Sean C. Morgan
The 2015 Sweet Home High School valedictorian is Sierrah Owen.
Alex Olin is the salutatorian.
Owen, 17, is the daughter of Greg and Carolyn Owen. She completed high school with a 4.0 GPA.
She was a member of the band for seven years, playing the flute and a member of the choir her senior year. She served on the band council as librarian and secretary, creating a database of some 2,200 pieces of music.
She ran cross country and track for four years, swam for three and played basketball her freshman year. She was involved in drama all four years of high school.
She participated in Key Club her senior year, and she has been involved in her church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints all her life.
She said her stubbornness, the kind that means she could resist eating food she didn’t like for several meals, was behind her drive for a perfect grade.
“I like to do my best in everything,” Owen said. “It’s not really anyone else pushing me, just myself.”
If her grade isn’t what she wants it to be, she’s unwilling to let it go and will study harder, she said. Her stubbornness can be frustrating to her at times, but she makes a concentrated effort to work with other people too.
“You just have to get it done,” Owen said. “If there’s a due date, get it in on time. If there’s a project, make sure it looks nice. Looking nice is often better than actual content.”
Be nice to others, and help them, she said. “You may have to get their help.”
It’s paid off for her.
“That was my goal from the sixth grade, to get a 4-point,” Owen said. The sixth grade at Hawthorne was her toughest year of school. She was swimming and learning to play the flute, and those kept her busy in combination with her homework. Her family had just moved that year into cramped quarters.
“That sort of prepared me,” Owen said. “When I got to junior high, it wasn’t so hard with the amount of work I had to do.”
In junior high, she learned to talk to other people, and she joined theater and track her eighth-grade year.
In high school, advanced placement history was her most difficult class, she said. Aside from band, she really liked Spanish.
“It’s like learning a code,” she said, and that’s where she wants to go after graduation.
She reads a lot, enjoying Terry Goodkind, Terry Pratchett, Dean Koontz and Brandon Sanderson; and she loves music, art and drama.
She plans to attend Brigham Young University and is trying to raise enough scholarships to afford it.
She will go on a mission trip for her church when she is 19. She doesn’t know where her church will send her, but she hopes it will work with her career path. She wants to work in Spanish translation – or in the language of the country where her church sends her. It is possible that it would be the United States though.
Her ultimate dream would be to act, and she plans to be involved in drama during college.
Olin, 18, is the daughter of Steve and Tracy Olin. She carried a 3.97 GPA.
Olin was in cheerleading for four years, co-captain her junior year and captain her senior year. Through cheer, she learned gymnastics.
She volunteers with Hope’s Closet, which provides clothing and items for people in need, and she is involved in Students in Ministry at her church, Community Chapel.
She is a volunteer track coach at the elementary level, and she competed in track her sophomore and junior years. She helped coach club and junior cheer, and she was a Sportsman’s Holiday Court princess her sophomore year.
“I’m proud of my accomplishments, but I’m humbled,” she said. She had to work hard, be a good kid and get good grades to get there.
“I believe in being a good kid and trying your hardest,” Olin said. The most challenging part of it has been “balancing sports and volunteering on top of cheer. Finding time for everything was a little bit challenging.”
The solution was to “study super hard and just know if you want to go for it, set a goal and don’t fall short.”
When she speaks Friday night, she will talk about not fearing failure, she said. She will urge her classmates to embrace failure, which are learning experiences that precede success.
She plans to attend the University of Oregon and study biochemistry. She would like to be a pediatrician-OBGYN.
“I’ve always been interested in kids, and I also wanted to do something in the medical field,” Olin said, as well as deliver babies. She enjoys chemistry and biology, her favorite subjects in high school, chemistry more than biology.