Warrenton High School (Oregon)

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Warrenton High School is a public secondary school in Warrenton, Oregon, United States.

There are three things that Warrenton High School is known for: major community involvement and ownership in the school, competitive sports programs, and one of the first on-campus fish hatcheries and aquaculture programs in the state.

Sport teams at Warrenton High School are called the "Warrenton Warriors." Notable alumni of Warrenton High School and accomplished athletes include Brian Bruney, former star baseball and basketball player for the Warriors and currently a relief pitcher for the New York Yankees, San Nguyen, a four year starter for the Lady Warriors basketball team and graduate of Emory University, London School of Economics and Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and Dusty McGrorty, who established several high school and collegiate rushing records, and enjoyed a brief NFL career with the St. Louis Rams.

The Fisheries Program at WHS started out as the "fish farm club" and later became the aquaculture class in the early 1960s. The program was conceived and began in the later parts of the 1950s by Clatsop County notables such as Prof. Duncan K. Law, Paul See, and the program instructor, Larry Ballman. Larry Ballman is credited with being the largest driving force in making the program a class and maximizing its potential. It started with rearing salmonids in buckets and releasing them into the on-campus Skipanon River, and grew to eventually being one of the pioneers of netpen rearing in the Pacific Northwest, with the first netpens built in the 1960s. Warrenton was founded under water and after its diking and incorporation as a city, it still was mostly wetland-- the fish rearing operation up until the 1970s was no exception. At times reaching only one board in width a wooden catwalk was the only way to the "fish farm" operations, until the early 1970s when the Oregon National Guard cleared and built a road to the pump shed. The first The on-campus fish hatchery was built in 1974 by the aquaculture, shop, welding, and PE classes alongside community volunteers directing the engineering. It is noted that the most prominent families in Warrenton or Astoria have members who were part of the program.

During the early to mid 1980s, the operations expanded to the Warrenton Municipal Sewer Ponds in the form of net pens. This operation recorded extremely high growth rates. The fish were tested and later released. The test results revealed that the fish were healthy and consumable, despite their environment.

With the retirement of Larry Ballman as instructor, the program declined. With the new leadership of Steve Porter, the program barely hung on amidst massive budget cuts. In order to secure enough funds to keep the program going, Porter revamped the program and called it Natural Resources Management. He added reptile, game bird, and feeder animal rearing to the program calling for the students to manage their rearing projects in order to sell them, and with raising feeder animals and insects, they could make a profit which would go to patch the crumbling fish hatchery building. Unfortunately a new principal was hired and the fish hatchery program was cut in the 2003-04 school year. It wasn't until the next year that a new principal was hired and a student took advantage of the opportunity. In October of 2004, Henry A. Balensifer III garnered the support of Rod Heyen, the new principal at WHS and with the principals support, restarted the entire program.

Receiving some eggs from Big Creek Hatchery and Astoria High School's fisheries program, the program began anew. Balensifer was put in charge of a crew of students in Steve Porter's Natural Resources Management Class and organized and implemented a fisheries curriculum with Porter's assistance. By next year, and a junior at WHS, Balensifer was rearing tens of thousands of fish, but enacted on his realization that a new fish hatchery facility would be needed.

Currently a new 2,000 sq. foot fisheries rearing and research facility is being built by WarHF, Inc. A non-profit incorporation that Henry Balensifer founded in 2005. It is scheduled to be operational by the end of January, 2007 due to weather constraints.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Warrenton High School (official site)