Senior Kohler Rauzi wasn’t sure at first whether to attend Wasatch High School or the new Deer Creek High School, but the new school offered an opportunity impossible to pass up.

“There are no traditions, no stories that everyone tells, no expectations and no culture. But we get to create all of that,” he said at Deer Creek High School’s ribbon cutting ceremony and open house on Wednesday. 

The $169 million school is ready to welcome students on Aug. 18. Only a few finishing touches to the theater are left to do.

Former Wasatch School District Superintendent Paul Sweat noted at the ceremony that the building will soon turn into a “living organism” where students will build their futures. 

The first signs of life could be seen at the open house. Aspiring athletes mimed making shots on the basketball court. 

Students wandered into health sciences teacher Jordanne Davidson’s classroom for a demonstration of the new Anatomage table — used to dissect digitized cadavers — and left the room either green in the face or with a gleam in their eyes. 

Meanwhile, members of the student government were hard at work enlisting elementary schoolers to their cause, asking them to pledge to be a Deer Creek Riverhawk instead of a Wasatch Wasp when they grow up.

Rauzi, the student government’s vice president, wants to create a culture in which every student feels seen. He believes the easiest way to do that is by starting conversations. 

Rauzi started his high school experience somewhat isolated from his peers.

“When I was a freshman, I spent a lot of time in the front office, not because I was in trouble, but because my best friends were the ladies who worked there,” he said.

Eventually, a few seniors who frequented the office took him under their wings. Rauzi forged friendships with them that lasted even after they had graduated.

“They probably have no idea how much those simple conversations meant to me,” he said.

Now a senior himself, Rauzi hopes to start those conversations with other students. He’s done the math: If each of the student government’s 28 members befriended 47 of their peers, then every student at Deer Creek High School would have someone in their corner.

Ensuring that every teen gets care and attention is why the Wasatch County School District set out to build its second high school in the first place. 

Deer Creek High School Principal Justin Kelly, formerly principal of Wasatch High School, said, “It was sad to me at graduation that a student would come across the stage, and I would think, ‘I don’t know their name, and I can’t remember seeing them very much.’”

With more than 2,700 students enrolled at Wasatch High School last year, forgetting a few students’ names is inevitable. This upcoming academic year, that population has been halved, with the high schools’ enrollment numbers within only two students of each other, according to Superintendent Garrick Peterson.

Peterson added that at-risk students will be especially impacted by the second high school.

“We’re going to be able to have kids coming to school, and their names are going to be known better. Their struggles are going to be known better. We’re going to be able to react to them better,” he said. “If we can make a difference for just a few of those kids and change their lives forever and start to change their stories, there’s power to that.”

With smaller class and club sizes, students at Wasatch High School and Deer Creek High School have been eager this year to try new things, said school board member Breanne Dedrickson.

“I know kids in my own neighborhood who wouldn’t have gone out for student government before, but they thought, ‘Man, there’s extra spots. I don’t know if anyone’s going to try it at Deer Creek. I’m going to try it.’ And they got involved for the first time in something they never tried before,” she said. “That’s what this is about.”

Student government adviser Jessica Firth explained that the students have been planning the high school’s first year since May. They’ve designed merchandise, planned a spirit week and come up with cheers for football games that tease, “You wish you were a Riverhawk!”

Members of the student government hope there’s more to their relationship with Wasatch High School than a friendly rivalry on the football field.

“They were our people just a few months ago,” Firth said. “We have goals to do service projects with the Wasatch student government and keep connections so that we’re not just rivals, but we’re also collaborators.”

The motto the students came up with, “Together we soar,” was in line with the Riverhawk mascot.

“We don’t want anybody to feel like they’re doing this alone,” Firth said. 

