Ananya Karthik, a senior this year, serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Blaze. Since moving from Cincinnati, Ohio in 2021 and joining The Blaze her sophomore year, Ananya has had the opportunity to express her passion for writing. Her other extracurricular activities include being the president of the National Honor Society and Rho Kappa. Over the...

Melissa Waas, a senior, has been a part of the newspaper staff for three years, and is one of the Managing Editors for the Blaze. She enjoys participating more in the media and video aspect of the Blaze. Even outside of the paper she loves making videos and has favored art and making things visually. Her goals as a journalist this year are to continue contr...

Lucian Tiller is a senior this year, and he is currently a co-managing editor to The Blaze. He has been a part of Newspaper since freshman year.  Lucian was previously the opinion piece editor and hopes to expand his reach in multimedia by exploring all the various types of journalism this year. In fact, his goal this year is to do one of every type...

Shivu Sathe is a senior who has been in journalism for the past three years. She is the Lead Copy Editor and loves writing and sharing her work with the world. Shivu loves reading and writing about politics, and some of her goals for her last year in journalism are to write articles about politics and cover some topics she hasn’t covered before, su...

Bhargav Kuniki is a senior, and he’s been a part of The Blaze for three years and is the current Sports Editor. Most of his time is spent on his physics research project, which he is planning to submit to GMU. Besides college goals, he is also focusing on activities like teaching himself piano. His favorite aspects of Newspaper are photography an...

Arnav Mahajan is a freshman and it's his first year on the newspaper staff. He joined the newspaper because he has a strong passion for writing, which he uses to express himself. His main style of writing is argument and opinion-based pieces. He's looking forward to getting good work done and meeting the rest of the staff. When he’s not writing, he enj...

Maya Coleman is a senior and this is her third year on The Blaze. Maya is the Business Manager and Social Media Coordinator and she is excited for the stories The Blaze will put out this year, as well as the social media content that will accompany them. She believes that tools like Instagram play a large role in attracting newcomers into the ne...

Senior Bella Gerardi has been a member of the Blaze for four years and this year she has the role of the Photo Editor. Bella has had a history with writing since a young age. Her grandmothers were both authors, and it led her down the journalism path.  While she started off writing opinion pieces her first few years, she slowly started to love taki...

Nidhi Manchala is a senior and the Design Editor for The Blaze. Originally joining on whim, this is her fourth year on staff and she now recognizes journalism as her favorite part of school. Being a part of the school newspaper gave her better writing skills and is an outlet for her creativity through the magazine. As the Design Editor, Nidhi is res...

Sitwat is a senior, and the Graphics Editor for the Newspaper. She enjoys art and is excited to create graphics for the staff this year. When she’s not frantically worrying about school, you can find her listening to music, spending time with her family, and eating. She is probably the most unathletic person you will ever meet, and has the memory a...

Hylay Assefa is a veteran staff member. He is a senior this year and has been writing for Rock Ridge since freshman year. He is the website coordinator for The Blaze. He has wanted to join since he heard about Newspaper in seventh grade. Hylay enjoys writing and is looking forward to uploading articles this year, in accordance with his goal of putting his al...

Saketh Nandam is a sophomore and a new staffer for the Blaze. He's looking forward to strengthening his essay writing skills as well as gaining exposure to podcast and interview techniques. His hobbies include reading books and coding. His ultimate goal is to become an editor next year and possibly win a SNO Award for the Blaze. He is also a part of...

Abhinav Jammula is a sophomore and a new staffer for The Blaze. Looking to improve his writing skills, he joined to get better at writing articles and essays, which is a massive goal for this year, along with learning to write an article and keeping the newspaper afloat. He’s also a member of multiple associations, honor societies, and classes, i...

Sophia Dabre is a freshman this year and a new staff writer for The Blaze. She joined the newspaper because she enjoys writing and reading, along with getting her opinion out there for people to hear. Sophia is starting off her year in hopes of joining cross country in the winter, as well as joining debate and Key Club. In her free time, she likes to ...

