Stevenson High School Class of 2021

Graduates in the Class of 2021: 1,088

Scriptor speakers: Liana McGhee and Lucas Hwang. The purpose of this speech is to give the graduating seniors the opportunity to look back at their years of education up to their graduation.

Gubernator speakers: Rishika Chikoti and Aditi Singh. The purpose of this speech is to give graduating seniors the opportunity to look ahead. This forward-looking speech focuses on the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Class Officers: President Michael Kim; Vice Presidents Lindsey Grant and Jonathan Chan; Secretary Diane Bi; PR Officer Carlos Fernandez

Academic achievements:

• Senior Sayalee Patankar was named one of the top 300 scholars in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, which is one of the nation's oldest science and mathematics competitions for high school seniors. This talent search provides students with a national stage to present original research. Sayalee's research project was titled Deep Learning-Based Computational Drug Discovery to Inhibit the RNA Dependent RNA polymerase: Application to SARS and COVID-19.

Extracurricular achievements:

• The math team competed in the MathWorks Math Modeling Challenge, in which high school teams are invited to explore and tackle real-life challenges using mathematical modeling. Our senior Math Team placed in the top six teams overall for their outstanding approaches: Praneet Rathi, Sai Merneedi, Brandon Lu, Emily Hu and James Kim.

• Catalyst student member Rebekah Jin was recognized recently by the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) as the Youth Advocate of the Year during their Virtual National Leadership Forum.

• Senior Katie Wu was selected as the 2021 Distinguished Young Woman of Illinois last month. The Distinguished Young Woman Program, formally known as America's Junior Miss, has recognized outstanding high school students for more than 60 years.

• The Stevenson Varsity History Bowl team comprised of seniors Aniket Dixit, Allen Guo, Arjun Nageswaran, Denis Selyuzhitsky and Ethan Soifer captured Stevenson's first varsity national championship at the National History Bowl national champion competition.

• The Stevenson chess team continued their winning moves by recording a third-place finish at this year's virtual Illinois High School Association state championship. We congratulate seniors David Wallach, Ricky Wang, Ryan Yao and Joseph Silberman who were part of this effort.

Athletic achievements:

• The 2020-21 Boys Bowling team continues to receive postseason honors as their team score of 6048 bowled on Saturday, March 13, earned them Third Place Team Honors in the ISBPA Virtual High School State Tournament, just 3 pins shy of second place Machesney Park Harlem and 73 pins behind Champion Rockton Hononegah.

• Jenna McCullough, a senior on the Stevenson Girls Cross Country team, won the Premier Buick GMC Dealer's High School Challenge for the Quad-City Times Virtual Bix 7 race. Jenna donated her $1,000 winnings to the Stevenson High School Athletic Department and Stevenson girls cross country team.

• Senior wrestler Sara Sulejmani has recently been named a top-five Illinois finalist for the Tricia Saunders Excellence in Wrestling Award. This award is part of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame's effort to honor the top female wrestlers in 50 states, and ultimately selecting a Tricia Saunders Excellence in Wrestling National Award winner.

• For the second time in the last two IHSA Girls Badminton State Series, the Patriots have captured the Runner-Up Trophy, falling short of the State Championship by the smallest of margins. Seniors Emily Hu and Shabani Ram won the IHSA Doubles State Championship with a win over senior teammates Jyotsna Harikrishna and Benna Li. Ram, Hu, Li and Harikrishna will go down as one of the most decorated senior classes in Stevenson Girls Badminton history.

• The Patriettes are now back-to-back IHSA state champions. They were also crowned 2021 Dance Team Union National Champions in the Large Jazz Competition. Members of this year's team include seniors Breanna Buan, Elli Freeman, Nicole Graff, Marina Halana, Leah Kochevar, Madison McCarty, Sarah Rainis, Josephina Ronson, Grace Schubert, Jocelyn Silk, Zoey Silver, Audrey Spewak and Madison Sturgeon.

Theater productions:

• Fall Play: Oliverio: A Brazilian Twist, Oct. 24-25

• Fall Musical: Disney's Newsies, Nov. 20-22

• Freshman-Sophomore Play: Almost, Maine, Feb. 12-14

• Winter Play: The Compass, March 5-7

• One-Act Plays, April 29-May 1

What traditional events were adapted for the pandemic and how?

Traditional events that were adapted for the pandemic included our Homecoming Week, Winterfest, prom, Spring Fling and graduation. Events that took place earlier in the year, such as Homecoming and Winterfest, challenged our student leaders to think creatively about how to maintain Stevenson's sense of community and belonging during a time when we could not physically be together. For those events, our students and faculty leveraged technology like Zoom to coordinate and execute the events in very engaging ways. Following the COVID spike in the fall, our students and staff returned for the spring semester and were able to coordinate events with some degree of in-person presence without compromising our masking and social distancing measures. Examples of this include our prom and graduation ceremonies. Students will be able to experience these events and make memories in groups and in an outdoor setting.

Principal's reflections on the Class of 2021:

If there could only be one word to characterize the Class of 2021, it's "resilience." Our students experienced their entire senior year of high school during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, and I am so humbled and proud to see so many of them grow into the young leaders they are in spite of it. While this may not have been the capstone year that they have dreamed of, I'm confident that our seniors will continue to thrive and am excited to see how they will go forth and make a difference in the world.

- Principal Troy Gobble