Wasatch County has come a long way since its first Wasatch High School, a 20-by-40-foot building built in 1908, as former Superintendent Sweat pointed out. The school district has since moved the high school to new buildings twice — first in 1964, then again in 2009 — to meet the needs of the community. The opening of the Deer Creek High School continues the trend of cultivating the Heber Valley’s greatest resource: its children. 

To Sweat, the two high schools embody a quote from philosopher and educator John Dewey: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.”

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With more than 600 students, the Class of 2026 constituted one of Wasatch High School’s largest classes ever since 1912, likely for the last time, with class sizes set to shrink when the new Deer Creek High School opens in August.

Among those graduates were 67 who maintained a 4.0 average throughout high school, as well as students who snagged scholarships, seals of biliteracy, associate’s degrees and other impressive accolades, explained Principal Ryan Bishop during Thursday’s graduation ceremony at the high school football field. 

Some other records were altogether less impressive.

“Just to keep things grounded, this class also managed to rack up well over 1,000 unexcused absences,” Bishop joked, to hoots and hollers from the graduating class. “We are not proud of you for that. And just to top it off, a few hundred parking tickets along the way. So, yes, you definitely left your mark in several different ways.”

Bishop added it is not the impressive GPAs, test scores or awards he wants students to remember, but the peers, family members and teachers who helped them through the journey.

“I hope you carry humility with you. The world will tell you to focus on recognition, comparison and proving yourself. But humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s remembering that no one succeeds alone,” he said.

That rang true for co-valedictorian Brynnlea Scheuller, who in her speech compared the high school experience to climbing Mount Timpanogos, whose snowcapped peaks she’s gazed at from her front window every morning since she was five. She finally took the plunge and climbed the mountain last year.

“Getting to the top requires waking up at 4 a.m. to beat the heat, hiking 7 miles straight uphill and earning at least three blisters and a shoe full of rocks along the way,” she said. “Just like this mountain, our lives have two sides: a side that everyone admires from a distance and a side we keep hidden. People often see the photo at the summit, the part that looks easy and put together, but the real story is in what happens before the picture is taken. It happens during the switchbacks, in the moments when no one’s watching, when we are tired and unsure but decide to keep going.”

Co-valedictorian Matthew Blood also used literal and metaphorical heights as inspiration in his speech, recalling NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon in April.

“I don’t know who the first to say, ‘The sky is the limit’ (was), but they sure weren’t very bright,” he joked. “There is no limit to where humanity can go. … We will be at the forefront of these projects. We will be advancing society and building a positive culture. Presently, we are the most influential generation because we will set the precedent of excellence in our communities, countries, the world and eventual interplanetary species.”

After the four co-valedictorian speakers was a fitting musical number by the high school’s chamber choir, “North” by Sleeping At Last. The lyrics about repainting when “our color fades” and “our paint chips away” set the tone for school board member Brad Ehlert’s speech about resilience.

Ehlert began by telling the story of Cory Hanks, a Charleston resident who, while working in a gold mine in Nephi, lost both hands and his sight after he picked up a box of blasting caps that had been sitting in the sun. 

He had been working in the gold mines to pay for his tuition to Stanford University and, despite his accident, went on to attend Stanford, Harvard University, the King’s School of Oratory and Columbia University. He became a lecturer in high schools, colleges, universities and civic halls throughout the United States, Canada, Cuba and the Hawaiian islands. 

Before Hanks died in 1955, he authored his autobiography, “Up From the Hills,” in which he wrote, “We can never turn in our pathway of experience. We must go on.”

“One choice changed Cory Hanks’ life, but the choices after that defined it,” Ehlert said. “He chose to learn and work again. He chose to build again. He chose not to let one moment, even a devastating one, become the final definition of who he was or what his life could become.”

Ehlert then awarded a surprise $5,000 scholarship to a student who embodied Hanks’ tenacity: 19-year-old Crew Baxter, a football and baseball player who recently received an athletic and academic scholarship to the Colorado School of Mines, where he will study civil engineering.

