Going Out with a Bang
How do you measure a year? How does a class stack up against the past and prepare for the future? Students put in hours of work, physical strain, and mental anguish. But perhaps the biggest measure of success for a senior class here comes not from what they do, but from what they can get out of—and that happens based on the opinion of Fr. Lawrence Frederick on tie burning day.
Duncan Diaz (class of 2017) took the weight of the decision and the class on his presidential shoulders. “Well, obviously, every year the seniors try to get out early. [The Class of 2016’s skit] kind of set the bar really high because they did something different with the Bible verse being read.” Not facing the daunting task alone, seniors often turn to an unlikely source for figuring out ways to get out of school—teachers.
“They all start going, ‘Do you think we’re going to get out early? What should we do?’ Every teacher tells them the same stuff. I always tell them chanting and things like that never work. Coming up with something clever and original is really the way to go,” said Mr. Steve Aday. Instead of studying calculus and physics, the seniors of 2017 decided to study the Bible. To get out of school, these seniors followed the same path the Israelites took to get out of Egypt thousands of years ago, by parting a sea of red.
“I had seen a bunch of basketball student sections do that [the skit]. They have everybody dress in red, and a guy dressed up like Moses parts the red sea before the game to get the crowd pumped,” said Diaz. “We just decided to get everybody to wear a red shirt, take it off, and have Aaron [Moore] come down with a Bible. That’s just kind of how it came about.”
The planning went well, then it all came down to execution. “We were kind of struggling because we didn’t know if it was going to work, and we were trying to make sure everybody was on the same page with it. [The skit] had a lot of moving parts, but it came together great, and it really worked well,” said Diaz.
Even current seniors, like Michael Miller, had to admire the effort. “I think it was the best skit they’ve done by far. It was actually pretty creative,” said Miller. It’s Fr. Fred who makes the final decision about the outcome of the tie-burning. Luckily for last year’s seniors, he liked their skit.
“[The skit was] very good; it was better than most years,” said Fr. Fred. At the end of the day, the seniors headed home, successful in their quest and proud of a stellar ending to a really great year. “I thought it was really good. I was excited about it,” said former senior Chase Condren. “A lot the teachers were saying it was the best one they had seen, so I felt really good about that.”
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