Sean C. Morgan
Rebecca Wooley and Sarah Dunkley are the top students, academically, of the 176-member Class of 2016 at Sweet Home High School.
With a 4.0 GPA, Wooley is the 2016 class valedictorian. Dunkley is the salutatorian, finishing with a GPA of 3.8. They will lead commencement ceremonies Friday at 7 p.m. at Husky Field.
Wooley, 18, is the daughter of Bruce and Kerry Wooley.
She plans to attend Western Oregon University and study pre-nursing before transferring to Oregon Health Sciences University, where she wants to earn her bachelor’s degree. She would like to become a labor and delivery nurse.
“I just really like babies,” Wooley said. “I want to be the type of nurse that can help a mom through that type of experience.”
Looking back at her high school experience, she enjoyed biology, a field trip to a cadaver lab at Lebanon Health Center in particular, Wooley said. That’s a field trip taken by students interested in health.
During high school, “I really enjoyed all the spirit weeks we do,” she said, and in school, “I enjoy all the elective classes at our school.”
She said the high school offered a wide range of electives.
Peggy Rolph was a key staff member to Wooley’s success in high school, she said. Whenever she had a problem, she could depend on Rolph to help her through it.
Wooley was determined to avoid bad grades, she said.
“I was very hard-working with my homework.”
Her worst grade was a D in the fifth grade, she said. “I wasn’t happy that year.”
That’s when she decided to do whatever it took to avoid bad grades. The next year, she was “valedictorian” of her sixth-grade class. Since then she has pushed for the grades, especially as school got tougher her junior and senior year.
She was taking college classes and working at Coffee Hut. Now she works at Dutch Bros. She also played volleyball for four years, her junior and senior year on varsity. She also recorded statistics for baseball and basketball.
To other students looking for academic success, she suggests knowing what to expect, setting goals and then pushing beyond those goals.
Dunkley, also 18, is the daughter of Liz and Mac Olsen.
She plans to attend Brigham Young University, Idaho, to study the prerequisites in dental hygiene, then she plans to transfer to a dental school.
“I always liked going to the dentist when I was young,” Dunkley said. “I really liked the environment.”
She also, earlier this year, went on a trip to Guatemala to provide dental services, she said. That helped solidify her decision to go into dentistry.
“I’ve had a little bit of experience,” she said. “And I liked it.”
After college, she wants to be a dental hygienist and a stay-at-home mom, she said.
Dunkley said she had one B in high school.
That was in advanced placement biology, taught by a substitute teacher, she said.
She most enjoyed her math classes, she said. Those teachers have been her favorites, and she always liked math.
During high school, she was on the soccer and track teams for four years, three years each on varsity. She also was active in the church youth group at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
The key to her academic success was getting the work done, she said. She received a lot of encouragement from her parents and her teachers.
“I don’t like getting bad grades. I did my work, and I turned it in on time. I just tried to understand it the best I could and get help when I needed it.”