Anthony A. Henninger High School is a high school in the

Syracuse City School District The Syracuse City School District is a public school district serving students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade from Syracuse, New York. Syracuse City Schools enrolls 20,000 students in over thirty primary and secondary school building ...

. Henninger is the largest of the four high schools in the district with an enrollment of approximately 1800 students.

History

Henninger High School was built in the mid 1960s in order to merge two institutions in the area, North High School and Eastwood High School. The latter was in a neighborhood that was once a village and was later annexed by the city of Syracuse. Originally, the school was going to be named Northeast High. However, by the time the school was finished, it was decided that the school would be named after the current mayor of Syracuse, Anthony A. Henninger.

Facilities

The Henninger High School campus is home to a variety of facilities. The

auditorium An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances. For movie theatres, the number of auditoria (or auditoriums) is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoria can be found in entertainment venues, community ...

, once the temporary home of the now-defunct

Syracuse Symphony Orchestra The Syracuse Symphony Orchestra (SSO) was a 79-member orchestra located in Syracuse, New York. In its time it was the 43rd largest orchestra in the United States and performed a variety of programs including the Post-Standard Classics Series and M ...

, was built to have excellent acoustics and seats around 950 people. The athletic complex includes two recently built

turf Sod, also known as turf, is the upper layer of soil with the grass growing on it that is often harvested into rolls. In Australian and British English, sod is more commonly known as ''turf'', and the word "sod" is limited mainly to agricult ...

fields, six tennis courts, two softball fields, one baseball field, four basketball courts, a quarter-mile track surrounding the main football field, an indoor pool, the Sunnycrest Ice Skating Rink and the Sunnycrest Golf Course.

Athletics

Henninger participates in both boys and girls Section III, Class AA athletics. Henninger has many athletic programs including boys'

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

, football,

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensiv ...

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), thou ...

, soccer,

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent ( singles) or between two teams of two players each ( doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball ...

hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

(through

Corcoran High School Corcoran High School is a public high school located in Syracuse, New York, having approximately 1800 students. In 2005, it became a member of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program. It is one of the top 1000 ranked schools in the country ...

swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, or other liquid, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Locomotion is achieved through coordinated movement of the limbs and the body to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that r ...

(through Corcoran and

Nottingham Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robi ...

High Schools),

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping ...

, and track as well as girls' basketball, soccer, swimming,

volleyball Volleyball is a team sport in which two teams of six players are separated by a net. Each team tries to score points by grounding a ball on the other team's court under organized rules. It has been a part of the official program of the Sum ...

, tennis, bowling, lacrosse, track, and

crew A crew is a body or a class of people who work at a common activity, generally in a structured or hierarchical organization. A location in which a crew works is called a crewyard or a workyard. The word has nautical resonances: the tasks involved ...

(with Corcoran and

High Schools).

Music/Fine Arts

Henninger has four branches of its fine arts department: band, chorus, orchestra and drama.

Band

The Henninger Band performs in several venues annually. The

pep band A pep band is an ensemble of instrumentalists who play at events, usually athletic, with the purpose of entertaining and creating enthusiasm in a crowd. Often members of a pep band are a subset of people from a larger ensemble such as a marchi ...

plays at all home basketball and football games. The

marching band A marching band is a group of musical instrument, instrumental musicians who perform while marching, often for entertainment or competition. Instrumentation typically includes brass instrument, brass, woodwind instrument, woodwind, and percus ...

performs in several parades a year and is the only high school band that has performed in the annual Syracuse St. Patrick's Day Parade every year since the parade's establishment in 1985. In 2007, the band achieved first place out of all high school bands. Its successful

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

Ensemble is well known throughout the area and goes to several competitions throughout the year. In 1996 and 1998, the Jazz Ensemble won National Invitational competitions in Myrtle Beach, SC with the trumpet section winning "Best Trumpet Section" in 1998. Several individual awards were also won by the lead trumpet player, pianist, and guitarist. The 2004-2005 Jazz Ensemble won several National Invitational competitions in Myrtle Beach, SC and Virginia Beach, VA, winning "Stellar Trumpet Section" and several individual awards were won including lead trumpet, Tee Nelson, and solo trumpet, Wayne Tucker. The

Wind Ensemble A concert band, also called a wind band, wind ensemble, wind symphony, wind orchestra, symphonic band, the symphonic winds, or symphonic wind ensemble, is a performing ensemble consisting of members of the woodwind, brass, and percussion famil ...

, a select version of its main Concert Band traditionally plays a copy of the original arrangement of

Leroy Anderson Leroy Anderson ( ) (June 29, 1908 – May 18, 1975) was an American composer of short, light concert pieces, many of which were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler. John Williams described him as ...

