'LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST'

SALUTE TO GRADS: Catholic Central School's valedictorian and salutatorian speeches

Sophia Ellis (l.), valedictorian, and Emily Wheland, salutatorian, for Catholic Central School.

‘Live life to the fullest’

By Sophia Ellis, valedictorian 

I’d like to start by thanking everyone who got me here. Thank you to my parents for their constant emphasis on a good education and support in everything I’ve done. Thank you to my sister, Maya, who has shown me what can be achieved through hard work and perseverance. Thank you to the teachers who have made it their mission to prepare us for the next stages of our lives. Finally, thank you to my fellow graduates who have filled these past six years with so much laughter and adventure. When I think back on who I was in seventh grade, I know for certain that I would not be who I am today, standing here right now, without the influence of each and every one of you.

I also want to congratulate my fellow graduates. Graduating high school is no easy task, especially when considering everything we’ve had to deal with. From the pandemic to a change in location, our high school journeys have been littered with obstacles that the generations of graduates before us can’t say they’ve had to face, and yet, we’ve overcome them all. That being said, it is not the roadblocks and setbacks we’ve all become accustomed to in our years at Catholic High that have defined our experience. It is the continued perseverance and our ability to come together and make the most out of what we’re given that I believe our class will be remembered for. I’m so proud of everyone and what we’ve all gone through to make it here today, so I mean it sincerely when I say to everyone, congratulations.

For those of you who don’t know me well, I’ve wanted to be on this stage giving this speech since the seventh grade. Specifically, it was seventh-grade health class with Coach Trembley, who had asked us to write down three long-term goals. I remember I wanted to be top of the class, I wanted to get into a good college, and I wanted to be class president, but, you know, we opted for an executive board instead, so … 2 for 3, not bad. Point is, being valedictorian has been very important to me for the longest time and that’s something people who’ve had the pleasure of knowing me are aware of.

I struggled for a while when brainstorming ideas for this speech. While Google was very prominent throughout that process, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to everyone, what message I wanted to end our high school journey with. Originally, I was planning on writing about falling and how important it is to just brush the dirt off and get back up, which again, if you don’t know me, I fall and trip … a lot. But, it wasn’t until recently that I had something better to say, something more important.

A couple weeks ago, on May 21, my grandmother passed away. I haven’t seen her in person in a while because she lives in Jamaica and it was hard for her to travel, so for the past few years I’ve only known her through phone calls. The last time I spoke to her was sometime between my sister Maya’s graduation on the 8th, and my birthday on the 18th. We spoke about how she watched my sister get her master’s degree on the livestream and how she couldn’t wait to watch me give this very speech. She was so proud of everything I’ve accomplished.

When my parents told me that she had passed, that was all I could think about. How sad it was that she wanted to be here, even if it was just virtually, but she couldn’t. The thought of that brought me to tears and my mother cried with me. The only person there, not crying was my father, her son. He said that he had made his peace with it, because for 84 years, she lived a good life. She wasn’t taken, but it was her time to go and she passed away peacefully of old age.

The reason I’m sharing this with you all is not just to make you sad or cry, but because I think there’s a powerful message in her story. As we all sit here now, at the end of our high school journey, I want everyone to be conscious of the fact that we’ve all got our whole lives in front of us, but we don’t know how long that will be for. We have endless decisions and mistakes to make, countless paths to be followed and hundreds of people to come in and out of our lives.

But, as we stand here, I want you all to make the choices you want, to be who you are, and to live life to the fullest, not only for yourselves, but for the people who sit in this crowd supporting us as we achieve this massive milestone and especially for those who couldn’t quite make it here. I want you all to live your lives in full color and appreciate every moment, so that when it’s your time to leave it all behind, the people left aren’t mourning your loss, but they’re celebrating your life. I wish everyone the best of luck in the next chapter and every year that follows. Congratulations everyone! Thank you all.

A wave and 33 ripples

By Emily Wheland, salutatorian 

I’d like to thank each and every one of you for being here for Catholic Central’s Class of 2024 graduation. You all mean the world to us, and we could not have made it to this stage without your love, support and guidance. I’d like to give a special shoutout and thank you to my dad for being here, as he wanted to be at the Belmont Stakes in Saratoga Springs this afternoon. I appreciate you turning down your ticket to come watch me graduate. It’s very kind of you.

For those of you who don’t know my dad, Chris Wheland is a very nautical man. And if you know anything about me, you know I inherited his love for the water. I love swimming, I love boating, I love the beach (though, not when it’s inside a classroom), but most of all, I inherited my dad’s love for the waves. Not only are they fun to ski on, tube on and take pretty pictures of, but they also symbolize something beautiful. This past year, my dad got a tattoo, a wave on his upper arm. My mom freaked out and we all thought he was having a midlife crisis, but if you ask him about this tattoo he’ll gladly jump into the true and deep meaning that inspired him to get it.

Waves are constant. They have highs and they have lows. They can be as big as a tsunami or as small as a ripple. But they are always in motion. It’s a law. Waves are created by energy passing through water. Energy cannot be destroyed. It’s redistributed, keeping the water in motion forever. Now at least you all know we’ve learned something these past four years. Enough with the science lesson, all of this is to say we can relate much of our lives to the constant and unpredictable motion of waves.

Looking back on our time together at Catholic High, I’m sure most of us can recall experiencing some of these highs and lows. We kicked off our high school career at the very bottom, in the midst of a global pandemic. We had to juggle Google Meets and masks and social distancing. And just when we started to take an upward turn, another low swept our class. We had to move from our original campus in Troy to Latham. This huge adjustment halfway through our high school career was not easy, and we lost quite a few peers and teachers in the move. In addition, we had to acclimate to high school in two hallways and a “gymeteria.” But we didn’t get lost in the troughs of these waves or swept into the undertow. Knowing what we do about waves, we kept moving forward, and eventually found an upward turn. Our togetherness.

As a class of just 33 people, we have had the opportunity to know each other and spend time with each other like no other class normally would. From mornings spent sitting in front of our lockers or sledding on the field when it snowed at the old campus, to now spending time together outside by the picnic tables or in the senior lounge at our new campus, we have been able to create some of the best memories together inside the walls of Catholic Central High School, no matter where they may be. This place has given us the opportunity to build some of the strongest friendships we will ever have. I’m lucky enough to be able to walk away from this place with friends I know will last a lifetime. I can walk away with memories of late-night drives, lab period gossip sessions, several themed sleepovers, a few road trips, and more gatherings at friends’ houses than I can count. And for that, I am incredibly grateful.

The thought of graduation seemed like a ripple for so long, something small and far in the distance. Slowly though, especially this year, it grew and grew into a monstrous wave that seemed to tower over us. The extremely early morning of senior sunrise marked the beginning of our end at Catholic High, and for every day after the wave has been gaining speed and momentum. Our last homecoming dance and powderpuff game (which I still believe was rigged, the seniors won in my heart) to the stress of submitting our college applications. Normal words we’ve heard throughout our lives suddenly had the word “senior” thrown in front of them, like Mass, prom, prank, skip and trip.

Today the wave crashes and sends out ripples in 33 different directions. We’ll go on to do amazing things, each and every one of us. But we will never forget where our ripple originated from, the place that gave us our start and our foundation. Our own dear CCHS.