CRESTVIEW — Crestview High School’s Class of 2016 may have parted ways, but the physical distance that will soon separate them can’t change one thing.
As commencement speaker Seth Kootsouradis said, “Once a Bulldog, always a Bulldog.”
Jack Foster Stadium was filled beyond regular football-game capacity June 3 as Hub City residents watched Crestview seniors enter for the last time as students.
See photos from Crestview High School's graduation night>>
CHS graduated 407 students on Friday, out of a student population just short of 2,000.
During the ceremony, graduates took time to remember Naja McCutchen, their classmate who died from cancer earlier that year. McCutchen’s family came on stage to receive her diploma.
As for the graduates, Kootsouradis said he was somewhat uneasy about leaving CHS, but that was a good thing.
“If I’m not nervous, it doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
Samoni Brown said she would remember the impact her favorite teacher, Dr. Tammy McKenzie, had on her.
“She is a doctor. She has her doctorate and she worked hard to get that doctorate. She is a very educated woman in the medical field,” said Brown, who plans to attend FAMU as a pre-med student. She wants to become a physician’s assistant to an OB-GYN.
Many students said they would remember their sophomore year, when the Bulldog football team defeated the Niceville Eagles for the first time in decades.
“I was on the sidelines when we won the Niceville game,” Erin Hardell said. “We beat them at their stadium, so that was awesome.”
Hardell said that, despite the school’s size, “There’s not a lot of cliques.
“Everyone is united instead of being separated.”
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Crestview graduates celebrate commencement and remember their own (PHOTOS)