CLASS OF 2026
Valedictorian | Andrew Wilson
1
401 days ago, those morning trumpets flourished for the first time.
wear the mask.” And on the surface, it’s obviously about a superhero. But when you look deeper, it also applies to the identity, the legacy, the thing you’re trying to become, and it doesn’t just belong to one person. It belongs to whoever is willing to step into it and carry it forward. We are the first class to ever wear the Golden Hawks mask for all four years. Every tradition this school has, we started. Every standard this school holds, we set. Future students will walk in these halls and inherit something, and that something is us. That is no small feat. And what I want us to remember is when we’re out there in life and things get hard, that we have already done something hard and made something incredible out of it. We built a community from nothing, at an age when most people are still figuring out who they even are. Whatever comes next, we have proof that we can walk into the unknown and make something beautiful out of it. That’s what maturity looks like. Not just getting older but deciding that the people around you matter. That the place you’re part of matters. That what you leave behind matters. We leave behind a legacy. We leave behind a standard. We leave behind a home. This school, this nest, of ours was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to just be the beginning. Class of 2026 Golden Hawks, I believe it is time we take our leap of faith and soar into greatness.
And if I’m being honest, I don’t think any of us really knew what we were walking into. A new building with new teachers, and no upperclassmen to show us the ropes, no alumni to look up to, no legacy to lean on. We were just a bunch of freshmen in a school that was starting from scratch. And we built it up together. We were fourteen, fifteen years old when we first walked through those doors. We were awkward and unsure trying to pretend that we weren’t. We didn’t know who we were going to be yet, and neither did Desert Sunrise. Think about how different we are now from those freshmen who showed up on day one. Not just taller, not just older, but genuinely different. We’ve learned so much over these four years. How to accept loss, how to pride our wins, how to be there for someone when they need it, and how to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. That’s not something you can teach in a classroom. That’s something you build slowly, imperfectly, but together over much more than 1,401 days, but we made it work. Recently I rewatched one of my favorite movies of all time, Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse. You’ve had almost 8 years to watch it but spoiler alert, after Spiderman dies, Miles is told: “Anyone can
20 DSHS • Class of 2026
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