SR sends off close-knit Class of 2016
SLIPPERY ROCK — Friends until the end might be the unofficial motto of Slippery Rock School District's class of 2016, which graduated Friday evening.
The uncommonly small class of uncommonly close-knit students — 146 in all — helped distinguish the district academically and set the stage for what teachers and administrators hope will be big futures.
High School principal Cory Hake said his first year as the building's head administrator confirmed what he has always heard about the class of 2016: they're a class where no one is left behind.
“It's always had a reputation of being a very together group of kids,” Hake said.
Senior class adviser Amy Geibel, who also teaches math at the district, agreed.
“They're amazing,” she said. “They're just a really tight-knit class. They're all friends with each other.”
The class is no slouch in the classroom either, Geibel said. Slippery Rock was named a national Blue Ribbon Award school this year, thanks in large part to the academic success of this class — a fact superintendent Alfonso Angelucci underscored when he told guests on Friday that nearly 70 percent of the class' 146 students intended to continue their education after high school, and that the class won, in total, nearly $1 million worth of scholarships and other awards based on their high school performance.
Angelucci called that the largest accumulation of financial awards he's ever seen in his time as the district's top administrator, but he cautioned students against getting complacent.
“This is the floor, not the ceiling,” he said. “You have so much energy and potential, you shouldn't even be able to see the ceiling and the heights of what you can accomplish.”
Valedictorian Gemma Padchonga seconded that advice in her address to the class Friday, casting graduation as a break-out moment for the students.
“After today we can each become a new person,” she said. “We have a chance to recreate ourselves. To redefine our goals.”Some of those goals are already pretty lofty, Hake noted. This year's class had 14 students graduate summa cum laude, the most ever in a single class, he said. And of the 12 students going into military service following graduation, two had already been accepted into the U.S. Navy's prestigious nuclear engineering program.Class vice president Josh Bowser, who plans to attend Penn State University's Behrend campus this fall, said it was athletics that helped bring the students close together. Bowser played baseball and golf at Slippery Rock and plans to major in plastics engineering technology in college.Seventeen-year-old senior Alex Stover agreed. Stover broke his leg playing baseball his freshman year, and said the experience not only pushed him toward the exercise science degree he plans to pursue at Slippery Rock University but also taught him to see life from a different perspective.“It was a humbling experience, being in a wheelchair and wearing a cast,” Stover said. “It showed me how to see things from the perspective of people who aren't participating in (sports).”Stover hopes to go on from SRU and earn a doctorate in sports medicine, but said he'll always remember his high school classmates as empathetic and community-minded.“I feel like we all step up for each other even if we don't know the other person that well,” Stover said. “There are no outsiders in this class.”Madeline McCleary, who plans to pursue an education degree at SRU this fall, summed up the evening.“Tonight is the result of four years of hard work, and I'm glad to be able to spend it with everyone who has supported me throughout those four years,” she said.
