Ridgefield High School Class of 2020 Graduates in Historical Drive-in Ceremony!

Today, as part of a week-long celebration of the Ridgefield High School Class of 2020, a Drive-In Movie Graduation Ceremony took place on the grounds of RHS. Parents and students arrived in vehicles bedecked orange and black, graduation wishes painted on windows.

This historical RHS graduation included live projection of speeches, the reading of names, and the communal turning of tassels.

Addressing the Class of 2020 was Principal, Stacey Gross, Class President Clodagh Ryan, Student Speaker, Kyra Linekin, and Valedictorian, Questin McQuilkin.

Here, we share the departing words from Gross, Ryan, Linekin and McQuilkin.

RHS Principal, Stacey Gross

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the Board of Education, Superintendent Dr. Da Silva, faculty and staff, family and friends of the Class of 2020, and today’s graduates. Welcome to the one hundred and fourth commencement exercises of Ridgefield High School. 

So, this certainly isn’t the way I had hoped to celebrate your graduation. But still, this is just that, a celebration of you! I have always secretly told you that the Class of 2020 is a very special class and that you have been that way since 9th grade. Well, today I’m publicly declaring your “specialness” for all to hear. You have been a joy to work with and, as difficult as it is for me to retire and leave RHS, I feel incredibly blessed to have been able to share my final year here with you. 

The author, Carlos Rodriguez, stated, “Tough times don’t define you, they refine you.”  How apropos to share these words with you today. I know that you will not be defined by the Covid-19 virus! You will not be defined by the losses you’ve experienced due to a global pandemic. You, the Class of 2020, are defined by the grace with which you have handled all of this. You are defined by the journey you have taken to reach this momentous day!

Your journey has included both celebratory and difficult times during your four years at Ridgefield High School. The highs and lows of exams and SATs; the athletic championships and the losses in the final seconds of a game; the roles you auditioned for in the school plays; the student government elections; the worthy community service causes you supported; the student body walkout protesting violence in our schools that you passionately organized and brought to life; and the time you danced on tables in the Student Center demonstrating that you “Can’t Stop the Feeling” in a school lip sync video, are but a few of the steps in your journey through your high school career. 

The steps along this journey have come together to refine your sense of self. Now, of course, this sense of self will continue to grow and change throughout your life. But I hope that your high school experiences have truly nourished the development of your inner being, which will now guide you through all that lies ahead. As you move forward to post-secondary education, the world of work or the military many new experiences are yet to occur. As high school graduates you will take on a new level of control over your choices and you may make them while remaining true to your basic sense of self. You are well prepared and ready for the new adventures that the future holds and I know you will continue to make your families, our school and the town of Ridgefield proud.

This life changing experience of the last few months ties you together as the Class of 2020. It actually makes you even more special than you already were! Always remember I am incredibly proud of you and I am a better person for having been your principal.  I know that you will continue to grace everyone you meet and every place you go with your own brand of “specialness”.

 On behalf of the Ridgefield High School faculty and staff, congratulations and good luck. Thank you.


Class of 2020 President, Clodagh Ryan

Good Afternoon. I thank you all for joining us today in celebrating the outstanding Ridgefield High School Class of 2020. A huge thank you to the administration and staff, the Ridgefield Police Department, and town officials who worked tirelessly to plan this celebration for us today. Although this is not the graduation we had expected, I am so glad we get to honor and recognize the amazing accomplishments the seniors have achieved these last four years. 

Special. Special is the word teachers and parents have used for years to describe this Class of 2020.  Thinking about what sets us apart, I have come to realize that it is our spirit. For our class, spirit means kindness towards each other, a sense of community, and pride in our school.  We all have our individual strengths, and together we created a culture that celebrates and encourages respect for each other’s interests and goals. As a result, over the past four years, our class has developed an incredible bond.

It is astonishing what we have accomplished during our time at RHS. Our athletes have earned 15 FCIAC Divisional Titles, 14 FCIAC Championships, and 9 State Championships. Our girls cross country team placed first at FCIACS, our powerhouse field hockey seniors left their mark with the best season in RHS history, and girls soccer had an undefeated regular season! The most recent moment many of us will never forget was when we stormed the court after our boy's basketball team won the FCIAC championships. Another highlight was when our football team won against New Canaan with a last minute field goal. The senior section lit up with a roar, and the energy in that moment was unforgettable. 

 Our love for the arts is an important element of our class spirit.  Our theater program brings joy to the entire Ridgefield community. This year they put on The Odd Couple and Silent Sky, and even though only family was allowed to see the spring musical, Legally Blonde, we all are so proud of the work they put in for months to create that one magical moment. Many of our seniors have taken individual Halo awards home in the last four years. Our music program at RHS is filled with seniors pouring their heart and soul into the musical performances. This year the band was selected to play as a featured orchestra at all state, which is a great honor.   

Our class spirit extended to the larger school community and beyond through our involvement in both the Names Day program and the National School Walkout.  Our desire to stand up for others and advocate for change truly shows who we are as a class.  

Of course, there is no better example of our class spirit than Spirit Week! Spirit Week demands that we work together toward a collective goal, and this is where our class shines. It’s rare for a junior class to win Spirit Week, but we did it!  And again senior year! But it’s not really about winning, it’s about the experience of our class uniting to create memories that we will take with us as we leave RHS.

 The aspect of this class that I am most proud of is that no matter what kids are involved in at RHS, everyone strives to be the best version of themselves, and at the same time pushes their peers to grow as well. We work cohesively to achieve in the classroom, fields, band room, auditorium, and community. We look out for each other and have created an environment that inspires pride in ourselves and in our school. 

