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.”

The post Wasatch County’s second high school opens appeared first on Park Record.

Any notions of Heber Valley’s agricultural industry being on its last legs are quickly shattered with a tour of Wasatch High School’s 1-acre farm.

Two adolescent goats curiously poke their heads through fences in a secluded barn. Greenery sprouts everywhere, both outdoors and in the greenhouse: mint and rose hips, watermelon beginnings and plump cherry tomatoes that students pluck for a sneaky snack while they work.

The labor is constant. Even in the July heat, a handful of students kneel on the ground, weeding the landscape instead of taking refuge in the air-conditioned indoors.

Tending to the farm is the students’ summer job, and they’re compensated well for it — $13 an hour, matched by $13 an hour set aside in a scholarship fund.

Agriculture teacher Matthew Zierenberg launched the farm, Ideal Farms, five years ago as a way to give his students hands-on experience and summer employees with a gateway to university.

“A lot of kids that come and work are not your typical … generational-wealth kids,” he said. “When we hire kids, we look for the kids (for whom) there’s a real need.”

The employees’ salaries and scholarships are funded entirely from revenue generated by Ideal Farms, which sells its wares to local vendors, including the Utah Department of Natural Resources. 

The farm has generated about $400,000 in its five years of operation, according to Zierenberg. Anything that does not pay for student employees rolls back into the farm’s continued operation. 

Zierenberg’s local advocacy for agriculture has not gone unnoticed. This month, the National Future Farmers of America Organization named Zierenberg a national teacher ambassador for the upcoming school year. While most states have multiple ambassadors — as many as six, in Texas’ case — Zierenberg is the sole ambassador in Utah. 

Zierenberg will provide training and resources to fellow agriculture teachers, assisting them in establishing work-based learning programs and tweaking national curricula to be relevant to Utah’s unique agricultural industry.

“Agriculture’s not just corn and animals. Agriculture is all the timber and the rangeland and the ranching that we do here, wildland firefighting, keeping our forests healthy, prescribed burns and all that kind of stuff,” he said. 

Zierenberg will also continue as an advocate for agricultural education in Utah.

“We see a lot of pressure from our Legislature right now. They’re looking to cut certain programs, and the summer ag is always right there on that (chopping block),” he said. “Luckily, we’ve kept it, but we want to make that a lot stronger and show this is hugely beneficial to our students as they go on to their future careers. But it’s also helping them to give back and build an economy right here in our state, right now.”

Recent graduate Trey Torres worked in the summer agriculture program all four of his years at Wasatch High School. The money he has earned will help fund his entomology studies, as soon as he can pin down which university to attend.

If Torres’ passion for insects was not apparent by his T-shirt reading, “Easily Distracted By Ants,” it shines through in his voice as he talks about the ant colonies he keeps in his room. 

“The first thing I remember, I ate a roly poly. That was I think where it started,” he said, half joking. 

In taking various agriculture classes and working on the farm in the summer, Torres has earned valuable skills — time management, teamwork and leadership — that will stay with him as he pursues his creepy-crawly career.

Seventeen-year-old Zadie Mitchell said something similar about her experience growing tomatoes.

“We had tomatoes at the beginning, but they really weren’t good, so we had to start over and plant different kinds and learn how to problem solve,” she said. “I think that’s a really useful skill in the future because you’re always going to run into problems.”

For Zierenberg, the appeal of teaching agriculture is instilling grit and critical thinking in students. 

He has been a teacher for 17 years, entirely at Wasatch High School. He’s currently one of five agriculture teachers in the Wasatch County School District. He began by teaching biology, physics and chemistry, later teaching an agricultural biology class. Within a few years, he’d transitioned completely to the agriculture program. 

Zierenberg found the constant hands-on learning a welcome change from the sparse, controlled labs in other science classes. Running a farm is also an excellent way to keep students off their phones, both because they’re engaged and their hands are too dirty to touch their screens.

“Meeting the kids with something that’s real is the key, and that’s what agriculture does,” he said. “They feed the goats. They’re like, ‘Oh, I have to keep this thing alive. This is real. I actually have to do this. If not, the thing dies.’ You don’t get more real than that.”

Growing plants and raising animals are also excellent Trojan horses for Zierenberg to sneak science concepts into his students’ minds.

“(In growing apples,) we talk about the roots, the shoots, the gibberellins, all the stuff that goes into raising a tree and raising healthy plants,” he said. “We bring all that science into it. But they see it as, ‘I’m learning to make apple sauce!’”

The high school’s agriculture program also teaches students about sustainability. 

Zierenberg’s students in the agricultural track of the high school’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies are installing solar panels on the farm to fuel its entire electrical output. The walls of the goats’ barn are lined with recycled Plexiglass instead of plywood. And the greenhouse uses a closed-loop aquaponic system. The students look after goldfish and koi, whose waste becomes fertilizer for plants. In return, the plants clean the water pumped back into the fish’s tank.

“It’s basically an ecosystem just running right here. We take the benefit of fish waste and put it into growing lettuce and tomatoes,” Zierenberg said.

