On Friday, March 8, Spring Spirit Week at Communications High School (CHS) concluded with the infamous Lip Sync event. Though the freshmen placed fourth in the competition, many students recall a memorable piece of the Class of 2028’s performance, more specifically an impressive stunt from one member.

Junior Cameron Mock of Hazlet observed the Class of 2028’s Lip Sync debut, describing how impressed he was by one freshman’s outing.

“All of the sudden,” Mock said, “this one kid comes barrelling through [the cafeteria] and he does all these flips and I was like ‘Woah! How does he do it?’”

Junior and fellow spectator Ryann McArthur of Farmingdale remembers being wowed by the aforementioned trick as well.

“It was really crazy,” she said. “He was doing flip after flip after flip. My head was spinning.”

Upon inspection, many students recall being astounded by the trick, but do not know who performed it, often referring to the student as “the freshman who did the flips.”

The lack of identification begs the question, who is this mysterious freshman that seemingly impressed the entire school?

“That was me,” Brian Kaplan said, a 14-year-old freshman from Marlboro.

The student-athlete has been doing gymnastics since he was two years old. While an experienced gymnast, Kaplan only started competing four years ago. Currently, he trains at All American Gymnastics four to five times per week, each session lasting three hours. Kaplan puts all this practice to use on the weekends, when he competes and is able to exhibit self-made routines, a perk that comes from his achieved rank.

Currently Kaplan is level seven, a gymnastics designation that allows athletes to formulate their own routines and compete for a score. Kaplan described that, in earlier levels, “you get assigned a specific routine with a bunch of skills for each event.”

Kaplan is taking advantage of this freedom, reaching a personal record in meet placement.

On Sunday, April 28, Kaplan traveled to Cleveland and participated in nationals for the first time in his career. This participation was made possible by Kaplan first placing at regionals and later placing at states.

While nationals had fierce competition, Kaplan did not let the pressure faze him.

“[Nationals] went really good,” he said. “For my age division, in my level, I got third place overall in rings.”

This places Kaplan, for rings, in the top three 14 to 16-year-old gymnasts in the country. His family, friends and Kaplan himself are all proud of this remarkable accolade. While he does recognize the significant accomplishment, Kaplan continues to look to the future, enthusiastic to compete and improve in the following years.

After his high school career comes to an end, Kaplan intends to pursue gymnastics as an intramural activity in college, but, beyond that, he anticipates to retire from the sport in his adult years.

Nonetheless, the CHS student body anxiously awaits his next spirit week debut.