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Palmer Trinity School rising junior Claire Assalone spent this past year working as the girls’ soccer team manager. She plans to do it again next year.
“This is my first year as the girls’ varsity team manager,” she says.
Her job has many aspects including helping with logistics at the games. She deals with the water bottles, getting errant soccer balls that went out of bounds, and making sure the girls had soccer balls to play and practice with.
She attended the majority of the games, even the away games.
Assalone became team manager because she couldn’t play soccer due to an injury.
“I had fractured my foot a couple of months prior,” she says. “It still hurt. And I wasn’t at my best at soccer, but I wanted to be a part of the team. I went to the coach and said I wanted to be a team manager.”
She fractured her foot competing in the long jump for the track and field team. Assalone recovered enough this spring to race in the 100, 200 and the 400 sprints as well as team relays. She’s been racing since sixth grade. Assalone is a strong runner, having medaled in the 100 and 200 races, usually placing first or second.
“Last year I didn’t get much time to race because of my foot,” she says. “I didn’t really practice that much.”
Assalone met personal record goals in her events this year on a regular basis. The girls’ track and field team took second place at Districts and the 4 x 100 relay team competed at regionals.
Although she ran track again this year, she gave up competing in the long jump.
Her volunteer work includes Achieve Miami, the Saturday program at Caribbean K-8, where teens match up with elementary school children to help them improve their reading and writing. She went with her brother.
When she attended, she usually worked with one child.
“They would pick out books and we would read with them, and we would do an activity with them,” she says.
One activity was a scavenger hunt in the room.
“When we were doing the activity, they wrote down things that the coordinator did,” she says. “We were playing games, and they were told to write something on a page.”
At Palmer Trinity, she’s a member of the Afri Kids Club. The club advisor has a connection with someone from Africa, in Tanzania.
“We raise money at school to donate to them,” she says. “We do bake sales.”
She’s also in the Palmer Trinity baking club, called Recipe for Change.
“I really like to bake in my free time,” she says. “I sent in my request to start a club. We ended up having to merge with another group who did food. We host bake sales. We talk about different recipes. At meetings, we talk about different baking things. We bring in things we baked and everybody tries them. We have judges and they rate them, and we say what they could do better in.”
One of the bakes sales is at the Palmer Trinity International Festival.
“We ask the people in the club to bring things they baked or bought but we prefer they bake,” she says.
Assalone’s personal specialty is banana bread. She also bakes cookies and a variety of muffins.
“I’ve made blueberry, I’ve made banana muffins, and lemon poppy seed muffins,” she says.
“I usually stick with chocolate chip cookies, but during the holidays, I make a spiced gingerbread type cookie that my brother likes.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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