Students learn how to take care of the environment through the projects they participate in through the agriculture program. 

They’ve sold thousands of willows to the Division of Wildlife Resources to plant along rivers to regenerate stream banks eroded by overgrazing or wildfires. They’ve raised thousands of chukar partridges for Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife to sustainably hunt. 

Not all of Ideal Farms’ projects make a profit. Students are currently growing trees to replace native plants destroyed by construction at the new Deer Creek High School. They also donate lettuce and tomatoes to local food banks every year. 

While agriculture has certainly shrunk in the Heber Valley, Zierenberg is consistently surprised by the popularity of the high school’s program. 

“Some of them, they come from legacy farm families here in the valley. So their grandparents owned a dairy. I mean, we had 40 dairies in this valley at one time,” he said. “Their parents skipped a generation, and we just see this resurgence … that interest in learning about where their families come from.”

The waitlist for Wasatch High School’s agriculture program is constant, Zierenberg said. The program will expand to accommodate more students when Deer Creek High School opens next month.

Zierenberg said it’s hands-on learning that draws in most students, even those with nothing more than a passing interest in agriculture. He said he hopes that even his students who do not go into the industry remember the National Future Farmers of America Organization’s motto as they cultivate their futures: “Learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live and living to serve.”

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Jenna Vollman dropped out of high school as a freshman with only three credits and a 1.1 GPA to her name. Now 35, Vollman received her diploma in November through the Wasatch County Jail’s adult education program, which the Wasatch County School District facilitates. 

Vollman, who has been out of prison for four months and now lives in Orem, said graduating is the first goal she’s actually accomplished in her life.

“I would always doubt myself growing up. Like, ‘There’s no way I can do that. I’m not smart enough, or I don’t have the patience to do it.’ I would lie to myself and not give myself a chance,” she said. “Now that I’m giving myself a chance, it’s the best feeling ever.”

Becoming a more confident person has been a lifelong, uphill battle for Vollman. 

When she was 5, her father died by suicide, creating separation anxiety so severe Vollman required a prescription. That snowballed into self-medication in her early teens. She started using methamphetamine and discovered heroin and fentanyl in her late 20s. 

“I would literally try any substance to not feel the feelings that I felt,” she said.

Though she had dropped out of school in ninth grade, by 17, Vollman was determined to reenroll. That dream was crushed when she realized she was pregnant.

“I just didn’t even think about school anymore. It was only about having a child,” she said.

Vollman now has four children who live in Pocatello, Idaho, with the rest of her family. She lost custody of her children during what she described as a vicious cycle of addiction treatment, relapse and homelessness throughout her adult years living in Utah County.

In that time, she had several run-ins with the law. Ultimately, Vollman was sentenced to prison at the Utah State Correctional Facility in January 2025, stemming from theft, vehicle burglary and drug possession charges, all misdemeanors, as well as a third-degree felony charge for unlawful use of a bank card.

“I was basically trying to do probation from 2023 to the end of 2024 and just could not keep myself out of trouble or clean. That’s when they eventually sent me to prison,” Vollman said.

After her sentencing, Vollman set a goal of obtaining her high school diploma through the prison’s adult education program by her Board of Pardons & Parole hearing in December. She was transferred to Wasatch County Jail in April 2025 due to high occupancy at the prison. 

At that time, the jail was between teachers for the program. Then, the Wasatch County School District hired retired teacher Kathy Carr that summer to teach the course. 

Carr began her part-time role at the jail because she desired to make a difference in inmates’ lives.

“I care so much for people in the system and want to offer what I can for them to change,” she said. “I’m so proud of (Vollman) and our other students who realize their potential.”

The jail’s General Educational Development, or GED, program is available to inmates depending on qualifications like good behavior, the crime they were convicted for and their sentence. 

Inmates must earn 27 credits through self-guided state curriculum packets, class time and tests on English, math, science and social studies. Any credits they originally earned in high school carry over.

Vollman also received credits by working full time at the jail’s kitchen for $1 an hour.

Carr visits the jail every Monday morning for a two-hour class in the library to help inmates with any subjects they are struggling with. Then, she hosts an art class, providing the supplies herself. 

“It was very uplifting, and you could see how much she actually cared about all of the women in there that were struggling and needing some lifting up,” Vollman said. “I love Kathy. She’s an amazing lady, and I know that it’s only the beginning of her journey with Wasatch (County Jail). She’s going to do great things there.”

Carr has now helped six inmates graduate the program. Vollman was her first, receiving her diploma in her cap and gown in November — one month before the deadline she’d set for herself.

“I did cry a lot, but it was a happy cry. I hadn’t seen my parents in over a year when they came (from Idaho for the graduation ceremony), so that was really special,” she said.

Vollman was “shocked” that she’d accomplished her goal. She’d pursued her GED about eight years ago but gave up after returning to drugs.

In Vollman’s experience, being unhoused has always been the No. 1 cause of her relapses.

“It kind of sounds like an excuse, but when you’re a drug addict, and you become homeless, you revert back to your surviving ways. Drugs are the only survival tool that you have when you’re homeless,” she said.

