they wanted,” she mentioned.

Hochberg shared the data for 4 weeks at a booth at the La Jolla Open Aire Marketplace, providing out pamphlets with a summary of the tips gleaned at the camp.

Samantha Ponticello

Ponticello made a web page to guide men and women following a loved one particular suffers a stroke.

The website, afulllifeafterstroke.com, consists of recommendations for identifying the indicators of a stroke and tips for assisting an individual by way of the healing procedure.

Ponticello was moved to start off the project following her grandmother had a stroke.

The web page involves all the things Ponticello and her household discovered following the stroke, along with data from a stroke help individual.

She also hosted a booth at the Open Aire Marketplace to aid educate men and women about the indicators of a stroke and created posters illustrating the acronym Rapid for face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty and time to get in touch with 911.

“I place these about La Jolla for men and women to see,” she mentioned.

Ponticello mentioned stroke victims and their household members would method her at the marketplace to create down the web page address.

Ponticello, who will attend Syracuse University, mentioned she will update the web page as she learns additional. ◆