Year of change, loss, hope ends at high school graduations in Rock Hill, Tri-County
You can’t help but notice the catharsis.
Perhaps it happens every year. After sitting quietly the whole graduation ceremony (per rule and custom), and after watching the final diploma-receiving senior cross the stage and shake their principal’s hand, it happens: Parents and relatives and teachers and everyone else finally release their prideful energy.
They rise from their seats. Their cheers come together and lift to a crescendo. And their cameras, mostly controlled by thumbs on touch-screen smartphones, start rolling.
The moment is special.
Everyone knows it.
And if you’re not careful, the moment catches you off guard, that beautiful noise suddenly washing over you, and the weight of what you see — this seminal moment in these young people’s lives — creeps up and bubbles goosebumps on your arms before you can grab the pencil tucked behind your ear and scribble down the memory.
The cheers you can make out above the crowd’s hum only make it more real: “You did it, baby!” one proud Northwestern High School mother screams from the right side of the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center.
“We’re so proud of you!” a South Pointe High mother yells from the left, a few hours later.
Surely this happens every year.
Surely, when Northwestern, South Pointe and Rock Hill high schools held their graduations on Thursday in the Rock Hill Sports and Event Center, these ceremonies were similar to those in years past.
But maybe, on Thursday, it’s fair to say they felt a bit different.
Maybe these Rock Hill school district graduations — the last of all graduations in high schools across York County, Chester County and Lancaster County — felt distinct.
Not because of the new year or the new names on the graduation lists or this year’s temporary graduation venue. But because of the change, loss and hope that has and will continue to emerge from the 2020-21 school year.
This graduation season punctuated a year with plenty of milestones, most of which can’t be synthesized in the next few paragraphs:
- In Fort Mill, a town that can’t build homes and schools fast enough to keep up with its population growth, there was plenty to be proud of. For example, Catawba Ridge High, which opened in 2019 without a senior class, held its first graduation. Across all three high schools in the district — Nation Ford, Fort Mill and Catawba Ridge — Fort Mill School District presented more than 1,100 seniors with diplomas, per a release from the district, and those senior students were awarded over $25 million in scholarships.
- Indian Land High is ready to soon move into a new high school. Similarly, Legion Collegiate Academy, the newest public charter school in Rock Hill, finally moved into a permanent site after a year and a half in a temporary home.
- And in Rock Hill? Thursday’s three graduation ceremonies echoed how this year was different from others. Mason Thomas of Northwestern was beautifully honest in his valedictorian speech about how this year had challenged him more than any other in his young life. South Pointe Principal Marty Conner and Rock Hill principal Ozzie Ahl shared how proud they were of their students and staff for being resilient in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and the sacrifices it required. (Conner even invoked words from the legendary poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley to explain his pride in his students’ resilience.)
Plenty of other consequential things occurred in the Rock Hill school district this year — a behind-the-scenes fixture in York County education (RHSD spokesperson Mychal Frost) retired, three Rock Hill elementary schools closed for good — but the graduations bookended a beautiful year filled with beautiful struggles that everyone, in one way or another, experienced together.
There’s something special about that — something that doesn’t happen every year. That in itself is deserving of a cathartic cheer.
We all deserve a catharsis.
After Northwestern’s graduation, as the jubilant crowd of purple-cap-and-gown teens left the gym, I noticed a sign near the done-up stage. It read, “Tradition Never Graduates.”
That served as a reminder not only that the world will continue spinning — that local civil rights leaders still will march like they did a summer ago, and that football season is and will remain king in South Carolina.
But it also said that no year is forgotten. That each year builds on the last.
That these students, however bombarded with change and pain and loss, can deliver hope for a better future. They already have.
This story was originally published June 26, 2021 at 11:48 AM.
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