Thankfully, Vollman’s had no trouble keeping a roof over her head thanks to a friend from her teenage years, who is offering Vollman a room free of charge in exchange for nannying and babysitting duties three days a week.

The experience of being “part of a family” again is preparing Vollman to reunite with her children, which she hopes to do after saving up money to move to Idaho. 

But for now, Vollman is learning to be comfortable living without family or a partner to fall back on. 

“I had codependency issues, and I still do. I’m working on them with my therapist right now,” she said. “I would jump from one relationship to the next and not give myself any time to actually heal or grow. I’ve actually been single since I went to prison, and it’s been the most amazing thing to be able to love myself, finally.”

Now that she’s graduated, Vollman hopes to pursue her associate degree and become certified as a peer support specialist. Her ultimate goal is to become a substance use disorder counselor and open her own rehabilitation center. She said she believes her story of resilience after losing everything can make a difference in addicts’ lives.

After her experience in prison, Vollman knows that “drugs are no longer an option.”

“Even on the hard days, I don’t get to quit and just get high. That’s not the option,” she said. “The option is to do the hard thing and to go after the goals that I’ve been setting. Because I know that I’m capable of it.”

The post ‘Giving myself a chance’: Wasatch County Jail inmate finds hope in high school education  appeared first on Park Record.

The Wasatch County School District could increase its general fund by $11 million for the upcoming fiscal year, without raising property taxes.

The general fund includes expenditures for supplies, textbooks, equipment and professional development, but the biggest piece of the pie is salaries and benefits, which make up about $122 million of the nearly $136 million total. 

All categories of general fund will see some increase in fiscal year 2027.

Some new costs include the school district’s addition of a childcare facility in Deer Creek High School for school district employees to use and increased spending on early literacy programs. The majority of the spending increase, $10 million, will go to salaries and benefits, including 4% raises for employees.

“We have nearly 1,200 employees now. Obviously, our most valuable and most costly resource is our people,” said Business Administrator Jason Watt. “The board has prioritized this in recent years as a way to attract and retain high-quality educators.”

The increase also accounts for new hires at Deer Creek High School, which opens in August. 

While most staffing occurred by divvying up existing Wasatch High School staff between the two schools, some roles necessitated hiring externally. For example, it would be impractical to divide one theater teacher between two high schools. 

Watt said the school district hired eight teachers, as well as custodial and maintenance staff, secretaries, an instructional coach, a librarian, an athletic director, a Hispanic liaison, school resource officers and a nurse.

With the new high school also comes increased spending on transportation, maintenance and utilities. None of that will necessitate an increase in property taxes, which make up about two-thirds of the school district’s budget.

“We have been budgeting for this year for some time,” Watt said. “We are really pleased that we are able to cover those additional costs with existing revenues and will not be approaching the public for additional revenues through the truth in taxation process.”

While general fund expenditures are increasing since the previous fiscal year, the school district will spend less money overall this upcoming fiscal year. The school district spent over $250 million in fiscal year 2026, and estimates spending about $193 million in fiscal year 2027.

The primary reason for that decrease is a reduction in capital project spending. The district spent $111 million last fiscal year — largely to construct Deer Creek High School — and will spend $41 million in the upcoming year.

The school board held a public hearing on June 16, during which two school district employees made comments in support of the budget.

Wasatch High School Assistant Principal Drew Camps Wofford expressed her excitement about Deer Creek High School and the new childcare program while holding her toddler, Scout.

“As a parent, (I’m) super stoked to have kids … in a district where you know that they’re doing the right things to take care of our kids while I’m taking care of other people,” she said.

Wasatch High School agricultural science teacher Kody Clyde thanked the school board for its “continued support and confidence in teachers.”

“I can promise that the teachers will continue to take care of the community’s greatest resource, which is, of course, the students. You will continue to see an increase in student academic performance. I can also assure you that Wasatch will continue to be the best district in the state,” he said. “I personally would like to thank you for my job. I feel so lucky to have the greatest career in the greatest community.”

The school board will meet June 29 at 6:30 p.m. to vote on adopting the budget. The meeting will include an opportunity for public comment.

The post Wasatch County School District to increase spending on salaries, benefits without tax increase appeared first on Park Record.

Twenty-four young women competed in a gauntlet of talent, poise, modeling and community service in a pageant as old as World War II at the Wasatch High School auditorium on Saturday.

The Miss Wasatch County pageant has been held 76 times since 1939. It names a Miss Wasatch County, Miss Heber Valley, and, for the first time this year, a Miss Deer Creek, for teens, 14 to 18, and adults, up to 27. 

The three titles are not based on location and are in equal standing, explained organizer Aja Phillips. Three titles exist to send as many women as possible from Wasatch County to the Miss Utah and Miss Utah’s Teen competitions next year, the winner of which advances to Miss America and Miss America’s Teen. The only Miss Utah from the Wasatch Back was Midway-raised Christina Lowe in 2010. 

