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Miami Palmetto High School senior Katarina Slazas is a badminton champion. She has three GMAC singles titles.
“If I win this year, I’ll be the first to win four in Women’s Singles,” she says.
She’s also been the Miami Herald Badminton Player of the Year for the past three years.
She started playing badminton in freshman year and won the majority of her matches. The winning has continued. She’s also won the districts championship but couldn’t move on to regionals or state championships because badminton is only played in Miami-Dade.
She’s team captain for the Palmetto team that has won the GMAC championships all three years.
Slazas also plays soccer.
“I’ve been starting center back for girls’ soccer for the last two years,” she says. “I’ve been playing soccer since I was seven.”
Slazas has been a Miami Herald All Miami-Dade Soccer third team honoree. When she isn’t playing sports, she’s playing the piano.
“I’ve been playing since I was five,” she says. “When I was one, I was put into a music program, where I was learning music theory and the glockenspiel. From that I transitioned to piano.”
At the end of every year, she takes part in the National Piano Guild competition. She plays ten pieces and scales and cadences from memory in front of a judge.
“They’ll give you grades from dynamics to articulation,” she says. “This was my 13th year and I’ve gotten a superior score every year. After 10 years of superior scores I was awarded the Paderewski medal.”
She also participates in piano recitals to raise money for underserved communities. The Friends of South Florida Music organization raises the money for childhood music in underserved communities in South Florida.
Her community service includes participating in Baynanza beach clean-ups and she donates food to charities. Much of her public service was done through the Girl Scouts.
For her Gold Award project, which is still in the planning stages, she plans to spread awareness about macular degeneration.
“Macular Degeneration is an area of interest to me because many people are not familiar with it,” she says. “It can often be caught and treated early if people know the signs, but if not, it can lead to much worse outcomes such as partial or complete blindness. My grandmother lost her sight to macular degeneration, and it is a condition that my family has experienced firsthand.”
Once her plan is complete, she will submit it to the Girl Scout Council.
She’s completing the plans at the same time as she’s been working on her college applications.
In college, she wants to major in computer science.
“I have always held a strong interest in technology and coding,” she says. “I am currently taking the second of the two AP computer science classes at Palmetto. Of the languages I have learned so far (Java, JavaScript, and Python), my favorite is JavaScript. I really like being able to make my own apps through coding, putting the puzzle pieces together to create something unique.”
She’s applying to Harvard, Yale, Purdue, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Florida.
At Palmetto she’s the president of Women in Tech.
“As president I hope to increase membership in the club through further promotion, explaining to other women at Palmetto what types of technology are included and why they should participate,” she says. “I also want to continue some of the activities from last year, like interactive coding activities that create fun images. Since the club has been relatively small in recent years, I want to revitalize it and help it grow.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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