By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
With only one quarter remaining in the 25-26 academic year, schools across the Castle Country are balancing keeping students engaged in academics with reducing stress during this final push.
At Mont Harmon Middle School, this is accomplished through a wide variety of extracurricular activities for students of all different tastes.
Mont Harmon Middle School Principal Keith Palmer, along with two student athletes, Chet Fredrickson and Maximus Johnson, joined the KOAL newsroom to preview upcoming activities at the school.
Opening our discussion, Palmer took a detour to the arts, discussing the school’s upcoming production of “Quest!” “We haven’t been able to do shows for many years. We put one on at Christmas, and then they’re doing a spring one for the students who took the class in the spring. So we’re excited to have these students perform.”
Mont Harmon’s performance of “Quest!” is scheduled for April 10 and April 11, starting at 7 p.m. in the school’s auditorium.
He continued,” And it’s not a play that probably most people are familiar with, but I’ve watched them rehearse a little bit. It’s a fun play that I think people will enjoy if they come out, and as people come out and support it, it allows us to do more shows in the future. It helps us to build up that budget for a new class.”
Another new activity coming to Mont Harmon is a drill team, which will hold its inaugural season in the 2026-27 school year. “The high school coach came and talked to me, and was concerned that there was no feeder program. So we kind of explored those options and decided that it would really benefit some of our students who were not doing cheer to have another opportunity to dance and get ready to compete in high school. So we’re excited about adding that and having a new experience for some of our students.”
In addition to the arts and drill, Mont Harmon has, in recent years, built a dynastic program in its archery team. Palmer sang the praises of Coach Tom Lasslo,” It’s kind of the center of the creation of that in this community with Mr. Lasslo, and he just continues to coach these kids up, and they do awesome.”
Looking at the sport from the student perspective, Fredrickson shared what drew him to archery: “Probably being able to hang out with my friends and shoot archery.”
Johnson gave a look into what training looks like as the team prepares for competition,” So training for me, I usually think about the little stuff that counts. So basically we’re trying to make that front hand not move while we’re shooting and get a perfect release in.”
Johnson added,” The biggest challenge for me is trying to find aiming points so they would hit in the yellow or close to the 10.”
Moving away from the world of athletics and into academics, Palmer laid out some of the goals for the remainder of the year: “We’re trying something new this year, and we’re doing all of our testing in one week and trying to really put emphasis on that and not stretching it out over multiple weeks. So we go on spring break next week, then come back and have a big push in the first week of May. We’ll run a different schedule and do all of the RISE testing during that week, and hopefully see all the hard work come together and see how students do.”
Continued the Principal,” We’ve been working really hard on just changing expectations and things, and I don’t know that we’re all the way there, but we’ve been working hard, and hopefully it will result in some great test scores from some awesome students. So we’re just down to that final push.”
To stay up to date with Mont Harmon Middle School, you can visit the school’s website or Facebook page.