Ava Winterton was crowned Miss Wasatch County, in no small part thanks to her performance in the talent portion, which constituted 20% of her score. During an expertly choreographed stunt cheer routine to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” her partner, “Ken,” threw her around as if she were as light as a plastic doll, hoisting her above his head to gasps and cheers from the audience.

Winterton, 18, graduated from Wasatch High School a few weeks ago. She’d competed in the teen competition the previous year only because her friends were doing it, but this year, she said she put her all into it.

She said the pageant was a valuable experience to prepare her for the adult world.

“I know now how to interview and how to talk onstage, and those are important skills for life,” she said.

Winterton’s community service initiative, an issue she was passionate about and advocated for locally in the six weeks leading up to the competition, constituted 10% of her score. Winterton’s was promoting children’s oral hygiene, which she has done by distributing free dental care kits and tabling an educational booth at Heber Market on Main.

Winterton currently works as a dental assistant at Smiles By Design and plans to use the scholarship she won to fund her education in Utah Tech University’s dental hygiene program.

As a winner of the adult competition, Winterton won $2,500. Teen winners won $1,200. 

These scholarships were funded by local businesses, anonymous donors and Wasatch County Parks and Recreation. The department used the budget for the county fair — at which Miss titleholders are announcers — to fund $8,500 in scholarships. The county fair budget is funded by the county’s restaurant tax revenue, according to Parks and Recreation program director Taylor Baker. 

Miss America and the state and local competitions under it originally began in 1921 as solely based on looks but have since expanded to focus more on overall character.

However, two categories of the competition focus on modeling. 

The evening gown portion constituted 20% of competitors’ scores. Announcers explained this stage of the competition was focused on self-expression, grace and composure rather than the cost or look of the dress.

Another 20% of competitors’ scores came from modeling athletic wear like yoga sets and tennis skirts in the health and fitness category. 

Each contestant strutted onstage while Lady Gaga played over the loudspeakers, sometimes flexing or doing cartwheels. Announcers said beforehand that the section was focused on displaying each competitor’s stage presence, personality and energy.

The health and fitness category is a spiritual successor to Miss America’s controversial swimsuit competition, which the organization removed in 2018, along with any judgment of physical beauty. Miss America somewhat reversed that decision in 2023 by adding the health and fitness category. 

The final 30% of contestants’ scores came from a private interview with the judges, who, with one exception, were all women with backgrounds in pageants, event organizing, fashion and dance.

Anahi Villalobos was the first attendant, or runner up, in the adult competition. Her community service initiative was teen mental health. 

“I struggled personally through depression and anxiety. Therefore, I wanted to be able to share the ways that I got out of it,” she said. “Like one of my favorite artists (Colombian singer Karol G) says, ‘Mañana será bonito.’ That means, ‘Tomorrow will be beautiful,’ and that’s true.”

All competitors who did not win also earned scholarships, albeit smaller ones, from various donors.

Villalobos plans to use her $900 in scholarship money to help pay for her nursing studies at Utah Valley University this fall.

Expanding scholarship money was a key priority for co-directors Phillips and Giuliana Willis when they took over five years ago.

Phillips, who is a model, said pageants are not “girly and ditzy” but instead about virtue, dedication, selflessness and service to one’s community.

“A lot of young women struggle more than men, not all men, with body positivity and being included and bullying,” she said. “Building confidence really is a big thing, because that’s a very crucial age … where a lot of people can go down a wrong path … because they don’t have that right guidance or the confidence.”

Newly-crowned Miss Heber Valley Kayleigh Hofheins said maintaining confidence was the hardest part of the competition.

“Getting on the stage and putting yourself out there, in front of a group of a ton of people, and all these beautiful girls … it’s really hard to keep your confidence up,” she said. “But it’s an amazing group of girls. You all hype each other up.”

Villalobos echoed that sentiment.

“Sisterhood is so important here,” she said. “I think it’s the most beautiful part.”

Here are the winners of the pageant.

• Miss Deer Creek: Jadyn Johnson
• Miss Heber Valley: Kayleigh Hofheins
• Miss Wasatch County: Ava Winterton
• Miss Deer Creek’s Teen: Elizabeth Cluff
• Miss Heber Valley’s Teen: Clarissa Blain
• Miss Wasatch County’s Teen: Adalynn Probst

The post Wasatch County crowns its new pageant royalty appeared first on Park Record.

Hands hovering over buzzers, four Wasatch High School students in military uniform answered obscure trivia questions asked by retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Denise Harris.

“The ancient ouroboros motif shows,” Harris began, before junior Joe Grayson hit the buzzer, answering that a serpent eats its own tail.

Other questions left the quartet stumped, like when they were asked to name the novels “Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf and “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe based on only a few plot details.

These four students — sophomores Hilary Palmer and Jonas Bevan and juniors Emilia Charlton and Grayson — are participants in the Leadership & Academic Bowl, a club that is part of the high school’s Air Force Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, known as JROTC. 

On Friday, they will be traveling to Washington, D.C., with their instructors as the only Academic Bowl team in Utah to advance to this year’s national finals at The Catholic University of America. 

JROTC, an elective course with voluntary after-school clubs and service projects, uses the roleplaying of military service to instill self-discipline, civic engagement and leadership in student “cadets.”

