Six desks clump near the far wall of a C. Milton Wright second-floor classroom. Gathered are five students and a teacher. It’s the first class of the new month, meaning time for the school paper’s April planning meeting. This one centers around The Pony Express’ sports desk.
“OK, what ideas do we have?” asks April Plaisted, a veteran educator in her first year teaching English and journalism since moving to Harford County.
Kailyn Schleicher sits opposite the table. She’s a junior defender for the Mustangs girls lacrosse team and editor of the sports section, now in her second year with The Pony Express. She’s also observant and a quick learner –– two skills beneficial on the field and in their makeshift newsroom.
Schleicher cuts in with a story idea before silence could meet the end of Plaisted’s question.
The last few weeks have stirred discourse surrounding what some deem the ascension of women’s college basketball, culminating in 18.7 million television viewers for the NCAA Tournament’s national championship game between Iowa and South Carolina.
What if, Schleicher thought, she could garner the opinions of other Mustangs girls student-athletes about this women’s basketball renaissance? “Go with it,” Plaisted encouraged. They then took it a step further. Schleicher could interview the younger sisters of her classmates, slaloming the role model angle.
Plaisted knew there would be a bit of a learning curve teaching this class, like figuring out the software and learning the new school. Schleicher and classmates have made her transition a breeze. “Kailyn was part of my good, solid group of girls,” Plaisted said, “who took the reins and said this is what we want the paper to be. We didn’t really have a paper last year. They definitely had a vision.”
This twice-a-week elective is Journalism II. The 15-person class holds court once a month to plan the following month’s online edition. They cover current events, sports, student life and arts and entertainment. All of it gets posted to their revamped website and blossoming Instagram page (@cmw_mustangmedia).
Schleicher took the first iteration of C. Milton Wright’s journalism school last year as a sophomore. She signed up on the suggestion of two close friends plainly because she thought, “it sounded interesting.”
Plaisted’s predecessor guided the foundation of writing and reporting in Journalism I. They had, for example, quarterly projects called “media shares,” reviewing albums and movies. Schleicher recalls it was more informational. But even then, she was hooked.
“[I’m] figuring out what I like to write about,” Schleicher said. “I’m not a huge writer. I don’t like writing essays. I can write a good one but I don’t necessarily enjoy it. But when I write about sports, it comes easier.”
Schleicher, a lifelong athlete, found greater appreciation for the writing process when it aligns with an internal passion. She’s writing stories about sports she knows well, like soccer and lacrosse, and eagerly interviewing players and coaches to learn ones less prevalent in her life, like basketball.
“I’m interested in [sports]. I know I like it,” Schleicher said. “So I know that I’m gonna be putting effort into something and not writing it just to write it.”
Her proudest clips? Schleicher’s first story of the school year, which dropped just before Halloween, was about college sports recruiting. After talking with high-level C. Milton Wright athletes past and present, Schleicher submerged into pros, cons and advice for NCAA hopefuls.
One classmate noted Schleicher’s knack for digging into unique angles. A November story about the Mustangs soccer team impressed her peers.
Schleicher didn’t drone on about the box scores of a state semifinal run. She brought readers into the thinking of coach Andrew Harrell’s goal-setting and inspirational storytelling. She offered details of a team bonding trip to a ropes course at Harford Glen Park. All of which helped the team “feel like a [jelled] and bonded unit,” Schleicher wrote.
“She’s always good about finding those sports articles that have heart,” Plaisted said, “and really connecting them to people.”
These are skills that similarly manifest on the field, playing for seventh-year coach Faye Brust.
Schleicher was disappointed to make JV her freshman year. She wound up getting the call up to varsity before the spring ended –– a brief chance to share the field with her older sister, Kirsten, now playing at the University of Cincinnati.
Since that promotion, Schleicher has become a key cog for one of the county’s top teams. Credit that ability to be both observant and a quick learner.
Brust pointed to last year’s state semifinal. The Mustangs lost, 11-10, to eventual state champs Manchester Valley. C. Milton’s game plan was to have Schleicher face guard Mavericks star Emma Penczek — a strategy they hadn’t touched all season, now implemented after a single practice against The Baltimore Sun’s 2023 All-Metro Player of the Year.
Penczek scored once that game. For context, she scored nine times in the state final days later, tying a 14-year-old state record. Schleicher asked questions, learned quickly and met the moment.
“She doesn’t take a long time to process things,” Brust said.
“I taught her French class her freshman year,” athletic director and JV lacrosse coach Kaitlyn Larrimore chipped in. “That’s not something everyone picks up super quick. She was one of the best students I’ve ever had.”
Schleicher, as Plaisted noted, is part of a group helping get more eyeballs on the student paper. When junior Phoebe Hennessey fired up the Instagram account this year, The Pony Express crossed 100 followers the first day. They make morning announcements and visit other classes to market new editions. They’ve made posters, too, to be hung up around the building.
There was perhaps no story this year more gripping amongst the C. Milton Wright student body than a student section tiff with Bel Air at an early December basketball game — a striking example of Schleicher’s journalistic chops and the growing engagement of the paper.
Plaisted was over at Fallston for a swim meet during the Mustangs-Bobcats boys basketball game. She checked her phone to see a flood of social media posts and crowded comment sections between rival student sections. Plaisted didn’t find out what happened until the next day, hearing that both student sections were tossed from the gym in the first quarter after inappropriate banter from both sides. “Peace was short lived,” Kalise Huber later wrote in an Op-Ed.
The next planning meeting, circling those clumped desks, would be an important one.
How do you cover contention among your classmates? Plaisted remembers her students driving that discourse, landing on Huber’s Op-Ed and Schleicher’s explainer, interviewing players and classmates about the incident.
“Being a part of a school community,” Schleicher said, “not just, ‘Oh, I go to school and play sports,’ but writing for the paper, which people read –– not even just people who go to the school, parents read it and relatives, so many people read and follow the Instagram –– it feels so good being a part of that.”