When looking back at your time at Ridgefield High School, you should all be so proud of what you have done. You are all off to wonderful places in the fall and are destined to do great things. I know for a fact that you have the entire administration and staff of RHS (and me) rooting for you. It has been an honor to serve as your president, and my wish is that you take our sense of class spirit with you on your next adventure.

Class of 2020 Speaker, Kyra Linekin

Good afternoon parents, faculty and fellow graduates. My name is Kyra Linekin, and I am honored to be the class speaker for the Ridgefield High School Class of 2020. Before I begin, I would like to thank Dr. Gross and the entire RHS staff for their heroic efforts to make up for what was lost and, once again, for showing us that you care

It was in the late afternoon of March 12th when we first heard that school would be canceled...indefinitely. I was driving with a few of my best friends, and we let out a collective cheer. Had we known that we had just attended our last day of high school, I don’t think our reaction would have been the same. Perhaps it was the combination of college decisions, classwork, and perpetual lack of sleep that made the concept of a few weeks off of school seem like a gift. 

But, as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, the reality of school being over sunk in...and I found myself thinking back to my first day of high school. I can remember feeling lost as I walked through the community entrance, exposing a fundamental truth about high school: it can be pretty scary. But as I stand here today, wishing I could be congratulating my best friends on our big day with hugs rather than facetime calls, it strikes me that the place I came to call home is not in a specific location, but in the people I met along the way. Now, when I say “people,” to me, they are not confined to those who know me best or those with whom I spend my weekends. I also mean my math group in Ms. Christofer’s pre-calc class, or the friend I sat next to on the bus during my first three years of high school who would always ask me how my day was. When I say “people,” I mean every single person who made the small things feel like big things. 

We sometimes underestimate the influence of small things, for they are not truly small. Whether it be the blessing of a lunch wave with all your best friends or even just a smile in the hallway on a rough day, these moments are oftentimes the ones we remember the most. If I had to share with you one piece of advice with this speech, it would be this: Go to every basketball game, dance, and party and have no regrets. Hug your friends; tell them what they mean to you. Let people know that you love them. Take pictures, but do not be afraid to put the camera down and just be present. Be kind to others and be kind to yourself. 

Charles R. Swindoll once said that life is 10% of what happens and 90% how you react to it. While I was not ready to let go so suddenly, it strikes me now how lucky I was to have something so hard to say goodbye to. Thank you Ridgefield High School for making the goodbyes hard and the fond memories easy. We did it!

So in closing, I say congratulations. Here’s to us. Thank you. 

RHS Class of 2020 Valedictorian, Questin McQuilkin

Welcome, everyone. I’m Questin McQuilkin, the Class of 2020 Valedictorian, and I'd first like to invite all my classmates to take one collective sigh of relief for making it this far. Graduation, freedom from those grueling days of high school, is finally upon us.

Now you all know what I’m going to say. You’ve heard this speech countless times before in every shape and form, whether in movies or stories or maybe at a sibling’s graduation. The valedictorian addresses his or her classmates, inspires his or her classmates, and brings new words of wisdom as we move into the next phase of our lives. To sum it up quickly, we did good. We entered this school barely teenagers, but we grew and we learned, and look at us now: going off to college or wherever life takes us.

But I don’t want this to be another boring address. I don’t want to echo the monotonous praises expected of a valedictorian’s speech. Quite frankly, you deserve better.  We deserve better. This can’t just be a typical old speech, because the Class of 2020 is certainly not a typical old class.

I want you all to think just how much we’ve changed in our time at Ridgefield High School. We came into this school almost four years ago, hard to believe I know, and since then we’ve only grown. Of course in the literal sense, we were all much shorter back then. I remember not being able to see over the crowds in the hallways. My friends and I would scamper about at the feet of the upperclassmen, mortals to the gods towering above us. And in these past four years, we’ve grown straight up. We’re finally tall enough to see above those crowds to friends and classmates as we pass in the hallways.

But more importantly, we’ve grown intellectually. We arrived at RHS as newbies to academia. The Pythagorean theorem, something most of us probably never want to see again, was just a rumor or a legend. Yet we learned. We didn’t give up, throw our textbooks up in the air and storm off. We put pencil to paper, and expanded our minds. We learned how to graph sinusoidal waves and examine heredity through punnet squares. We met Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn, Odysseus and countless others. By now we’re probably all sick of studying Shakespearean sonnets and reciting the quadratic formula. Marching into this school we were young and inexperienced, but we put in the work and advanced. We’ve come a long way since ninth grade, and it shows.

This wave of growth extends beyond us as individuals. We’ve grown together. Friend groups expanded at RHS, welcomed new members and thrived. We met new classmates and connected through our common learning experiences. Who knew that simply sitting next to someone in class could lead to new connections and bonds, strong enough to survive well into the future? The friendships that resulted from this growth will stay with us for the rest of our lives.

In a few years we may not remember the year when Constantinople fell, or precisely how to factor a polynomial. We may have forgotten some of the facts and notes we spent so long studying. But we have retained so much more. For at RHS, we grew not only in knowledge, but in ourselves. We learned how to persevere and prevail. We learned how to improve ourselves and our lives. Most of all, we learned how to learn.

This graduation may be the end of our high school experience, but it is certainly not the end of our growth. RHS has prepared us well for the next stage of our lives, and now we can continue to expand our talents and our minds. I want to thank Dr. Gross for guiding us on our journey so far, as well as all the amazing teachers who made this growth possible. But most of all, I want to thank you, Class of 2020, for putting in the effort to learn and make it here today.

It’s been a good few years. Let’s make these next ones even better.

 

 

R
Submitted by Ridgefield, CT

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