Wasatch High School’s Air Force JROTC unit began in 2017. It’s the only one in the Wasatch Back and has about 70 cadets currently enrolled.

The elective course teaches the expected, such as the history and science of aviation, as well as other, less military-specific lessons, like how to fill out a college application, land a job interview or manage finances.

“We’re just trying to build future citizens that can affect their community in a positive way, giving them the tools to be a good human. … Learn how to be a follower. Learn how to be a team player. Learn how to be a leader,” Harris explained. “We hope they just become better people. They don’t have to become better military people, but just better people.”

Some clubs within JROTC focus on physical fitness, marksmanship or cyber security. 

Meanwhile, the Academic Bowl was created to prepare students for the ACT or SAT standardized tests they take in their junior year. Cadets answer questions in categories including math, English, science, social studies, financial literacy, college readiness and current events. Math, Harris said, is always the trickiest subject.

All students in Wasatch High School’s Air Force JROTC unit take the Academic Bowl practice test at the beginning of the year, but often it is only those who performed exceptionally well who decide to join Academic Bowl. 

Advancing to nationals involves making it past two rounds of tests. Sixteen Air Force/Space Force JROTC units will be advancing to nationals out of the 715 who took the first test. 

These 16 teams will compete against each other this weekend to determine which will represent the Air Force in the final round against the top teams in other military branches of JROTC, including Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Coast Guard.

Wasatch High School’s Academic Bowl team advanced to the national competition and got second place in the Air Force qualifier in 2022 and 2023. 

“It was a race to the buzzer,” Harris said about the final tiebreaker question in the 2023 competition.

Harris and the cadets this year are hoping to take home the gold — and its prize of bragging rights. But, Harris noted, they’ve already won in a sense: Outside of souvenirs and meals, their trip was entirely paid for by the College Options Foundation, the organization that runs the Academic Bowl.

The thing that excites Grayson most about the trip is meeting other cadets from across the United States and its territories. He said he was “timid” when he joined JROTC as a freshman. Now, he’s a more confident leader — but still calls himself “antisocial and an introvert,” despite his obvious love for his teammates.

“The people, in general, are the main reasons I stick around. It’s like a second family to me,” he said.

Grayson will likely join the Army or Marines after high school. 

Cadets Palmer and Bevan are also looking forward to military service. 

Palmer wants to join the Air Force as a stepping stone toward becoming an anesthesiologist. Military scholarships, she hopes, will help her pay for medical school.

Palmer is the commander of the Academic Bowl team. She said JROTC has made her someone more willing to serve others, stand up for what’s right and be a leader. She recently became cheer captain, a role she doesn’t think she would have volunteered for if she hadn’t flexed her leadership muscles in JROTC.

Meanwhile, Bevan has wanted to join the Navy ever since he was a kid listening to stories from a Navy SEAL neighbor about the excitement and grueling physical training. 

Additionally, Bevan’s father is a foreign service officer, meaning Bevan has lived in countries like Gabon, China and Albania for much of his life. He’s lived with his grandparents in Wasatch County since his freshman year, when his father was stationed in the Central African Republic.

“We always lived in embassies, and there were a lot of families near us (with) parents who spent time in the military or were working for the Department of Defense while working at the embassy. So, I was just surrounded by veterans or current military officers. I grew up with a lot of those people,” Bevan said.

He added that learning military protocol and ceremonies, like how to march or fold an American flag, have prepared him for what he’ll deal with in the actual military. 

“I’ll be ahead of kids in the future when I do join,” he said.

Three years of JROTC service also equates to two promotions in any branch other than the Marine Corps as soon as a student enlists, according to Harris.

That’s why JROTC models the actual military as much as possible, which can be a sticking point for students and parents alike. Cadets must follow a military dress code, right down to their haircuts, and those who are even 30 seconds late to the first-period class must request permission to enter the classroom and explain why they are late.

“You’re following a system. You’re learning discipline,” Harris explained. “We’re trying to build you into a person that’s going to succeed when you leave here, so we’re taking the training wheels off.”

She said the values JROTC instills are useful no matter what career path a cadet chooses.

Charlton, for example, joined JROTC three years ago because she was dead set on becoming an FBI agent and had heard that military service would be a good gateway into that career. 

She’s since changed her mind and isn’t sure what she wants to do with her career, but she’s stayed in JROTC all the same.

Charlton was a bit of a British fish out of water when her family moved from England to Utah seven years ago, all so her father could pursue his dream of becoming a ski instructor in Park City.

The culture shock first came with bathrooms being inexplicably referred to as restrooms, then, the food, and finally, her American peers, who seemed, by and large, more extroverted and bold than she was.

By the beginning of high school, she found company in literature more often than people and wasn’t sure how to prepare for the ACT or navigate the differences in university here versus in England. 

JROTC helped her with all of those problems — culminating in an above average score on the ACT this year — all while giving her an outlet to express her love for literature in Academic Bowl. 

