Waterford District High School, also known as WDHS, is a public

high school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

Waterford, Ontario Waterford is one of the Communities in Norfolk County, Ontario and had a population of 3,132 at the time of the 2016 Census. Antiques from different historical eras can be purchased from downtown antique stores. Norfolk FS (formerly known as the ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. It is the northernmost school in Norfolk County.

History

The first school board meeting for the new high school in Waterford was held on February 15, 1892. The board purchased 1.8 acres of land on the northeast corner of Main and Brown streets at a cost of $150 per acre. The building was constructed for about $7,000 and the enrollment in the first year was approximately 100 students. In 1936 the structure burned down, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1937.

Summary

Athletics

WDHS has a variety of sports teams including football,

rugby Rugby may refer to: Sport * Rugby football in many forms: ** Rugby league: 13 players per side *** Masters Rugby League *** Mod league *** Rugby league nines *** Rugby league sevens *** Touch (sport) *** Wheelchair rugby league ** Rugby union: 1 ...

, soccer,

field lacrosse Field lacrosse is a full contact outdoor men's sport played with ten players on each team. The sport originated among Native Americans, and the modern rules of field lacrosse were initially codified by Canadian William George Beers in 1867. ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

badminton Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players p ...

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 ...

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping eve ...

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 ...

, and

cheerleading Cheerleading is an activity in which the participants (called cheerleaders) cheer for their team as a form of encouragement. It can range from chanting slogans to intense physical activity. It can be performed to motivate sports teams, to ente ...

. The team mascot is a

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly un ...

Fair Day

Each year, at th
Norfolk County Fair
the students of Waterford District High School compete with other local high schools in events like tug-o-war, cheerleading, and road racing. Each school fills a separate area of the grandstands and is judged on spirit and decorations.

Grade 9 Day

Grade 9 day at Waterford District High School is a long-standing tradition. The grade 9 students are paired with senior studentsto complete activities. Following a crackdown on hazing by the school's administration, the day's events are considered to be a safe opportunity for students from grade 9 and grade 12 to get to know one another. There is also a barbecue lunch for the students run by the school's student council.

Fall play & spring musical

There is an active drama, and music department at Waterford District High School that puts on yearly plays and musicals such as ''

Catch Me If You Can ''Catch Me If You Can'' is a 2002 American Biographical film, biographical crime film, crime Comedy drama, comedy-drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks with Christopher Walken, Martin ...

'' and ''

The Music Man ''The Music Man'' is a musical with book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. The plot concerns con man Harold Hill, who poses as a boys' band organizer and leader and sells band instruments ...

''.

Renovations

The school underwent renovations from 2010-2012. Modernized areas included science laboratories, a larger Edukids

day care Child care, otherwise known as day care, is the care and supervision of a child or multiple children at a time, whose ages range from two weeks of age to 18 years. Although most parents spend a significant amount of time caring for their child(r ...

for staff members and unwed student mothers, new gymnasium floors, and an addition of new offices for the school board. The school now has an

elevator An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They a ...

. Fundraising was done for a new electronic

scoreboard A scoreboard is a large board for publicly displaying the score in a game. Most levels of sport from high school and above use at least one scoreboard for keeping score, measuring time, and displaying statistics. Scoreboards in the past used ...

for the football field, replacing the old manual score board. Conforming with Canadian high school football standards, the scoreboard shows the time and score of both teams along with the down, the yardage of the line of scrimmage, the yards to go until a

first down A down is a period in which a play transpires in gridiron football. The down is a distinguishing characteristic of the game compared to other codes of football, but is synonymous with a "tackle" in rugby league. The team in possession of the ...

, the team with the possession (usually signified with the outline of a football in lights next to the possessing team's score), and the quarter.

Future

Waterford District High School may face closure similar to the fate that Port Dover Composite School faced on January 31, 2013. Trends including homeschooling, the rapidly ageing local population and the increasing popularity of virtual high schools on the Internet has stunted the ability of the Norfolk County high schools to maintain full classrooms. It has been suggested that if attendance continues to decline, a solution would be to close the school along with Simcoe Composite School and create a new secular high school spanning somewhere in Norfolk County. This comes at the annoyance of the students, whose rivals at Valley Heights Secondary School and Delhi District Secondary School both have a sufficient number of students to remain open indefinitely according to their level of government funding.

References

{{GEDSBSchools Educational institutions established in 1892 High schools in Norfolk County, Ontario 1892 establishments in Ontario