Meet Haley Reierson- Valedictorian

Manawa High School Valedictorian for the Class of 2017 is Haley Reierson. The Salutatorian is Ethan Hass. For Reierson , being first in her class was something she set out to do at the beginning of her freshman year.

“It’s amazing,” she said of the honor. “It’s something that I’ve wanted and worked for. It was a lot of late nights studying and preparing for a lot of tests that were challenging.”

Despite the challenges, she took them head on, balancing athletics and other involvements with academics successfully. Reierson says she’ll miss her teammates, teachers, and others that she’s met most but she’s excited to pursue her dream this fall and will encourage her classmates to pursue theirs when she delivers her commencement speech.

“I’m going to UW-Oshkosh and go into elementary education,” Reierson said of what’s next. “Ever since I was younger, it kind of just came to me.”

Looking back on her high school career, Haley will miss the teachers and people she’s worked with most, particularly those that shared this previous basketball season with her. When asked what she would change about her high school experience, she easily pointed to one class.

“I would have studied harder my freshman year in biology and not gotten an A-minus.”

While she wishes she could have told herself that as an underclassman, she did offer advice to the current group of freshman and sophomores as they continue on with high school.

“Work hard with anything you want to achieve because hard work with pay off,” she offered.

Haley says she’d love to be able to return and teach in the area once her degree is completed.

Meet Ethan Hass- Salutatorian