Plenty of foot stomping, hand clapping and cheering punctuated the accolades bestowed on Wrangell High School students last Friday, making the auditorium a celebratory club for an hour.
Eighth through 12th graders gathered along with community members for the high school’s end-of-the-year award ceremony to honor student achievements and announce senior scholarship recipients.
A total of $108,300 from 19 local scholarships were awarded to seniors, said school counselor Addy Esco. An additional $682,869 from 17 outside scholarships were also awarded.
Teachers Lisa Brooks, Jack Carney, Winston Davies, Ann Hilburn, Donna Massin and Tasha Morse handed out awards to their students who put in extra effort to succeed throughout the past school year. Categories like the Improved Athlete Award honored students from all four grade levels. Some were awarded to multiple students, some to just one.
From science and mathematics to shop class, teachers took note of their students’ performances.
“They put in more time than they’re expected to, they’re here before school, after school, lunch time,” Davies said before awarding the shop class Workhorse Award to senior Jimmy Baggen. Along with a couple of other awards, he also named senior Darryl Smith as the Shop Student of the Year for 2021-22. Davies admitted it was a tough decision because of all the hard work his students put in.
Scholarships for the senior class were also announced. Of the local scholarships, the Wrangell Pulp Scholarship, which is usually awarded to two students, was handed out to three students this year: Liana Carney, Renee Roberts and Baggen, who is the first student to receive the $20,000 award for a vocational-technical school.
“It’s definitely nice to see all the hard work put into (applying for) scholarships starting to pay off,” senior Carney said on April 21 when the scholarship was originally presented.
The award ceremony was emotional for some of the presenters at times, as Frank Roppel awarded Jamie Early with the $5,000 Patricia Roppel Memorial Scholarship in honor of his late wife. Gig and Julie Decker awarded the $3,000 Sig and Helen Decker Memorial Scholarship in honor of their late children, Sig and Helen, to Early as well.
The eighth-grade class is encouraged to attend the event to get an idea of what it takes to succeed in the next four years of school.
“We try to do that every year just so they can hit the road running as a ninth grader, understanding that every class counts and every minute counts,” said Bob Davis, the assistant principal of the high school and middle school. “There’s a tremendous amount of money and support out there for people who put in the time and effort and work hard. It can go to a variety of people. It’s not just people going to college.”
The Sentinel plans to print the entire list of award and scholarship winners next week.
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