Extra effort pays off for CCH valedictorian

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on May 12, 2023.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Hudson Dell has been named valedictorian for the 2023 graduating class at Catholic Central High School.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

Catholic Central High School students will have the opportunity to cross the stage this weekend to receive their diplomas in front of family and friends, and for one of them it will be extra memorable.

Graduation will be special for everyone, but especially for Hudson Dell as this year’s valedictorian. He received 100 per cent in four subjects, and kept the high marks after diploma examinations.

Dell said being recognized as valedictorian is very fulfilling as he realized earlier this year that he might have a chance to be chosen.

“I realized that I had a chance of getting it after our award ceremony from last year because the person who won highest standing Grade 11, I was only like 0.3 or 0.4 per cent behind them overall in my average,” said Dell.

 He said this helped him realize he could become valedictorian if he put in more effort, saying he did not try as hard as he could last year.

 “I said ‘I’ll just kick into high gear and see what happens’ and then I got a 100 in Biology in quarter one, and then the next quarter I got a 100 in Chemistry and Religion, and I was like OK well now I have three 100s, but next quarter I have Physics and Calculus which is a lot of work,” said Dell.

 But when he received a 100 per cent in Calculus, he thought he might have a shot of becoming valedictorian, even though he still was not sure if he could.

 “I got called into office and I was surprised, I wasn’t expecting it, so it was a pretty good feeling,” said Dell.

He said he is ready to give his speech at graduation, and he was more nervous about writing it than speaking in front of hundreds of people.

“It feels nice, it’s like you have your five minutes of fame, you get to try and inspire your classmates and your peers to be better and work for what they really need in life, rather than just let their life passed them by,” said Dell.

He said he wants to go to the University of Lethbridge to study Neuroscience, with the intent of later on moving to the University of Alberta and fulfill his life-long dream of becoming a dentist.

CCH principal Joanne Polec said this year is the graduating class that started as the cohorted class in 2020 when they were in Grade 10.

“When they came into high school they were cohorted, they were masked, they were asked to not attend sporting events or any other sort of gathering, they had to follow arrows up and down the hallways, they were restricted to one campus or the other, that’s how they started their high school experience,” said Polec.

 She said this is the class that has since then seen the changes that came along with restrictions being lifted. They are the first graduating class sinceto be able to have their senior year uninterrupted by fluctuating restrictions.

 “This year they’ve been tasked with the huge challenge of stepping into a leadership position that they really haven’t had modelled for them over the past two years. There is something to be said about the top dog, the Grade 12s that model those behaviours for Grade 10s and 11s and they haven’t had that model because the classes before them had so many restrictions,” said Polec.

She said they are the first class to kind of reset what things should look like in high school for high school students, they had to set the tone of what high school looks like post-pandemic.

This year’s graduation theme is “keeping dreams alive,” which Polec said is quite fitting in terms of everything they have had to do to keep what high school is supposed to look like.

“It’s a fitting theme and it’s a fitting song, because I think they’ve just taken everything in stride and really not worried about too much, and really put their belief in God and in faith to kind of get them through all of these challenging years,” said Polec.

She said the grad song is “I ain’t worried about it,” by One Republic.

 This year 327 students will cross the stage Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Enmax Centre, following their graduation mass on Friday at 7 p.m at the Enmax Centre.

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