“I have always been motivated to excel in my academics, which led me to NCVPS because they offer advanced courses that my middle school doesn’t offer. This fall I will be starting high school, so the online courses allow the much-needed time flexibility for me to engage heavily in my athletic activity as an ice hockey player. The ample NCVPS resources and support from the school district are well appreciated for my academics.” —Henry Z.
“Henry Zhang is a motivated and dedicated student with a passion for academics, ice hockey, and community service. He seeks to contribute his skills in math and computer science and passion to his local school to further his academic education and personal growth in athletics. He is a co-leader for an Anti-Bullying Education Team where he partners with peers to complete a research project on ‘Identifying factors that influence bullying incidents using national survey data on children’s bullying.’
He helped in performing a data set analysis using Python and AI-assisted methodology, to identify and rank major risk factors that influence bullying incidents and develop a predictive model to identify children at risk of being bullied. The project was submitted into the North Carolina Science and Engineering Fair (NCSEF) for the 2025 competition.” —NCVPS Honors Pre-Calculus Instructor, Jamillia Gillespie
Online Experience
I have finished a total of one NCVPS course which was Pre-calculus, while right now I am currently taking Chemistry.
The online courses are divided into many modules which work at a very fast pace that also cover fundamental and challenging materials which will prepare me for more difficult courses. Since I find the teachers of NCVPS quite nice and considerate and I am quite familiar with the format, I expect to take even more NCVPS courses next year.
The pleasant surprise that I’d like to stress the most is the fact that all assignments had no late penalty, all you need to do is to turn in the assignments before the entire module’s due date. This fact helps me a lot as a travel hockey player with frequent tournaments.
My advice to other students and especially new students would be to stay on pace. The lack of late penalty may be an enticing idea, but unless you absolutely need it, you shouldn’t use it.
Life Outside of School
The main thing I like to do in my free time is to play ice hockey. The sport I play involves an incredible amount of time investment especially since my team is based over an hour away, but I feel the time is worth it. Not only do I have to drive for over an hour for practice, but also even more for games since we have many out-of-state tournaments. I’ve had slightly more time because my season just recently ended, so I’ve started my off-season training with the excess time I’ve found in my hands. The thing is it isn’t only my time that is used for these experiences because my parents are the ones that invest even more time than me to drive there and back while still being college professors. I’ve seen the effort and faith they put in me, so I like to match them with the same amount of effort in my academics and athletics.
My favorite show is SpongeBob SquarePants because I have great memories of me and my dad going to the local Cici’s pizza buffet every Saturday, and we’d watch the new SpongeBob on the restaurant TV while trying to beat our previous pizza-eating records. I can still remember the smell of the pizza and the sounds of the blaring arcade in the back. Whenever I go to hotels if they aren’t playing any NHL or NCAA hockey games, I can still settle on good ol’ reliable SpongeBob SquarePants.
Something interesting about me would be the fact that I am extremely flexible. I grew up doing many sports that stressed flexibility such as Tae Kwon Do. These sports have made a great impact on my habits which led me to stretch for a good amount of time every day to prevent and recover from sports ailments. After many years of training stretching in a multitude of sports allows me to now easily do a split.
Goals & Future Plans
The personal goal I have this semester was to score a hat trick during my hockey season. A hat trick consists of 3 goals in a single game. I performed this feat of a hat trick in a hockey game at Liberty University against the Lynchburg coyotes.
The future that I desire within the next 10 years is to obtain a NCAA D1 scholarship to play hockey at a great university up north. I’d like to achieve this by not only establishing an extremely skilled basis of hockey, but also academic prowess.
Personal Notes & Fun Facts
My favorite snack is salmon because it is a great lean meat that is high in protein with many essential oils.
One item I could not live without would be my hockey stick. To demonstrate this if I went on a vacation, I would bring my stick so I could still stickhandle while still on vacation.
I have a small dog named Grayson and a Rhode Island Red hen named Albert who we may be getting chicks for.
If you’d like to hear more about my stories you can check out my youth YouTube channel.
Sample of Henry’s Work