“Every Tuesday, we’re answering questions and laughing,” she said. “It’s just super fun because then you’re shouting, ‘Oh, I know this answer!’ and then you’re arguing about it, and you’re just sort of making fun of each other. It’s that companionship.”

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Of the roughly 25 Wasatch High School students who qualified for the Utah High School Rodeo State Finals at the Wasatch County Event Complex late last week, seven will advance to the national finals next month in Nebraska. There, these cowboys and cowgirls will vie for a winner’s saddle and belt buckle, along with the chance to meet college recruiters and potential sponsors.

For most of the students, the four-day gauntlet of bronc riding, bulldogging and goat tying was a lesson in how to brush the dirt off their chaps and get back up after being thrown to the dirt, both literally and metaphorically.

“It’s definitely been a marathon trying to avoid burnout and have consistent runs and have fun. It’s been quite the journey,” said junior Isla Bell, who competed in breakaway and team roping events.

Breakaway roping involves the competitor roping a fleeing calf while on horseback. Team roping is similar, except the target is a steer, and there are two competitors — referred to as a header and a heeler — who rope the animal’s head and legs, respectively.

“It’s like catching a fish,” described Eva Hunsaker, a fellow junior and breakaway roping competitor. “It’s just a great feeling.”

On a hot day like Friday, the key to managing sweaty hands is baby powder, Hunsaker explained. Still, her lasso came short, in part because her little calf was as speedy as a shotgun.

Breakaway roping was challenging for Bell, too, in no small part because her breakaway horse of five years, Jerry, tore a deep flexor tendon mere days before the event. 

“His career is over,” Bell explained. “I had some really amazing friends offer me a horse to use this week, but I’d never ridden it before, so it was just a rough time trying to get the whole run to click.”

Ty Bingham, Bell’s stepfather and the director of the team, explained that the horse she had borrowed had come from an unlikely person: her rival.

“They’re competing against each other, and one of her competitors is like, ‘Hey, jump on my horse,’” he recalled. “That’s a very common thing in rodeo. Whatever you need, your competitors will typically do it for you.”

Although contenders came from all over the state, Hunsaker said everyone was more like friends than adversaries as they chatted in line for events and played an evening kickball game together.

The almost familial bonds of the rodeo world are rivaled in closeness only by the bonds competitors have with their animals.

That was true of Hunsaker and her steed, Holy Smokin’ Cayenne, or Cayenne for short. Hunsaker has been riding Cayenne since she was in eighth grade, but they only became best friends once they started rodeoing in Hunsaker’s freshman year. 

“Now, my parents say that we’re a lot alike,” joked Hunsaker. That includes both horse and rider’s fiery red manes.

She continued, “We’ve worked together super well, and I can feel what she’s feeling. … We just want to compete the best we can. No matter how fast the calf is, she always gives me a shot.”

Hunsaker’s love for Cayenne has blossomed into a desire to become an equine dentist.

Bell, on the other hand, hopes to work in marketing, ideally for a western-themed brand. She already has the poise and unwavering confidence of someone used to speaking with the media.

Her communication and public speaking skills can be owed to her experience serving as the vice president of the Utah High School Rodeo Association. In that role, she helps organize events like dances and activities during the state finals, votes on changes to state high school rodeo rules and bylaws and acts as a role model for her fellow competitors.

Next school year, Bell will be president of the association. She also plans to train hard and “kick some butt.”

Just as rodeo is a family tradition for Bell, it plays the same role in senior Jenna Jepperson’s family.

Like Bell, Jepperson switched horses after one of her team roping horses sustained an injury. She borrowed her older brother’s horse, which had a lot more energy than hers did.

“If you get after it, it’s going to bring out even worse in you,” Jepperson explained.

Something similar could be said about Jepperson’s brother, though he has been one of her greatest mentors.

“Me and my brother have gotten closer in ways, but we also know how to fight pretty good,” Jepperson laughed. “But it’s drawn us so much closer. He knows what bugs me and how he can help me when things are going wrong.”

And in rodeo, anything can go wrong, Jepperson explained, from ripping a brand-new pair of pants mid-competition to eating dirt. The key to enjoying rodeo is resilience.

That’s something Jepperson’s younger sister, sophomore Lydia, is learning, as well. She’s figuring out how to focus on the good aspects of a bad run and control her feelings amid high-pressure competition.

Now that Jepperson has graduated from high school, with plans to serve a Latter-day Saint mission in Pennsylvania and attend nursing school afterwards, she will carry the lessons she learned in rodeo with her.

“It is great to win, but you’re going to lose more, and you’ve just got to keep your head up and keep going,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re going to get stuck there and not go anywhere.” 

Here are the seven Wasatch High School competitors advancing to the National High School Finals Rodeo in July.

• Genevieve Graham: Rodeo Queen
• Sam Haderlie: Steer wrestling
• Jack Rodeheaver: Saddle bronc riding
• Westin Simpson: Bareback riding, bull riding
• Colton Smith: Trap shooting
• Wiley Thomas: Bareback riding
• Ellie Thompson: Barrel racing, breakaway roping, goat tying, All Around Cowgirl

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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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During the Wasatch Alternative High School graduation, educators and families celebrated 48 students who received their diplomas despite the personal and academic challenges they had faced.

