The ceremony moved to the gym because of stormy weather and the ghost of the Pride Trip hovered over the Class of 2009, but they graduated with gusto Friday and headed out to seek their fortunes.
“All of our schooling and education that has led up to this day has been practice for the ‘big game,'” Valedictorian Paige Niemi, who graduated with perfect grades while playing three sports a year for four years in high school, told the 129 other seniors who received their diplomas and a full house of family and friends in the Main Gymnasium.
“The big game of life. It’s what we’ve been waiting for and now it’s our time to play.”
Valedictorians Niemi and Norajean Lemar, and Salutatorians Tanesia McDowell and Alysa Marner, along with members of the Senior Class Board of Directors Ella Butler, Marc Callagan, Ryan Graville, John Price and Zane Wise led the proceedings.
Marner and Lemar thanked parents, community members and volunteers, and teachers for their contributions to the graduates’ development.
“Thank you for your hard work, faith and support,” Marner said.
They urged graduates not “to let your individualism get sucked up by the world or lose the identity you have created for yourself.”
“Don’t forget who you are,” Lemar said. “Don’t surrender yourself to others and forget where we have come from.”
McDowell told the crowd that after being in a hurry to grow up, “I realized that I had missed what was right in front of my eyes.”
She said she realized she failed to appreciate the good things that she has experienced.
“Do not fear the future,” she told her classmates. “Believe in the excellence of your own dreams, appreciate what you have now and, most importantly, love today.”
Niemi urged the graduates to forget past mistakes and chase their aspirations.
“Some of us may have made mistakes we regret and wish we could have ‘do-overs,’ but it doesn’t matter,” she said. “What matters now is that we look to the future and know what we want and how to get it. We are prepared for what is coming and now is the time that matters.”
Several speakers wryly referred to this year’s class’s loss to the sophomores in the Pride Trip competition, which, Niemi said, made them “the first senior class in the history of mankind to not win the Pride Trip.”
“Some of our memories are bittersweet while others make us want to laugh every time we think about them,” she said. “We’ve been through so much together and it’s hard to believe we’re done.”
The Concert Band, directed by Pat Johnson, performed “As Torrents in Summer” by Edward Elgar and “Entrée” by J.S. Bach during the ceremony.
Director Matthew Clark led the Symphonic Choir in a performance of an arrangement of “Photograph” by the band Nickleback, which was chosen by senior choir members.
Teachers David Younger and Billy Snow gave the keynote address, focusing on four questions.
In response to the first question, “What’s better than being negative,” Younger urged the graduates to focus on the positive, noting that many people immediately focus on the negative rather than positives in situations they encounter.
“If you can learn to focus on the positive more than the negative, you’ll be much happier in the world you live in,” he said.
Snow asked the graduates “What’s better than working hard?”
“You have always been told to work hard,” he said. “But there’s something better than working hard €“ it’s working smart.”
He told the story of a soap manufacturer that had a problem with an empty box getting through the production line and being purchased by a customer. To avoid a repeat of that problem, engineers assigned the problem developed an X-ray machine manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes as they came through. A production employee, however, came up with a different solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan, pointed it at the assembly line, and switched it on. When an empty box came through, the fan simply blew the box off the line.
“Clearly, the engineers worked hard, but the production employee worked smart,” Snow concluded, assuring the audience he wasn’t discounting the importance of working hard.
“If you can combine both working hard and working smart, you will possess a major factor toward success in your life,” he said.
Younger cited the example of Walt Disney in answering the third question: “What’s better than dreaming big?”
He said the secret to Disney’s success was not just dreaming, it was “Imagineering,” a word coined by Disney that combines “imagination” and “engineering.”
“Not only are imaginers curious, they are courageous, outrageous and their creativity is contagious,” Younger said. “The big difference with imaginers is that they dream and then they do.”
The final question, posed by Snow, was “What is better than waiting for things to happen?”
“This one is easy,” he said. “Making them happen.”
“Waiting upon the road of life are countless opportunities where doors will be open for you, or you will open those doors that will lead you to some meaningful experience in life.”
“Get up, get involved and make things happen,” he urged the students. “There’s a funny and really good thing that tends to happen when you choose to get involved and make things happen. You tend to affect the lives of others in positive ways.”
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