Excerpts from Principal Casey O’Brian’s graduation speech for Aptos Times:
You are one of the most academic classes I have ever seen! But other words that have been used to describe this class are: Inclusive, Positively diverse, Intelligent, Athletic, Bi-literate, Bi-cultural.
Listen to some of the universities some of these students will attend:
Cal Berkley, Brown, Rider, Cal Poly, Reed, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara, Pepperdine, University of Puget Sound, Indiana River State, Queens University of Charlotte, UCLA, U of Hawaii, every UC in CA practically, Cabrillo College of Aptos – best Community College in the state … the list goes on. Wow!
Since the schools inception in ’69, your junior year was the first time AHS has ever been recognized by the State of California as a Distinguished School. Quite an honor and a testament to the great work that has been done by your teachers and administration in your time here and many of you acted as ambassadors for the state team. Jose Arias represented us well as the only student rep at the state celebration, Richard Alvarez and others represented us when the state team visited, Ventura Villanueva came to school after significant illness because she didn’t want to miss the opportunity to represent AHS when the state team visited.
Out of adversity and tragedy the class of 2014 became closer and responded with a Friendraiser week, the creation of clubs with a mission of giving back – Rise Above Club and The Bridge Project, and the first ever whole school wave.
Of 297 graduates 33 students earned over 4.0 GPAs!
125 students earned a 3.0 or above GPA!
And for you with the 2.0s and above …(107)!
This class may be one of the most athletic classes to ever come through AHS! You won 10 SCCAL championships this year – that’s out of 24 possible. In four years you have accumulated 40 SCCAL team league championships! That is the highest four-year total in school history.
Three CCS championships — the first time ever in one school year.
Football had its 3rd consecutive undefeated league season and WON the CCS Championship for only the 2nd time in school history.
Wrestling won its 5th consecutive SCCAL title.
Girls Cross Country won their 3rd consecutive CCS championship (that’s 1st out of over 130 schools) and boys won CCS as well – first time they have both won CCS Cross Country in the same year.
Girls Track & Field went undefeated this year, and has not lost a dual meet in 19 years (116 consecutive dual meets without a loss – currently the 2nd longest streak in state history).
Academically, 7 teams have earned CCS Scholastic Team Honors this year. That’s top team GPA out of 130 schools in our section.
Our senior lacrosse players have never lost an SCCAL championship in four years (in a five year winning streak), they’ve never known anything except 1st place.
Your amazing service clubs have done an amazing job, you collected over 34,000 meals in the Second Harvest food drive for local families You won the county high school competition for the third year in a row for the Second Harvest food bank collection! and over 400 pints of-+ blood for the Red Cross.
Every graduate here dedicated at least 40 hours of service to our well deserving community, which equaled over 22,396 hours!
Courtney Laschkewitsch 475 – Maddison Montana 1100 – Taylor Altizio 1730
The fourth ever Seals of Bi-literacy on a diploma in PVUSD were earned by twelve seniors from AHS.
This is an amazing class — artists. Spectacular fine artists, actors and singers. It shows pictures of fabulous choir concerts and drama productions with some of the best productions ever at AHS – Fiddler on the Roof, Guys and Dolls, The Ash Girl, and Anything Goes.
Oh — and the incredible Gates Millennium Scholarship winner Chris Tiran edged the old man principal O’Brien in the 2013 school triathlon. However, the old man got revenge and beat him in the triathlon this year!
It shows that many of you overcame great hardships and challenges to be here today. Many of us would have crumbled under the pressure but you made it here today and we are proud of you.
This group of seniors tallied more in scholarships than I have seen in my five years here — 1.7 million dollars in scholarships for college and 35 of you are life-time CSF members. .
Here’s your last quiz in high school —what are these? … Sci-Fi, Operation, Greek Dressing and Disney! Class of 2014 Homecoming themes over four years
We have three members of our two-time WORLD Championship Robotics team! Chris Randolf, Ben and Jacob Rodriguez, You’ve already won this year’s western states regional and good luck to you in a few weeks against 15+ countries — let’s take home the top prize again!
You are the first class to ever win the Mariner Cup two years in a row and you annihilated the class of 2013 two years in a row in Homecoming competitions!
At the end of this record book there is a famous quote that you have heard many times … Make a great life … or not … The choice is yours!
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Click Here to see the Graduating Class of 2014!