Among the students Friday was Alistair VanRoosendaal, an aspiring musician who looked the part with his flowing brown hair, pink velvet suit jacket and wealth of jewelry pieces, each with a special meaning — even the necklace of strung-together Goldfish cracker bags, which his siblings made for him. 

VanRoosendaal has been at the Alternative High School for one year. He said he’s learned more in that year than in his first three years at Wasatch High School.

“I never felt like a curriculum was being shoved down my throat. It felt like I was learning what I needed to learn in order to be who I needed to be. … I think every teacher is incredible. I don’t like calling them teachers because they’re friends,” he said. “I don’t feel like it’s just a school, and I don’t feel like it’s just a place to go hang out and goof off, because it’s the perfect marriage of the two.”

The Alternative High School, held at west campus, provides intervention for students in need of extra attention and guidance outside of a traditional classroom environment. 

“A lot of kids obviously come for different reasons, but we have some that are just so credit deficient that recovering credits at main (campus) while earning credits gets to be super daunting,” explained Administrator Amanda Edwards. “Kids will also come with family trauma or anxiety, depression, reasons that keep them out of main campus right now. It’s 2,700 kids (at main campus). It’s overwhelming, busy, daunting. The classes there are 80 to 90 minutes, and we run on a much shorter, 50-minute class schedule.”

During the ceremony, each graduate was introduced by a teacher who had tracked their progress to ensure they made it to graduation. Unlike a traditional graduation, each of the nine teachers also shared thoughts about each student after reading their name.

There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, though many tried to hold back their tears. 

Teacher Lindsey Jacobsen, for example, began announcing names in an even tone, but the steely-faced facade didn’t last as she spoke about students like Anthony Gonzalo Rodriguez Batalla, a budding barber who calls Jacobsen his “school mom.”

“Oh, dear,” she said, choking up, to which a graduate shouted from onstage, “You’ve got this, Ms. Jacobsen!”

Teacher Paul Smith was also emotional as he addressed Sandybel Reyes Dominguez.

“Sandy, when I first met you, you wanted nothing to do with school or with me. However, over the last few years, I’ve seen miraculous change, like the caterpillar and the butterfly,” he said. “It’s been one of the great blessings of my life to see this transition.”

He took a more jocular tone with Antonio Saucedo Tapia.

“Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony,” Smith sighed after reading his name. “I’ve lost a lot of sleep over getting you to graduation. We went back and forth so many times about what work you needed to do and the time you needed to get everything done. Every time, you’d say you’d do it, and you did.”

He used the same routine on the following graduate, Collin Coomes.

“I’ve never lost more sleep over anybody but you. I’ve also lost six pounds,” he jested.

Smith wasn’t the only one with jokes. 

“I’m going to be honest. In a way, Caston (Spear) was a disappointment,” teacher Derek Brooks said. “Because he’s such a hard worker, he ended up finishing many of his credits earlier than expected, and this meant that I got to experience less of our meaningful conversations before, during or after class this past year.”

One of the 48 graduates was given special recognition by school board President Kim Dickerson.

Dickerson began by telling the story of Cory Hanks, a Charleston resident who died in 1955. Hanks lost both hands and became blind after a box of blasting caps exploded while he was working the gold mines in Nephi to pay for his tuition to Stanford University. After the accident, he pursued his education anyways, becoming an author who gave 6,670 lectures throughout his life.

Dickerson quoted a passage from Hanks’ autobiography, “Up From the Hills”: “Tears shed through trials should be tears of joy, for scars grow together stronger than before.”

Dickerson then awarded a surprise $5,000 scholarship in Hanks’ name to Josie Perez, who will be studying nursing at Utah Valley University in the fall. 

Perez had been one of five graduate speakers and told the story of her parents’ immigration to the United States over three decades ago.

“Their sacrifice became the foundation for my opportunities,” she said. “All my life, my parents told us the importance of school. ‘We have no choice but to work with our hands for the rest of our lives. You have an opportunity to work with your brain.’”

Education was the “job” Perez and her siblings were tasked with, but her first three years of high school were “rough.”

“Transferring to Alternative may be seen to many as a setback, but for me, it was a turning point. It gave me a chance to reflect and to rebuild,” she said. “It gifted me with teachers who saw me, who believed in me and who pushed me to believe in myself again. … Anyone can handle assignments and show up to teach a class, but it takes something much deeper to truly change a student’s life. It takes a person with a genuine and compassionate heart to look beyond the grades, the struggles and the setbacks, (and) continue to see potential, to choose encouragement over judgment, patience over frustration, belief over doubt.”

Using Perez as an example, Dickerson said that each Alternative High School graduate’s story is not defined by strife. Rather, each story is defined by “resilience, determination and hope” — qualities that will guide the graduates as they write the next chapters of their lives.

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The Wasatch Education Foundation on Monday night awarded $465,000 in scholarships to 271 seniors in the Class of 2026, a record amount for the nonprofit organization.

