Five Class of 2025 students competing in Japanese speech contest just one of many examples of students taking advantage of opportunities outside the classroom

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Those chosen to speak at the Chesterton graduation ceremony scheduled for today at 7 p.m. in the football stadium will deliver their speeches in English. Five students listening to them did not have that luxury when they spoke at a competition at the Consulate-General of Japan in Chicago.
The weekend day was just one small example of the myriad opportunities Chesterton students take advantage of that start in the classroom but don’t end there.
The Japanese 5 students who participated: Carmen Thomas (fourth place), Cooper Fowler, Milena Letic, Luke Sparks and Izdel Huerta.
Not all students who embrace the challenge of learning the difficult language do so with the idea that they will use it regularly after graduation. Fowler, however, will speak Japanese daily soon.
Fowler soon will be leaving this summer for Tokyo to start a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church.
Fowler follows in the footsteps of his older brother Tanner, one of his six siblings. Cooper’s mission is in a more touristy area with more English-speaking people than where his brother served. still, he is not naive to the hurdles that await him.
“It’s a religious mission, so you’re there trying to spread the gospel, and Japan is a primarily a Buddhist, atheist agnostic kind of country, so the idea of Jesus Christ is a little bit not the normal there, so it definitely was a difficult mission for Tanner,” Cooper said. “Still just being there and interacting with the culture, I always thought it was super-duper interesting, so it was something I wanted to strive toward and luckily I was chosen to go there.”
Fowler said he will be required to wear “dress clothes” six days a week, all but on preparation day. Traditional door-to-door visits now are complemented by meetings that take place online, Fowler said.
His Japanese was developed enough to give a speech in a competition, but he’s determined to have it better than that when he leaves for the mission.
As no doubt will be the case with the speakers at Wednesday’s commencement exercises, the students who spoke at the consulate appreciated the value of less is more, keeping the speeches to five minutes or shorter.
For the topic of his speech, Fowler decided on the self-control aspect of jiujitsu, a martial art that started in Japan. Fowler has done it for nearly two years.
“You have to have self-control because there are rules and you’re fighting and facing other human beings and you’re not going to punch them or something,” he said. “There is no punching, kicking, scratching, pinching, none of that. It’s mainly wrestling, but you are trying to choke someone out, and you’re trying to submit them in like an arm bar, things like that.”
When practicing against another martial arts pupil, the submitted party does what’s called “tapping. As soon as you are in that position, you tap out.”
Fowler plans to college degree after completing his mission. He already has been granted admission to BYU-Idaho and plans to apply for admission to BYU-Provo during his mission.
Sparks will attend Dartmouth College, one of the eight Ivy League schools. A small story Sparks shared from his visit revealed that he not only has the lofty academic qualifications to gain admission to one of the eight Ivy League schools he’s armed with the common sense to sense how well he will fit there.
“We were in the lunch area, and it seemed like no one had their phones out. Everyone was just talking to each other,” Sparks said. “That was one of the things that stuck out to me.”
Here’s guessing Sparks could have made a whole speech in Japanese about that one observation and made it interesting. Instead, his was about what riding a bicycle has meant to him at different stages of his life.
“When I was younger, it was a big point of pride when you first learn how to ride a bike,” Sparks said. “And then I started to use my bike to get around everywhere in town, get to school and stuff. And once I got a car, I didn’t really need it to get around, so I used it to explore and wander and kind of relax out in the countryside.”
The speakers all received a goody bag that included three different types of soy sauce.
“I can’t have gluten,” Sparks said, “so I’m going to give it away.”
He didn’t do it for the goody bag. He did it for the experience.