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Academics

Western High School generally gets very good ratings academically, since it's students test scores are usually very high in some areas. The Western student average was over the state-wide average in Algebra and English for the End of Course Assessment (ECA) tests, including being 15 percent over the state average in English. Western offers a wide variety of different classes that many other schools do not offer. For instance, Japanese is one of the foreign languages that can be selected from if a student is going for a diploma with academic honors and needs to have some foreign language credits. The school also has great facilities for some of the auxiliary classes it offers, such as a huge kitchen used for Family and Consumer Sciences, and a first class kiln for pottery projects in many of the art and pottery classes. The fully loaded wood shop is also top of the line for Industrial Technology classes. The variety of classes inside the core state requirements is also evident in the fact that they have different levels of classes such as English and Science. There are choices the students can make as to which area of that core requirement they would like to pursue. For example, a student at Western can decide whether they would like to go the rout that includes two chemistry classes, or if they would like to take microbiology and then move in to the Advanced Placement (AP) biology class. Another example would be that once a student gets past the junior level of English, they can decide to take a senior English class, an AP English class, or an ACP English class which they pay for and then get college credit for at many colleges and universities.

Facilities

Western has also been known in recent years for the brand new facility that has been added on to the school. The new wing was added in 2007, and the addition ahs raised not only the quality of the building, but the technology level of the classrooms as well. Each room is equipped with a projector, a screen, document cameras, a speaker system, and a video player. All of this is connected to the desktop computer on the teacher’s desk. It is also controlled by a small panel with buttons on the wall right next to the teacher’s desk as well. These improvements have made for a much easier time in showing different types of media in the classroom, and many teachers have taken full advantage of this. Movies are used often as resources to assist the learning in classes such as U.S. History and Spanish. Health classes also use this to their advantage when showing informational videos.The buildings for the entire corporation are also all on the same campus as the high school, with the middle school building actually being connected to the high school with the school’s auditorium in between. All of the practice and game fields are also right behind the high school, so students simply walk to the locker rooms after school for practice.

School Size

Western High School is one of 5 public high schools in Howard County. There is one city school, Kokomo High School, and the other three are county schools. They are Northwestern High School, Eastern (Greentown) High School, and Taylor High School. Kokomo is the largest in the area, and has well over 2000 students compared to Western’s 800+ student body. Western is in the same conference (MIC) as the other three county schools, and many sporting and other competitive events are held between those four.

Creation

Western was founded in 1949 by combining three smaller school systems in to one corporation. The New London Quakers, West Middleton Broncos, and Russiaville Cossacks came together and formed the Western Panthers, which is the name of the school in existence today. Western School Corporation is the official name, and there is a primary, intermediate and middle school associated with the corporation as well.

Athletics

Western has its own athletics web site here.

Western High School is one of the 8 schools associated with the Mid-Indiana Conference.

Western’s athletic tradition is a long one, with teams dating back to its creation. Currently, the teams are as follows: Boys- Football, Soccer, Cross Country, Basketball, Wrestling, Swimming, Track and Field, Golf, and Baseball. Girls- Volleyball, Cross Country, Basketball, Swimming, Track and Field, Softball, Golf, and Soccer. In addition, there was a club bowling team added in 2010, however its events do not count towards conference standings since not all of the other schools have a team.

Probably the most notable and successful teams in the school’s recent history are the girls golf team, the boys basketball team, and the boys and girls track teams. The boys basketball team has been a contender in the conference title for many years, and the team has won it several times. More importantly, the team has a long list of sectional championships, four of which were two sets of back-to-back titles. Western has won the regional matchup once, and then ended up losing that game to the eventual state champion team. The current coach, Andy Weaver, has been with the team for a long time and is a math teacher at the school. Girls golf is more of a recent success, and coach Steve Hoppes is an Industrial Technology teacher at the school as well. The team has been to the state championships four times in the last six years, and they have won the title once. They were also the runner up team once.

The boys and girls track and field teams are probably one of the most well known teams to be at the school. Under the coaching of Dana Neer and Joni McCracken until 2007, they were an MIC powerhouse in nearly all of the events, often winning sectionals and sending several athletes to the regional and state meets. Senior Brandon Youngdale won the state high jump in 2006 with a school record leap of 6’10”. In 2008 Marvin Boswell took over the program, and neither team has missed a beat. The girls have won MIC championships and for several years been in the top 3 for sectional championships. The Boys have won the MIC several times as well, along with winning the sectional meet. The boys team also won the state indoor meet in 2010, after sending a competitor to a majority of the events after getting out of the qualifying meet. In 2011, McCracken came back and is now coaching the girls team while Boswell remains as boys head coach.

The boys and girls teams each have one athlete in the Kokomo All-Area Best list, Nikki McCracken for the girls in the pole vault (11'0") and Demetris Gaines in the discus (177'5").

Notable alumni

• Mike Fulk - former NFL football player with the San Francisco 49ers.
• Annette Griessman - children's author.
• Ezra Hendrickson - former MSL and international soccer player.
• Ryan White - hemophiliac expelled from Western School Corporation in the mid-1980s after contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion.

Ryan White Incident

Western was the school corporation that became infamous for kicking out Ryan White in 1984 because he had HIV, a disease at the time that was just coming in to the national spotlight as a scary and deathly disease. Since that time, Western has regained its upstanding reputation, but the whole ordeal will forever be a stain on the school's otherwise nearly perfect record.