Pleasant Hill High

By RON HARTMAN Ron@Chronicle1909.com

PLEASANT HILL – Graduation week is a fun time for nearly all seniors … but at Pleasant Hill High School, they believe in taking their fun to new levels.

One of the school’s long-standing traditions is that, on the final day of school, seniors are permitted to drive to school in the vehicle of their choice. So on June 7, along with the usual array of riding lawn mowers, tractors, ATVs, and big rigs, students met at the Dairy Queen and formed a parade along Hwy. 58 as they drove to school.

One big surprise was that senior Blake Richardson wasn’t among that group. That’s because he was arriving by helicopter in the middle of the Billies’ baseball field.

“I wanted to do something that nobody had ever done,” said Richardson, who said he has a friend in Cottage Grove who allows him to fly his plane – but his friend is the one who actually landed the helicopter.

Senior pranks are nothing new at PHHS, and thankfully they were reportedly rather tame this year. But school employees still remember the time when somebody released thousands of ladybugs inside the school. Then there was the time when somebody Super-glued a bunch of locks – a “prank” that nobody was laughing about.

“One year they hoisted an outhouse on top of the gym – twice,” said Stephen Ferguson, who helped with the sound system during Friday’s graduation ceremony. “Maintenance pulled it down, then they put it up there again.”

These last four years haven’t been all fun and games for graduating seniors. Dealing with Covid, working remotely, not being able to see their friends. … It was the kind of heavy stress that most students never have to face.

Valedictorian Gavin Hoellrich put those struggles in perspective during his speech Friday.

“In 2019 our roller coaster was at full speed, because we were officially high schoolers,” Hoellrich said. “As freshmen we enjoyed Friday night football, homecoming festivities and, of course, sneaking off campus with older siblings and friends at lunch. But just as we were headed into those first set of loops, our ride came to a sudden stop, leaving us strapped in, hanging upside down. During Covid, we were left hanging there for a year, waiting for our ride to be repaired.

“We all found our own ways to cope, but we did have some commonalities. The boys all experimented with longer hairstyles and their ability to grow facial fuzz, while the girls seemed to work on their fashion sense, and perfected the pajama-pant look. When our roller coaster finally got moving again, and we returned to school again in our junior year, we all looked like overgrown Chia pets walking around in fl annel pants wearing masks.”

In concluding his speech, Hoellrich added: “Sitting here today symbolizes the end of our wild ride here in Pleasant Hill. Some of us are thrilled and are already looking forward to their next adventure. Some of us probably have that nauseous feeling that can hit after a bumpy ride.

”One thing is for sure, we’re all stronger and we’re more prepared to face all the ups and downs and the twists and turns that our futures must certainly hold.”

Hoellrich received a handful of various scholarships, and will be attending Oregon State University in the fall.