Yesterday the students of the Middle School gathered in Thies Auditorium for the Middle School Awards Ceremony, looking back at their 2024–25 school year at Charlotte Latin School and celebrating some of their triumphs. 

Todd Ballaban, Head of Middle School, began by recapping the division’s athletic achievements: 95% of eighth graders and 92% of seventh graders played at least one competitive sport. While many of the division’s teams did very well, two of them excelled in the GCMSAA (Greater Charlotte Middle School Athletic Association) Invitational: the Navy Girls’ Basketball team placed second and the Wrestling team came in first.

Ballaban also celebrated the many MS students who received regional and national recognition in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and the sixteen MS students who were accepted into regional music honor ensembles. He noted that 18 members of the eighth grade class had participated in the play or musical for all three years of Middle School.

In addition, the student body had some impressive accomplishments in engineering, including the construction of a robotic walking table and participation in the SumoBot competition. He spotlighted eighth grader Julia R. A., who placed first in the technology category of the middle school division of the UNC Charlotte Science and Engineering Fair and was nominated for the Thermo Fischer Junior Inventors Challenge.  Her research focused on using AI to help detect breast cancer. 

The ceremony also revealed the winners of two significant Middle School laurels, the Mary Sue Patten Scholarship (voted on by eighth grade students) and the Alma Award (voted on by the entire Middle School student body).

With the caveat that the voting for both awards was close and that there were many worthy candidates, Ballaban announced that the winner of the Alma Award was seventh grader Lauren G. The award honors the Middle School student who shows the most caring attitude; thinks of others before self; demonstrates compassion; and shows concern for their peers, community, and family. He praised her as both an ideal student and an ideal friend, humble and helpful. “In a world where kindness seems to be a dying virtue, it is so nice to see a student put others before herself, choose respect over conflict, and focus on uniting instead of dividing,” Ballaban said. The Alma Award comes with a $500 scholarship for next year’s tuition at Charlotte Latin.

Julia Walthall-Eisman, Middle School Educational Technologist, presented the Mary Sue Patten Scholarship (named in honor of the longtime secretary of the Middle School), which goes to the student whom eighth graders think is kind to everyone and a good representative of Charlotte Latin, on and off campus. It comes with a $1,000 scholarship for next year’s tuition at Charlotte Latin. The winner was eighth grader Harriet S., described by one of her peers as “the living definition of kind.” Walthall-Eisman said that in her own classroom, she had seen how Harriet “is more than deserving of this honor” and that she “emanates warmth and joy.”