Applause and happy hoots from the senior section were irrepressible at the start of the event. But as the awards turned into a two-hour procession of names, the students fell into a familiar, funny rhythm, letting out a single, collective clap after each name was announced.

Over 100 donors funded the scholarships. They included local families, parent networks, businesses and organizations ranging from Intermountain Health Heber Valley Hospital to the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office. 

Some brand-new scholarships were awarded this year.

For example, the Joe Witt Future Builders Legacy Scholarship was awarded to five students from the homebuilding course to support their careers in the trades. It was established by Joe Witt’s siblings, Bonnie Witt Vance and Ben Witt, after the homebuilder and volunteer instructor for the course died in an avalanche while snowmobiling in the Snake Creek area in February.

“We have enough in the funds now to do this every year, probably give out five to six (scholarships) … for the rest of our lives,” Bonnie said.

The Summit Pride Foundation also awarded a scholarship at Wasatch High School for the first time. Maghie Ingols-Pennington, president of the high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, was recognized for her support of LGBTQ+ students.

“I’m not part of the LGBTQ community myself, but I love supporting it,” she said. “I just feel like it makes sense to treat everybody equally and give equal opportunities to everyone.”

Ingols-Pennington plans to study political science at the University of Utah, launching her into whatever career lets her travel the most — a diplomat, she hopes.

The scholarship night was especially significant for recipients of We Rise scholarships, which are awarded to first-generation college students. A board of first-generation Wasatch High School alumni launched the program through the nonprofit Wasatch Education Foundation in the spring of 2021. This year, 24 students received We Rise scholarships. 

Among those 24 were Jazmine Ramirez Parks and Alexander Velazquez Bobadilla. 

They were recognized for completing their associate’s degrees through Utah Valley University during high school, and both plan on attending the University of Utah in the fall.

Velazquez Bobadilla will study mechanical engineering. He’s drawn to the creative problem-solving of the profession.

He wrestled as a junior but dropped out of the team to focus on his studies and work, which he does pretty much constantly at Wendy’s and Walmart. 

“I have lots of money saved for college,” he explained. 

Velazquez Bobadilla’s father is a chef, and his mother is a housekeeper.

“They always tell me, ‘Keep pushing. We need to break the cycle,’” he said. “I have kind of a lot of pressure, but I like it because that’s where I do my best.”

Ramirez Parks described her friend as “bubbly” and able to get along with anyone but serious when he needs to be. Velazquez Bobadilla offered her a fist bump in response to the compliment.

Ramirez Parks plans to get her prerequisites for medical school so she can become a surgeon. 

She’s wanted to be in the medical field ever since she watched her childhood hero, Doc McStuffins, of the animated Disney Junior show of the same name, give operations and check-ups to toys. Now, Ramirez Parks is a certified nursing assistant at Heber Valley Assisted Living.

“(My parents) told me that if I find happiness in doing that, and if I … truly enjoy helping people, and it’s not all about the money, to go the route that I want to do, just figure out the rest when it comes,” she said. 

Ramirez Parks said one of her greatest challenges during high school was her parents’ divorce during her sophomore year — something she chose to approach as a stepping stone instead of a stumbling block.

“That just helped me keep pushing for the sake of my mom and myself,” she said.

Velazquez Bobadilla and Ramirez Parks agreed that fitting in was a challenge throughout high school.

“Being from a different culture … sometimes you fit in, but only into a certain group. It always feels like you don’t fit in, and you have to find your way in,” Velazquez Bobadilla said. 

Ramirez Parks added, “My last name is Parks, so yes, everyone thinks I’m American, but I do have a Mexican mom. … It is kind of hard to fit in because everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you’re American. You have a lot of money.’ There’s a whole stereotype. It’s like, ‘No, complete opposite, actually.’”

Ramirez Parks found community in the high school’s Latinos In Action club. As president, she tried to shatter the conception that Latinos In Action is “boring” — for example, by organizing and fundraising a trip to Disneyland for members in March. Despite that, Velazquez Bobadilla didn’t join the club, which Ramirez Parks jokingly gave him a hard time about. 

Kim Danely, the high school’s college success advisor, said a common denominator among first-generation college students is how hard they work, never using academic responsibilities as an excuse not to be involved in service or career advancement opportunities. 

Danley is a first-generation college student herself. She said scholarships were instrumental in her ability to get a bachelor’s degree in conservation biology from Brigham Young University and a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale University.

“(My parents) were very supportive of it, but they had no money to help me, and they didn’t really know how to help me navigate it, either,” she said.

That’s why each student in the We Rise program is assigned a volunteer mentor — whether it be a Wasatch High School alumnus, a trusted adult or older college students — to answer any questions they have about the college experience and help them look for jobs after graduating.

Danley said college — and education in general — can change a student’s life.

“It opens up the world to you and helps you appreciate everything. When I listen to music now, because I minored in music, I see it in the context of the history of music. And when I go on a hike in the forest, I don’t just see green. I see 50 different plant species,” she said. “It helps you connect with people. You can have a conversation with anyone in any field. … And then, I think it gives you an opportunity (to) give back to the community because it gives you a broader vision of the world.”

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