Sleigh Ride "Sleigh Ride" is a light orchestra standard composed by Leroy Anderson. The composer had formed the original idea for the piece during a heat wave in July 1946, and he finished the work in February 1948. The original recordings were instrument ...

Drama

The Henninger High School Drama Club puts on 2-3 performances a year. Unlike many high schools in the area, at least two of these performances are musicals. In the past several years, the Club has been particularly ambitious. In the spring of 2006, they performed the Syracuse area debut (High School and professional) of '' Elton John and Tim Rice's: Aida''. In the fall of the same year they performed the Syracuse area debut of Disney's ''

High School Musical ''High School Musical'' is a 2006 American musical television film directed by Kenny Ortega and written by Peter Barsocchini. The 63rd Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) and first installment of the ''High School Musical'' film series, ...

''. In the spring of 2008 Henninger was the first high school in the area to do the musical, ''

Miss Saigon ''Miss Saigon'' is a stage musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, with lyrics by Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr. It is based on Giacomo Puccini's 1904 opera ''Madame Butterfly'', and similarly tells the tragic tale of a doomed roma ...

''. Other shows in recent years include '' Fiddler on the Roof'' in 2004, ''

West Side Story ''West Side Story'' is a musical conceived by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a book by Arthur Laurents. Inspired by William Shakespeare's play '' Romeo and Juliet'', the story is set in the mid ...

'' in Fall 2007, and ''

Once On This Island ''Once on This Island'' is a coming-of-age one-act stage musical with a book and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens and music by Stephen Flaherty. It is based on the 1985 novel ''My Love, My Love; or, The Peasant Girl'' by Rosa Guy, a Caribbean-set retelling ...

'' in Spring 2010.

Academics

Henninger High School's academic program is different in that it is divided into various "focus teams." The four main teams are Business, Media and Communications, Art Focus and Health Careers. The two largest teams, Health Careers and Art Focus are the only programs of their kind in the surrounding area. Health Careers in particular is a program aimed for students heading towards the medical profession. Benefits from Health Careers include many medical-based courses as well as volunteer work at local hospitals. Henninger High School also has chapters in the National Honor Society,

Tri-M Tri-M Music Honor Society, formerly known as Modern Music Masters, is an American high school and middle school music honor society. A program of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), it is designed to recognize students for their ...

Music Honor Society and the only chapter of the

National Art Honor Society The National Art Honor Society was established in 1978 in the United States by the National Art Education Association for high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the ...

Upstate New York Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long Is ...

Notable alumni

Andray Blatche Andray Maurice Blatche (born August 22, 1986) is an American-Filipino former professional basketball player. He played nine seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) between 2005 and 2014 before finishing his career with five seasons ...

– professional basketball player *

Karl Buechner Karl Buechner (born December 23, 1970) is an American musician from Syracuse, New York, best known as the frontman for the hardcore band Earth Crisis. He is also the singer of Freya, Path of Resistance, Vehement Serenade, Apocalypse Tribe and 1 ...

– metalcore vocalist for

Earth Crisis Earth Crisis is an American hardcore punk band from Syracuse, New York, active from 1989 until 2001, reuniting in 2007. Since 1993 the band's longest serving members are vocalist Karl Buechner, lead guitarist Scott Crouse, bassist Ian Edward ...

Freya In Norse paganism, Freyja (Old Norse "(the) Lady") is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future). Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chario ...

and Path of Resistance *

Andy Mineo Andrew Aaron Mineo (born April 17, 1988), is an American Christian hip hop artist, producer, music executive, and video director based in New York City. He is signed to Reach Records and his creative initiative Miner League. In addition to ...

– Christian hip hop artist * Joseph A. Nicoletti – Syracuse City Council and New York State Assembly representative * Jessimae Peluso – stand-up comedian and television personality from MTV's '' Girl Code'' * Tom Romano – professional baseball player * Ray Seals – professional football player * Lazarus Sims – professional basketball player *

Marquise Walker Marquise Walker (born December 11, 1978) is a former professional American football wide receiver and punt returner who signed to play in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at the University of Michigan where he se ...

– professional football player *

Frank Whaley Frank Joseph Whaley (born July 20, 1963) is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, and comedian. His roles include Brett in ''Pulp Fiction'', Robby Krieger in ''The Doors'', young Archie "Moonlight" Graham in ''Field of Dreams'', and Guy ...

– actor, director, screenwriter and comedian

References

External links

Henninger High School WebsiteCurrent site
{{authority control Public high schools in New York (state) Schools in Onondaga County, New York Syracuse City School District 1965 establishments in New York (state) Educational institutions established in 1965