Archbishop Carroll grad earns school's first Silver Knight

By Florida Catholic staff - Florida Catholic

MIAMI | Archbishop Coleman Carroll graduate Stephanie Embil became the southwestern Miami-Dade high school’s first Silver Knight winner when she earned the recognition in World Languages this year for her Little Readers Worldwide project.

Classmate Sofia Quintana became the school’s second graduate to receive an honorable mention in The Miami Herald’s annual tribute to graduating seniors who have excelled in both academics and community service. Quintana earned the distinction in the Science category.

Other Miami-Dade County winners this year represented Belen Jesuit Prep (in Vocational-Technical) and Christopher Columbus High (for Digital & Interactive Media). In Broward, Archbishop McCarthy High in Southwest Ranches earned a win in Science.

Columbus also got four honorable mentions and Belen and Our Lady of Lourdes Academy each got one.

Broward students receiving honorable mentions included four from St. Thomas Aquinas High in Fort Lauderdale, two from Archbishop McCarthy and one from Chaminade-Madonna College Prep in Hollywood.

The Herald’s 66th annual awards were presented May 22, 2024, during a ceremony at Miami's James L. Knight Center. A total of 788 students from 77 Miami-Dade and 29 Broward public, charter and private schools were nominated this year. 

Silver Knights are given in 15 high school disciplines: Art, Athletics, Business, Digital & Interactive Media, Drama, English, General Scholarship, Journalism, Mathematics, Music, Science, Social Science, Speech, Vocational-Technical and World Languages. Each discipline has two winners, one each from Miami-Dade and Broward, and 90 honorable mentions, 45 from each county.

Each Silver Knight winner receives a $2,000 scholarship from the Herald Charities Foundation, plus the medallion and a Silver Knight statuette. Winners also receive 25,000 miles from American Airlines for one round-trip flight in the continental U.S. Each of the 90 honorable mention students receive a plaque and a $500 scholarship from the Herald Charities Foundation.

Here are brief summaries of the winners’ achievements (in alphabetical order by category), followed by the list of students who earned honorable mentions. The summaries are taken from The Miami Herald’s Silver Knights site (https://bit.ly/3WUDnkA). 

WINNERS

Digital and Interactive Media: Dominic Gatto, Columbus

Gatto shot and edited video as part of a team that created a documentary on the 2021 SOS Cuba protests taking place throughout Miami to support Cubans on the island. The documentary was screened at a fundraising event where more than $2,500 was raised for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba. Dominic also is editor-in-chief and head of design for his school’s monthly and quarterly newspapers, The Log, along with the school’s annual literary magazine, both of which have earned statewide acclaim. He also designed and edited a cookbook the school produced to benefit the Katy Strong Foundation, named after Katy Puig, the Lourdes student who was seriously injured in the 2022 Labor Day weekend boat crash.

Science: Simone Kaplan, Archbishop McCarthy 

Kaplan, a runner-up in the 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee, created Rhizophora Literary Organization and Rhizophora.net, a website that features Latin and Greek roots to help elementary and middle school students interested in the spelling bee understand the spelling, meaning and history of words. She completed an internship in molecular biology at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables; conducted research in southern blight fungal disease in vandaceous orchids as a Regeneron Science Talent Search entrant; and participated in the Southwest Florida Regional Science Olympiad every year since 2020.

Vocational Technical: Armando Gonzalez, Belen Jesuit

Gonzalez founded Save Our Soles (SOS) in 2022, whose mission is to provide foot exams, shoes and socks to residents of the homeless assistance centers run by the Chapman Partnership in Homestead and Miami. The student-led initiative coordinated foot exams at the centers by licensed podiatrists and medical residents. As president of SOS, Gonzalez manages partnerships, funding and helps with other student-run events at Chapman. Since 2022, he has secured at least $200,000 in grants and Save Our Soles has hosted six clinics with volunteer podiatrists who have examined more than 1,000 people. He also received the Chapman Partnership Student Impact Award.

World Languages: Stephanie Embil, Archbishop Carroll

Embil created Little Readers Worldwide to help children in Nicaragua and El Salvador learn to read and write in English via Zoom. The program started as a weekly tutoring project but as the number of students multiplied, she assembled a team of volunteers. Seeing that two of her students shared a pencil to complete a worksheet led her to raise more than $2,000 to provide her students with basic school supplies, backpacks, books, internet access and snacks. She even secured a corporate sponsor. In addition to teaching, Embil has collected toys for the Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida, volunteered at food drives and worked with Blue Missions to spread awareness on the importance of accessible clean water. She was also the class of 2024 salutatorian. 

Honorable Mentions

• Art: Leila Murray, St. Thomas Aquinas
• Athletics: John Barry Bertematti, Columbus
• Digital & Interactive Media: Alexa Tapanes, Our Lady of Lourdes
• Digital & Interactive Media: Isabella Kenhan, Archbishop McCarthy
• Drama: Alexander Valcarcel, Columbus
• Drama: Sawyer DiCowden, St. Thomas Aquinas
• General Scholarship: Amelia De La Torre, Chaminade-Madonna
• Journalism: Isabella Ruiz, Archbishop McCarthy
• Journalism: Sebastian Broche, Columbus
• Mathematics: Anthony Tivda, St. Thomas Aquinas
• Music & Dance: Jovan Rojas, Columbus
• Science: Sofia Quintana, Archbishop Carroll
• Speech: Isabella Neustein, St. Thomas Aquinas
• Social Science: Nicholas Leon, Belen