On September 19th at Shawnee Mission South, Latin club had their discus event. Latin Club Vice President Junior Alex Chamberlin was there to participate.

“It’s an ultimate frisbee competition,” said Chamberlin. “It’s not like the discus the track team does. It’s a team sport where you and another team are competing to score touchdowns, kind of like in football, but there’s less stopping — unless the frisbee decides to fly off [and] out of bounds,” he said. “Basically, the goal is, through teamwork, to get all the way down the field and get through their fences, which can be pretty tough sometimes.”

Anyone in Latin club can participate in this event, and anyone in high school can be in Latin Club. Latin Club Secretary Senior Serena Nangia said she is very excited for this year.

“I joined Latin club because that’s just what you did when you joined Latin,” said Nangia. “It’s so much fun.”

Nangia said there are about 30 people currently in Latin club, 15 of which took part in discus.

Chamberlin said despite not doing any other sports, he enjoys discus.

“I heard there was going to be an actual [athletic part] to it,” said Chamberlin. “I didn’t do any other sports because I found them not as fun, but I went to one practice for discus and it was amazingly fun and everyone there had a great time.”

Nangia said that being in Latin Club offers her a new type of leadership position.

“My favorite part of Latin club is the officers’ meetings because as secretary I can become more of a leader in this club than I ever could in another club,” Nangia said. “I haven’t had the opportunity even in other clubs that I have leadership positions in to do nearly as much work because it’s completely student run.”

Despite Latin being a dead language, Chamberlin said it still holds great value.

“Some people might disagree with that, but I think [Latin is] extremely important to take because it’s something like 85 percent of words have Latin roots, and then when you get into academic language it’s like 90 percent,” he said. “There have been multiple studies that have shown higher ACT scores on the reading tests by taking Latin.”

If you’re interested, Latin Club meets one day a week once a month and senior Nathan Niederhauser is their president.

“I suggest everyone joins Latin club,” Nangia said. “You don’t have to be in Latin, and it’s just a lot of fun.”

Chamberlin also said he encourages students to participate in discus and Latin club, “The practices this year for [discus] have been amazingly fun.” said Chamberlin, “You don’t have to be extremely athletic to participate but the amount of fun you have competing out there with your peers is amazingly fun. On Latin club, I think Nathan said its best [when he said] ‘everything hard in Latin is in Latin class, everything fun in Latin is in Latin club.’”