{"id":10259,"date":"2019-01-11T17:43:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T17:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=10259"},"modified":"2019-01-11T17:43:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T17:43:42","slug":"owen-ruggeri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/11\/owen-ruggeri\/","title":{"rendered":"OWEN RUGGERI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aspiring engineer discovers passions for space and long-distance running<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Emilee Mae Struss<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
WRHS senior Owen Ruggeri was recently accepted at the Colorado School of Mines and hopes to become an engineer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

W<\/span>ood River High School senior Owen Ruggeri is a \u2018mathlete\u2019 in the truest sense of the word. In addition to his three years with the varsity swim team, Ruggieri added the sport of running to his passions to balance out his rigorous academic pursuits.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruggeri started running track in the spring of his junior year and then joined cross-country at the start of his senior year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in track, I discovered I really love running,\u201d he recalled recently. \u201cI wanted to run longer races, like the 5k.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This spring, Ruggeri plans to run track again and continue to push his limits in distance beyond graduation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to run even longer races\u2014like marathons,\u201d Ruggeri said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Along with his discovery of endurance running, Ruggeri has an interest in things beyond the boundaries of the eye, including a keen interest in math and the mysteries of the universe. <\/span><\/p>\n

He is currently enrolled in five Advanced Placement courses, including Calculus II, Government & Politics, Environmental Science, Physics II, and Statistics.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruggeri has a 4.24 GPA and found his niche in science, technology, engineering and math\u2014or the STEM program at WRHS.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn ninth grade, I took Algebra II (two years advanced for his grade),\u201d Ruggeri said. \u201cAnd in 10th grade, I really started leaning toward STEM.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruggeri took a special interest in math once he realized it is a \u201cmodel of the world.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

He found it fascinating that the construction of the world, or specific elements as we know them, are at their truest core various types of math equations. Ruggeri also enjoys the mixture of both math and science, which melds into a curiosity for space and the unknown things beyond this world.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI joined Space Club last year as a junior and found it really interesting,\u201d Ruggeri said. \u201cSpace was a foreign concept [to me] and I wanted to learn more about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Space Club has five consistent members who are committed to learning about ancient stories behind constellations in the sky and the difference between structures in the sky such as star clusters and galaxies.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStar clusters are groups of stars that just happen to be closer together,\u201d Ruggeri said. \u201cThere are a lot of them out there but usually if you see them in the sky they can be indistinguishable from one another.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Space Club travels out Croy Creek Road in Hailey once a week with a Celestron telescope to locate constellations in the sky.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruggeri grew up skiing and hiking in the Wood River Valley and surrounding areas, and learned new skills such as being a lifeguard with the Blaine County Recreation District for two summers and trying out different clubs in school such as Model UN and debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

This past summer, Ruggeri was presented with a special opportunity to do trail maintenance and data collection for one month at Yellowstone National Park.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ruggeri was also proud to share that the one school he was nervously awaiting to hear back from accepted his application and that he will be attending the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo.<\/span><\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note: Anyone who would like to recommend a Blaine County School District student for The Weekly Sun\u2019s \u201cStudent Spotlight\u201d feature should contact Emilee Struss at emilee.struss@gmail.com.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aspiring engineer discovers passions for space and long-distance running By Emilee Mae Struss Wood River High School senior Owen Ruggeri is a \u2018mathlete\u2019 in the truest sense of the word. In addition to his three years with the varsity swim team, Ruggieri added the sport of running to his passions to balance out his rigorous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,41],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sponsored","8":"category-student-spotlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}