Listen in the hallways and all of the sudden people are yelling ‘Tweet me!’ at their friends.

I’ve been a part of the #Twitterverse for almost a year and I figured that, as a social network, Twitter would never catch on in BV Classic.

There have been students already into Twitter before the craze — students like senior Paige DuBay, who has been Tweeting since her sophomore year. Junior Clinton Webb has a massive following of 1,115 people.

DuBay said Twitter first interested her because she had the option of following celebrities on Twitter. She even began to prefer Twitter over Facebook.

“I feel less creepy on Twitter,” she said. “I love Facebook but there are a lot of different ways to see what people are saying to one another. It is easy to be a Facebook creep. But on Twitter it is just short and sweet; it is just random thoughts.”

Webb said he created a Twitter for one reason — to follow Lady Gaga.

“Lots of Lady Gaga fans are on Twitter,” Webb said. “And we all just follow each other.”

@paigeynicole is following 70 people and has 196 followers.

@HausofClinton is following 1,392 and has 1,115 followers.

DuBay said her favorite person to follow is Vinny Guadagnino from the Jersey Shore.

“He is my favorite celebrity to follow,“ she said. “Everything he says is hilarious.”

Webb said he normally tweets about Lady Gaga or random song lyrics.

With Twitter on the rise, DuBay said she isn’t too crazy about the phenomenon.

“With nobody knowing about Twitter, you could say whatever you wanted,” DuBay said. “Now you have to be careful what you say.”

Webb also said he prefers Twitter to Facebook.

“You can share anything on Twitter,” he said. “You won’t be judged.”

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She stretched out while shaking off the pre-audition jitters.

This was the day she had been waiting for — two years and running.

She loved the school — the campus, the vibe from the students and of course, the dance program.

Senior Jamie Florack found everything she was looking for in a school at TCU — most importantly a school with a great dance reputation.

Florack auditioned for TCU’s dance team on Jan. 22.

Her acceptance to the team will determine whether or not she will attend her dream school in the fall.

“The day before the audition I was a nervous wreck,” she said. “But an hour before I wasn’t so nervous — just excited to be there.”

After flying in to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport earlier in the day, Florack checked in at the studio and entered the dance room.

She eyed several judges walking the floor who would determine the fate of her dream.

“The judges were really intimidating to look at,” she said. “But at the same time, it felt like I could just concentrate because it was familiar to me — just class.”

The dancers started the audition at the ballet bar and Florack lost track of time. After that, dancers auditioned in either ballet or modern. Florack watched the other dancers’ technique to see where their strengths were.

“I felt like a lot of them were really well-trained in ballet,” she said. “Some you could tell that they were just born to do ballet and they were really good. When it came time for modern you could tell that the ones trained in ballet were losing their technique. That was an advantage for me because I’m not as strong in technique as some of those girls are.”

Florack said her acceptance to a college that offers a dance major is critical to her dream of one day owning her own studio. She plans to pair a minor in business with a major in dance to prepare for years of dancing in the future.

“I realized that I really love dancing and it wasn’t just a hobby or something I was doing for fun,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine myself not doing it. I realized if I wasn’t dancing, I wouldn’t be Jamie.”

The event hosted students from Johnson, Miami and Douglas County high schools and offered 27 events for competition.

Event coordinator Damon Feuerborn said he had the idea for the event after attending similar ones in the past.

“While I was [teaching] at Olathe, they did a similar event,” he said. “Then while I was at Blue Valley, they did one too. So when I became a professor here [JCCC], I decided it was a good option and a good event to have.”

The JCCC Competitive Technology Event offered a variety of contests.

Events like Dragster Design and Transportation Modeling were centered around cars, while other categories included fashion design and tower-building.

Feuerborn said he used his high school teaching experience to brainstorm events.

“Just by looking at things from my time in high school, and working with other teachers, we went through the possible events and found our 27 to start with,” he said.

He said they also considered demographics when planning categories.

“In the technological fields, females are kind of a minority,” Feuerborn said. “The fashion event was an effort to bring in some more girls. There was a male team too, which I thought was pretty good.”

Of the 17 BV students who attended the event, 12 placed in at least one event.

Blue Valley students placed first, second, third and fifth in the Dragster Design event.

The team of sophomores Nathaniel Dorr and Cordell Frazer placed first in the Structural Analysis event, in which competitors had to build a strong tower.

The freshman team of Eamon Mankle and Michael Thompson won second place in the Problem Solving Challenge.

While all events were judged using a 100-point rubric, different events were analyzed using different criteria.

Judging a competitor for a presentation-based event such as Music Production was focused more on subjective criteria, while events like Dragster Design were all about the numbers.

For example, in the Structural Analysis event, pressure was applied to the top of small wooden towers, and the structures were judged based on how much pressure they could take.

“Whichever [tower] smashes last, wins,” event judge Glen Davis said.

Mankle said the freedom to determine their events contributed to their success as a team.

“Each person got to choose what they wanted to do, unlike most schools,” he said. “For the competitions we were in, we dominated them and got first or second.”

Individuals must have graduated more than one year ago to be nominated. Athletes and coaches will be inducted.

Teams, in addition to individuals, can be nominated for the award.

Individuals qualify automatically by garnering first team All-State honors.

Non-automatic qualifying nominees are determined by the athletic council which consists of all coaches as well as Athletic Director Bob Whitehead and principal Scott Bacon.

Whitehead said special recognition a player received, such as being named to an All-EKL team or breaking school records, are taken into consideration for the Hall of Fame.

Each coach decides what the criteria will be to evaluate individuals in their sport.

“They [athletes] have to meet four out of five or six criteria, usually if they make the higher ones they will get the lower ones,” girls basketball coach Andy Unrein said. “Then we will look back and say ‘OK, now is that stringent enough?’ We had a lot of kids [get inducted] this winter and we will put in more in the fall.”

Whitehead said next fall’s induction class will include football players instead of having the sport nominate athletes at this time.

This year’s induction class includes 17 athletes in sports including volleyball, girls and boys golf, girls and boys soccer, girls basketball, wrestling, boys and girls swim and dive, baseball and softball.

The new inductees also include one athlete, 2009 graduate Lindsey Muller, who is being inducted for two sports: softball and volleyball.

Teams that got the nod include the 2008 5A State Championship baseball team and the 2005 5A State Championship boys golf team.

Teams automatically qualify  for induction by winning a state championship, which means both the 2010 football and girls tennis teams will qualify for nomination in the future.

All athletes:

Volleyball John Schaaf ‘03 Lauren Wismer ‘09

Lindsey Muller ‘08 Matt deFlon ‘03 Wrestling Lindsey Petrick ‘07 Erin Lewis ‘06                    Pat Ross

Golf Shay Alford ‘05 Keaton Baker

Jessica Wagner ’02 Basketball Baseball

Adam Blue ‘05 Brianna Eldridge ‘08 Nate Kerkhoff ‘08

Soccer Taylor Hanson ‘08 Softball

Craig Cook ‘07 Swim and Dive Lindsey Muller ‘08

Mohammad Ramahi ‘08 Parker Sergeant ‘06