Junior Kristian Bryant is a first-year staff member. She’s always loved reading articles and informational pieces and thought she’d test the waters of writing them. Bryant has multiple pet peeves, one of the strongest being late work. She plans to broaden her writing skills in her time on staff. Bryant is introverted and doesn’t identify strongly...

Lia Davis is a sophomore and a first-year staff writer for The Blaze. Originally from Okinawa, Japan, Lia brings a unique perspective to storytelling, one that’s shaped by her love for media and pop culture. After exploring video production in middle school, Lia decided to broaden her horizons with journalism, where she’s eager to try her hand a...

Lucinda Eskandar is a freshman staff writer excited to start writing for the Blaze. As an English lover, Lucinda joined the newspaper as a way to get into the humanities and diversify from the business and STEM pathways. This year, she aims to get more experience writing and have her pieces published. With a future career goal in law, she loves the idea...

Amogh Sarasam is a sophomore and a new staffer. He’s ready to write and explore the world of journalism. Amogh is also fascinated by the sciences. From computer science to chemistry, he’s just about conquered them all, and intends to stick with them in the future. Amogh joined The Blaze to improve his writing skills and to make him a more well-rou...

Divitha Mathe is a sophomore at Rock Ridge this year. She joined The Blaze this year and recently moved here from Fairfax two weeks before school started. She picked journalism because that’s what she wants to do in the future. She likes creative writing, and likes how journalism has a frame that you could already use. This year she hopes to understa...

Mariia Pecherkina is a sophomore, and this is her first year on The Blaze. In 2020, she moved from Russia, and as a result, has a great interest in Russian politics and wants to explore a career within politics in the future. With her knowledge of both Russian journalism and the United States journalism, she believes it will definitely help her bec...

Sophie King is a senior and has been interested in joining The Blaze since her freshman year, but a busy schedule filled with theater and cyber security classes didn’t allow for it previously. After school, Sophie loves to play lacrosse on the Rock Ridge girls lacrosse team or ride horses. From the moment she first sat on a horse at 10, the sport...

Sanvi Challa is a junior this year, starting her first year on The Blaze staff. She is very passionate about writing and hopes to eventually publish her own book. She enjoys the thrill of tennis and has been part of the girl's tennis team since she was a freshman. Alongside being a tennis player, she started Care4Kiddos and American Cancer Society clu...

Aneeq Yussouf is a new staff writer and a senior on The Blaze. Aneeq is well-versed with English courses, taking advanced English classes, being a writing center tutor, and finally acting as  the president of NEHS for their 9 ¾ chapter.  He is nervous and excited to start journalism, as it’s the one form of writing he hasn’t delved into yet. In his...

Rachel Bhardwaj is a second year staff writer on the Rock Ridge Blaze who likes drawing, sketching  and singing when she's not doing hip hop dancing. She hopes to join DECA and Debate and more clubs as the year goes by. Her goal for the year is to learn more about visual media and create more visual media. She joined this class because she likes wr...

Francisco Rodriguez is a sophomore this year, and it’s his second year on The Blaze. He was skeptical about The Blaze at first, but it quickly became one of his favorite classes. For him, the highlight of being part of a newspaper is writing sport pieces. Although Francisco prefers writing sport pieces, A&E is a close second. He plans to be a ...

Danielle Kimpson is a junior, and this is her second year on staff. After transferring from Broad Run at the beginning of sophomore year, Danielle’s mother convinced her to join The Blaze after loving her own personal experience in high school. This year, Danielle wants to write more articles, work towards achieving Best of Sno, and take as many ...

Samantha Chang is a junior and in her third year on staff along with being a co-podcast editor for The Blaze this year.  Currently, she is looking forward to helping the new staffers and spreading the knowledge about Newspaper, including the podcast and video section. Furthermore, this year she wants to get the multimedia SNO badge and push for more vid...

Aline Gonzalez is a senior and the Multimedia Editor for The Blaze. This is her fourth year on staff, and her passion for journalism started in third grade after joining her elementary paper. On the staff, she enjoys writing impactful opinion pieces to give a wider perspective on various topics. One of her proudest accomplishments was writing a piece on pronouns...