Sinaloa's Gabriella Skarka Has a Blue-Ribbon Week

Every Wednesday, Novato Patch honors a Whiz Kid in the community for doing something special in the classroom, in sports, for charity or maybe being awesome with numbers like last week’s .

This week we honor a musician, all-around excellent student and first-place winner in the annual dramatic and impromptu speech contests held last week at Sinaloa Middle School.

Name: Gabriella Skarka

School: Sinaloa Middle School

Grade: 8th

Great Deed: Besides earning top grades in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program at Sinaloa for the past three years, Gabby plays flute in concert band, wind ensemble and marching band at her school. The marching band, which performed in the National Memorial Day Parade in Washington, D.C., last year, played at Disneyland last weekend. She’s also part of the Sinaloa Mathlete Team, the and California Junior Scholarship Federation, a group that organizes events that raises money for charities.

Last week’s two first-place speech contest trophies add to her other two other speech trophies from Sinaloa’s speech program last year, as well as a gold and a bronze trophy from the Margie Burke Marin County-wide contest last year.

This year’s Margie Burke Speech Contest is April 30. Good luck, Gabby!

Key to Awesomeness: Gabriella is not only smart, talented, hard-working and lovely, she is also a truly kind and fun-loving person who enjoys people. Admired by her peers and appreciated by her teachers, Gabriella flies high in her achievements but keeps it down-to-earth and low maintenance.