Baxter’s older brother, Kaden, died in a car collision with a drunk driver in 2020. Kaden was 20 at the time. Surrounded by family after the graduation ceremony, Baxter explained that Kaden’s death had completely changed his approach to life.

“It’s pushed me forward in schooling and sports and everything. I feel like I’m living his life through me. I mean, he did civil engineering, too, and he was really a football star and a baseball star,” Baxter said. “Every day, I feel like he’s looking down at me. He’s giving me his energy to go through all this stuff and achieve.”

Another challenge for Baxter throughout his schooling has been his parents’ divorce. He described his father as “abusive.”

“We went through a lot of years of going through the divorce, going through a scheduled visitation and then going through a lot of court systems,” Baxter said. “I lived in an apartment for most of my middle school and elementary school, sharing a room with my mom and my brothers.”

Throughout the challenges, Baxter’s family has been his guiding light.

“The comfort and moral support that we had with each other really helped us grow and blossom,” he said.

Baxter said high school came with its fair share of fun — participating in sports, becoming more sociable and growing into himself — but it felt “amazing” to be acknowledged for the hardships, too.

“Us Baxters, we don’t really like talking about our grief, especially me. I don’t want to feel like I’m given a step up or pity,” he said. “Having the scholarship was being recognized at least, for once. It really salved my heart and soul.”

The message Ehlert left the Class of 2026 with was to persevere, just like Baxter did.

“When you choose a path that isn’t the right fit, do not let that be the end of your story. Learn, repair, stand back up, choose again, because your life will not be built by one perfect decision. It will be built by the choices you kept making after the plan changes,” he said. “You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not defined by the hardest thing that has happened to you. You are the person who still gets to choose what comes next. That is what this valley has been teaching you.”

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The Deer Valley Music Festival opened with a Patriotic Celebration at the Snow Park Amphitheater Saturday evening, July 1, 2017. The event featured acclaimed vocalist Lisa Vroman. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

See full gallery here: https://parkrecordphoto.smugmug.com/PHOTOS-Deer-Valley-Music-Festivals-Patriotic-Celebration/

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The Basin Recreation Fieldhouse held an expansion celebration Saturday morning, June 10, 2017. Activities at the Fieldhouse were free all day, with a myriad of classes, kids’ activities and more. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

Link to full gallery here: https://parkrecordphoto.smugmug.com/PHOTOS-Basin-Recreation-Fieldhouses-Expansion-Celebration/

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The Park City High School girls and boys water polo teams faced off against Kearns High School at the Park City Aquatic Center Wednesday evening, May 10, 2017. Both the girls and the boys beat the Cougars, 7-6 and 13-8, respectively. The teams also recognized their senior members. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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In this week’s collection of portraits from For The Record, we asked people at Starbucks on Park Ave. what they’re doing for Valentine’s Day. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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The 5th annual Louisiana Film, Music & Cuisine celebration brought Mardi Gras to the stage at Park City Live Tuesday afternoon and evening, Jan. 24, 2017. The event kicked off with the Peace Parade in front of Park City Live, and was followed by burlesque-style dancing, entertainment, music and more. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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Chabad of Park City hosted their Grand Hanukkah Celebration at the St. Regis at Deer Valley Wednesday evening, Dec. 28, 2016, with live entertainment, kosher snacks, menorah lighting and more. In addition to the festivities, the kitchen at the St. Regis launched its first-ever kosher dining program this holiday season, too, offering guests and locals kosher cuisine between Dec. 21st – Dec. 30th. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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The Winter Sports School graduating class of 2016 held their commencement ceremony in the social hall at the Temple Har Shalom Friday afternoon, Nov. 18, 2016. The class of 30 was celebrated as they took their next step into the world. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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The students of Parley’s Park Elementary hosted a costume parade Friday morning to show off their Halloween costumes to their parents. Following the parade, students were invited to a haunted house on the stage behind their gym and trick-or-treating fun. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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