Storm Lake seniors honored with awards, scholarships, and celebration

Storm Lake High School turned its senior awards night into a Graduation Farewell on the afternoon of May 3 in the school commons, replacing the usual stage-only ceremony with photo booths, food and a looser celebration for seniors and their families. The format, used for the second year in a row, was meant to make the end of high school feel less like an assembly and more like a memory families would carry with them.

The event still centered on recognition. Students who completed service requirements received Silver Cord community-service certificates, and the senior advisory awards brought a lighter touch to the day with superlatives such as most likely to become president, most likely to win the lottery and lose the ticket, most likely to have the best hair and most likely to break a bone. That mix of humor and achievement gave the farewell a tone that felt personal without losing the weight of the honors being presented.

Academic and scholarship recognition also ran deep. Seniors were celebrated with awards and scholarships including the Ag State Scholarship, the Bernie Saggau Award, Buena Vista County Farm Bureau scholarships and the Governor’s Scholar Award. The school also recognized multiple biliteracy honors, underscoring the breadth of the graduating class and the number of students moving toward college, work and other forms of higher education.

The biliteracy piece has become one of Storm Lake High School’s defining strengths. The school put up a Seal of Biliteracy wall near the south entrance in 2023, and by spring 2019, 155 students had earned the seal since Iowa began offering it. The Class of 2026 set a new school record with 56 students earning the Seal of Biliteracy, topping the previous mark of 43 set by the Class of 2021. Twelve seniors earned Golden Seal status, a sign of how deeply multilingual achievement is embedded in Storm Lake’s identity.

That emphasis fits a pattern that began in 2024, when counselor Crystal Nieland said the point of the new format was to make the event feel like a graduation party, and Principal Matt Doebel said the school wanted more than a traditional awards assembly. The district repeated the approach in 2025 with food, cap-and-gown pickup, photo stations and awards handed out in homerooms, making the 2026 farewell part of an established tradition rather than a one-time experiment. In Storm Lake, senior recognition now reads as both ceremony and community gathering, a bridge from classroom life to commencement day.