Mountain Pointe High School

Mountain Pointe High School is a secondary school located in the community of Ahwatukee, which is in the southern part of Phoenix, Arizona. Mountain Pointe is a part of the Tempe Union High School District.

On April 16, 2010, the school was awarded the A+ School of Excellence Award, the first school in the district to ever do so.

History

The Ahwatukee area of Phoenix experienced explosive growth in the 1990s. The Kyrene School District, the elementary school district in the area, opened a string of new schools here at this time, and the Tempe Union High School District followed suit by opening its last two high schools west of Interstate 10. Mountain Pointe was completed by the fall of 1990, but the Tempe Union district could not open it right away due to funding shortfalls.^[3] At last, the new, US$27 million facility ($46.9 million in 2016 dollars^[4]) opened to students the next year.^[3] The 1,100 students in grades 9 and 10 that attended the school at its start were asked to pick a mascot: an eagle, thunder, rough riders or a pride of lions, which won out.^[1] Its rival Desert Vista High School was opened to serve the growing southwestern part of Ahwatukee in 1996. Prior to Mountain Pointe's opening, Ahwatukee was part of the service areas of Corona del Sol High School (five miles away from Mountain Pointe and east of the Interstate 10 freeway) and Tempe High School. In the spring of 1994, Mountain Pointe graduated its first graduating class.

Mountain Pointe is the largest high school in Ahwatukee with open boundaries. Many people who live in the 85044 zip code attend Mountain Pointe along with commuters from the South Mountain area as well as from Maricopa. The Tempe Union High School District, which had to redraw boundaries significantly in the early 2000s as Corona del Sol grew over its capacity, also includes significant portions of west Chandler in Mountain Pointe's boundaries. While Corona has since shrunk in size, the boundary oddities remain.

Campus

Mountain Pointe is an open boundary school that permits any student to attend.^[5] Mountain Pointe enforces a closed-campus policy and has since its inception,^[3] in which ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders may not leave campus without an adult checking them out for the day. Seniors are only permitted to leave campus with a special ID which can only be obtained with a signed and notarized parent permission form.

As of the 2009–2010 school year, Mountain Pointe High School now operates on a traditional schedule.^[6] This change comes after a ruling in which all six of the Tempe Union district schools did not meet the Arizona standards for required classroom time. The day now consists of five 57 minute classes, one 63 minute homeroom (five extra minutes for announcements), and a 30-minute lunch. A major criticism of traditional schedule is the loss of an academic lab, a 45–minute study hall, which allowed each student to travel to one teacher for extra help. A 40-minute academic lab returned to Mountain Pointe in the fall of 2011.

Notable alumni

• Danny Baugher, American football player^[7]
• Will Claye, triple jumper, won Bronze medal in the long jump at 2012 London Olympics^[8]
• C. J. Cron, baseball player^[9]
• Kevin Cron, baseball player^[10]
• Brad Evans, Major League Soccer player^[11]
• Adam Juwig, former guitarist for the band Anarbor
• Joe Mather, baseball player^[12]
• Rachel Melvin, actress on Days of Our Lives^[13]
• John O'Callaghan, lead singer in the band The Maine^[14]
• DC Pierson, comedian, Derrick Comedy^[15]
• Nicole Powell, WNBA player^[16]
• Reid Priddy (1996), volleyball player in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics^[17]
• Aaron Dornstar, Messiah; Famous for Operation Dorney, in which he ran for state mine inspector. During this miserable failure he ended up making more enemies than supporters.
• Sara Slattery, distance runner^[18]
• Cole Tucker (baseball), MLB Player^[19]
• Nick Scheib (golf), Alps Golf Tour Member^[20]

Athletics

Mountain Pointe's athletic teams' accomplishments include 118 region championships, over the course of 20 years with its sports. Their teams are considered some of the best in the nation.^[21] The athletics program has won the H.A. Hendrickson Award for Arizona's outstanding 5A athletic program, as well as Tempe's outstanding athletic program numerous times.

In 2006, one of their female soccer players, Alexandra Elston, earned the Gatorade Player of the Year award. She won the award attending as a senior.

Mountain Pointe competes in the annual Ahwatukee Bowl, a Friday-night football game against Desert Vista. Previous Ahwatukee Bowls have been nationally televised on ESPNU.^[22] Beginning with the 2011 edition, the game is titled the Ahwatukee Memorial Bowl.^[23]

The football team won the Division I Arizona State Championship by defeating defending champions Chandler Hamilton 42-19 on November 30, 2013. The team finished the year with a perfect 14-0 record as the number one team in Arizona and ranked in the top 10 of all high school football teams in the United States.^[24]

There are many sports offered at Mountain Pointe that includes Freshman, junior varsity, and varsity level for both boys and girls. The offered varsity sports are:

References

External links

• Mountain Pointe High School
• Mountain Pointe Alumni
• School Academic Report Card
• MPHS Attendance Boundaries