As students, family, and community members congregated in South’s auditorium on May 19, the Honors and Awards ceremony looked normal again for the first time in over two years, Mark Maranto, Assistant Principal of Student Activities, said. 

After being pre-recorded in 2020 and live-streamed in 2021, this year’s Honors and Awards ceremony – which honored seniors for their talents and accomplishments – invited family and community members to attend in-person again, Maranto explained. This was especially exciting and special because the families were able to present their own awards, he said. 

“If [a memorial scholarship] is in memory of somebody, and the family of the person comes to present it, it’s very special,” Maranto said. “We’re very excited to bring back the full experience.”

Different elements came together to produce the Honors and Awards ceremony, including many contributions from stage crew, Maranto said. They built and painted the set, and also ran the sound and lighting during the ceremony, senior Mark Bauerschmidt, a member of stage crew, explained. While the basic set design is reused each year, the seniors paint the set differently to make it unique, Bauerschmidt said. In 2019 the set was inspired by Claude Monet’s water lily paintings, in 2021 it was blue and gold themed, and this year the set has purple clouds and mountains, he said. 

“The steps and the main platform [were] light purple with white clouds, and there [was] a dark purple mountain on the podiums with a moon,” Bauerschmidt said.

Bauerschmidt was sad that the Honors and Awards ceremony was the last production stage crew seniors worked on, but he also recognized it as a time for the seniors to hand off many of their responsibilities to the underclassmen, since they were in the audience during the ceremony, he said. This included all the technological aspects of the ceremony, such as sound and lighting, he explained. 

“It’s really sad, because it [was] the last one,” Bauerschmidt said. “[Honors and Awards is] a passing on to the underclassmen, because they [had] to run [the ceremony] and do all the jobs.”

Auditorium Manager Rich Winship said that while he was excited to see the underclassmen step up, he was saddened to see the seniors leave, too. 

“It’s an exciting [but] bittersweet time because we’re losing all the seniors,” Winship said. 

The ceremony was a time for underclassmen Student Council members to gain more responsibilities as well, Drew Duffy, Junior Class President, said. The current sophomore and junior class boards, as well as next year’s executive board, announced many of the awards, Duffy said. It was also a time to honor the seniors, Duffy explained.

“There [are] a lot of unique and talented individuals at our school, and the ceremony is amazing because those individuals get recognized,” Duffy said. “Whether it’s [for] athletics, fine arts, or whatever they specialize in, everyone gets recognized for their gifts.”