Alvirne High School

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Alvirne High School is located in the town of Hudson, New Hampshire with an enrollment of approximately 1,500 students from grades 9-12. Alvirne gets its name from a prominent Hudson family, the Alfred and Virginia Hill family, who left a large piece of property to the town in the early 20th century to provide land for the building of a high school. A contraction of their names (Alfred and Virginia) provides the name for the school.^{[citation needed]}

1 History
2 Academic programs
- 2.1 Wilbur H. Palmer Vocational-Technical Center
3 Athletics and other competitions
4 Band and Theater
5 Trivia
6 Notable Alumni
7 References
8 External links

[edit] History

The school almost never got built. A tract in the Hill's will that provided for the school required that the school open by a certain date. Behind schedule, the town held 4-H classes on horticulture in the yet-uncompleted building to meet the literal deadline.^{[citation needed]}

On September 8th, 1974 a large fire gutted the building, requiring most of it to be rebuilt. The agricultural school dates from the 1950's, and the modern vocational building opened in 1993.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Academic programs

Alvirne teaches a standard college preperatory course of study, but also features an extensive vocational education program.^[1]

Alvirne is also home to one of fewer than 800 units worldwide of the Air Force Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Wilbur H. Palmer Vocational-Technical Center

The campus is home to the Wilbur H. Palmer Vocational-Technical Center, a comprehensive vocational education center that features programs of study in finance, accounting, agriculture mechanics/diesel technology, banking, biotechnology, building trades, business, culinary arts, early childhood education, floriculture, health occupations, landscaping, marketing, natural resource management/forestry, production agriculture, and veterinary technology.^[2]

The program focuses on application based education, and centers around student-managed businesses. The center features several fully operational businesses that are open to the public. These include a bank, convenience store, and restaurant, day care, and the campus' most noticible feature, a fully operational dairy farm. The dairy farm has cows, chickens, goats, and a barn on campus.

[edit] Athletics and other competitions

The mascot is the Bronco. Alvirne fields athletic teams in baseball, football, cheerleading, cross country, golf, soccer, volley ball, wrestling, tennis, softball, basketball, and track. Alvirne High went many decades without a football team, despite being one of the largest high schools in the state. It had long been rumored that the Hills' only son had died during a football game and the school did not conduct a football program out of respect. Alvirne focused on its soccer program, dominating the state by winning many High School championships. After the 1974 fire, some residents questioned if the school should continue its "no football" tradition since the town would be rebuilding the school. It was assumed that such a stipulation had been put as a condition of the high school's charter. When it was learned that no such condition had ever been recorded, local supporters encouraged the formation of a football team. In fall of 1994, Alvirne High School fielded its first JV football team, with varsity play beginning in 1996. Recently, an ice hockey program was also added.

Alvirne High School should also be known for its achievements in academic competitions. It has won the Granite State Challenge championship three times giving the high school the status of being one of few multiple champions in this academic competition to have won every championship game appearance.^[3] They also compete in the FIRST engineering competition.^[4]

[edit] Band and Theater

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While Alvirne High School has always had a music program, the marching band and competitive concert bands began with the addition of Gerry Bastien to the music program 11 years ago (from fall 2006). The marching band began as a volunteer pep band for the growing football program, continuing to become respected state-wide for unique and challenging shows, even among larger high schools such as Londonderry High School and Salem High School. Throughout the years, the band has steadily grown from 32 members to well over 120, including a full-blown drumline, pit, and color guard. The concert band has also grown through the past decade, having gone to Walt DIsney World and marched down Main Street U.S.A. in 2002 and 2006, and traveling to places like Maryland, Ohio, New York, Virginia, and Canada. THe jazz ensemble (stage band) has become known worl-wide, travling with the marching band to Florida and going across the Atlantic to Germanyin 2001 and 2006. The entire music department has also been hosting its annual "Cabaret" each spring for the last decade, starting at one performance to an entire three-performance weekend that the public raves about the entire year.

The theater program really began again in spring 2001 when Jennifer LaFrance took over the program, then as a student teacher, and the following school year as an english teacher with the school. The first successful show to be put up in years, "Women and Wallace", took place in spring 2002. The year continued with "Arsenic and Old Lace" in the fall, and spring 2003 held "Rumors" in store. Fall 2003 was the first ever full musicalto take place at Alvirne, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown". That winter also held the first time in many years that Alvirne entered itself into the Regional New Hampshire Educational Theater Guild Festival with the play "Trifles." The year continued to a Spring of One-Acts: "Of Widows and Vegetables," "The Scheme of the Driftless Shifter" and "This is a Test." The summer kept everyone busy with Alvirne's first summer of Shakespeare, with the students meeting and rehearsing "Much Ado About Nothing" to perform in August 2004. To begin the new school year in Fall of 2004, there was "Harvey," and preparations for entering into the Reginal NHETG Festival again. The beginning of 2005 held auditions for the extremely successful play "Bang, Bang You're Dead." The troupe of 20 ventrous teenagers traveled to festival with this show and advanced from Regionals to States to New Englands, where the road stopped only because there is no competition to attend past the New England Drama Festival. THe troupe also played to the entire high school and to the 7th and 8th grades in the middle school, and put on performances at night for the public and even traveled to the Youth Detention Center in nearby Manchester, NH. While staying busy with the powerful BBYD, Alvirne's "Class Act" also put together another night of One Acts for Spring 2005. The summer kept everyone busy with Alvirne's first summer of Shakespeare, with the students meeting and rehearsing "Much Ado About Nothing" to perform in August 2005. Class Act continued its successful rise in the 2005-2006 school year with "The Odd Couple," "Incident at San Bajo" (NHETG to States Festival), and "The Jester", adapted by the students from the movie to the stage. Class Act again had its Summer Shakespeare, this time with "Midsummer Nights' Dream." The company continues to grow and become better each year.

[edit] Trivia

Alvirne was listed in the 1980 edition of the Guiness Book of World Records^[5] Alvirne High School math students built a slide rule measuring 320 feet 11.1 inches in length. It was completed in March, 1979. The record was broken later that year by students at the University of Illinois.