Matanzas High School honors seniors on award night

Palm Coast Observer
News

Pablo Picasso once famously said, “Action is the fundamental key to success.” Through most or all of their four years as high school students, the action these award winning students took was that of trying to make success contagious.

The 2015 senior awards were handed out May 13, and what started out by a passionate National Anthem sung by Noah Reed was followed by a numerous amount of awards presented for all academic subjects to all deserving students by Kari Dutton and Chris Lam, who were actually Mr. and Ms. Matanzas this year. These awards were all voted on by the teachers of that certain subject.

“The main point is to celebrate accomplishments of our seniors and teachers and to give them some accolades,” said Principal of Matanzas High School Chris Pryor about the event.

Many awards were given out, but nobody in the senior class had more recognition than William Conville, or as most of his classmates like to call him, Liam. Conville won Excellence in Government and Politics, as well as Excellence in Advanced Placement Literature; his most gratifying awards, though, came later in the ceremony from his ROTC class, where he not only won the Distinguished Athlete Award by the U.S. Marine Corps, but Conville also received a full-time scholarship from the U.S. Air Force.

“Honestly, anyone could have won these awards," he said. "I am so very blessed to have received these honors. ... I ran cross country and track this year, as well as soccer, and my coach, the teachers, my friends, my family, and the people around me all made it easier for me along the way. … As much work as I put in, I got a lot of help from everybody, too.”

Just about matching Conville was Joanette Gonzalez, who accomplished just about a clean sweep of all the subjects for the academic awards, winning Excellence in Macroeconomics, Advanced Placement Physics, and Dance Performance. Gonzalez also won the Medallion of Excellence award from the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

“It was unexpected,” Gonzalez said. ”I definitely put a lot of work into this. I really didn’t get as much time as everybody else did because I danced all the time, and, when I got home, I would do all my homework until about midnight.”

Woody Allen once said, “Seventy percent of success in life comes from showing up.”

Nobody showed up more than Jeffrey Simon, who won the Perfect Attendance Award, along with four others for showing up to school every day for 720 straight days.

“A lot of it was just grinding through it,” Simon said. “I wasn’t about just staying home just because my immune system’s low.”

“The Perfect Attendance Award is an incredible achievement,” said Ken Seybold, assistant principal of Matanzas. “I’m sure there were days where these students didn’t feel a hundred percent and because of that it’s a great tribute to their work ethic.”

Below is a list of other award winners from Wednesday night:

Senior Award Honors

Perfect Attendance:
Elizabeth Wells
Jeffrey Simon
Mikayla Short
Joshua Pedron
Nalinie Ragnauth

Armada Award
Charlie Elman

Excellence in AP Geography
Nicholas Robinson

Excellence in AP Psychology
Nikol Fedotova

Excellence in Government & Politics
William Conville

Excellence in Macroeconomics
Joanette Gonzalez

Excellence in AP Statistics
Nicholas Robinson

Excellence in AP Calculus BC
Isabel Hess

Excellence in AP Environmental Science
Ashley Savage

Excellence in AP Physics
Joanette Gonzalez