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Trimble Top Students Push One Another To Succeed
By: Sarah Hawley | Athens Messenger staff reporter
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“I think these two have pushed each other, more than I’ve seen as a principal, to be their best and do well. I think at times they’ve pushed each of the to take harder classes knowing that they wanted to be the top and the best,” said Trimble High School Principal Matt Curtis of the valedictorian and salutatorian for the Class of 2014.
Kate Spencer is the Trimble Class of 2014 valedictorian and Andrea Swart is the salutatorian.
In their final days leading up to graduation, Spencer and Swart took a few moments to reflect on their time at Trimble High School.
“I will miss all of the teachers because we have a lot of good teachers here,” said Spencer. “They definitely have played a big part in the choices I have made educationally. I will miss also the sports. Because football was pretty fun this year and I played three sports all the time. They’ve always been fun. I will miss just the team and everything.”
For Swart it was the relationships that she will miss the most.
“I’ll miss how close everybody is here. Because were all kind of like brothers and sisters here in this grade,” said Swart. “I’m really glad we got to be in this grade together cause it’s one of the years that everybody gets along.”
“I’ll miss seeing everybody all the time and like (Spencer) said we have great teachers. A lot of them are like friends. I hope to keep connections with everybody when we leave,” Swart continued, adding that she had graduated a semester early and was already enrolled at Ohio University.
“They both have done the post secondary. Andrea talked about graduating early which isn’t easy to do. I mean you have to want to do that,” said Curtis. “And Kate’s been here taking our accelerated classes. They have taken all the classes that we can offer to prepare them for next year. So I think they will be very successful.”
Curtis continued, “They’ve got goals. They don’t just think ‘Hey a grades a grade’ and ‘I can graduate and have a diploma.’ That’s not good enough for them.”
“What’s also been impressive — Kate more so with the sports and Andrea some other activities — they are involved outside of school. Not just school, study, school, study. They do a lot of things. They will be sorely missed,” said Curtis.
Spencer has been a member of the cross country, basketball and track teams, national honor society, student council, prom committee and Glouster Volunteers. Swart participated in upward bound, national honor society, post secondary in both her junior and senior years, prom committee and Glouster Volunteers. Swart also works at web services at Ohio University.
“As principal what do you want — them to be here every day, try their best and not give me any headaches outside of their academics. That class in general has been like that, but I think it all kind of starts at the top and these two are the top academically,” said Curtis. “That class really kind of pushed each other and looked up to each other.”
Spencer and Swart both spoke of teachers who had made an impact on their academic success.
“The Top 10 (graduates) have to honor somebody and I chose to honor my biology teacher and anatomy teacher, Mr. (Amrik) Brar,” said Spencer. “There are lots of teachers that have always helped and like she (Swart) said we like to maintain those connections because I mean they’re friends now.”
“They teach things in fun way too,” said Swart, with Spencer adding that that can be difficult to do with some subjects.
“I have to say Dr. Jones as well. She’s been important in our lives since fifth grade. And now she is retiring this year,” said Swart. “She was always one of my favorite teachers. I mean she would always challenge us. We both had advanced reading and math classes and it was just fun. She would have us play mind games some days. She was just a great teacher and we are going to miss her,” said Spencer.
Spencer, 17, is the daughter of Ray and Becky Spencer of Glouster. Swart,18, is the daughter of Stasi Moore and Bret Swart.
Spencer will be attending Shawnee State University in the fall to major in biology, pre-med. Swart plans to continue her studies at Ohio University where she is currently undecided on a major, but may possibly major in linguistics.