Stretching beyond limitations: Hancock County High School graduates 112

Friday night served as a grand kickoff to the weekend for the seniors of Hancock County High School, as friends, family, administrators and teachers celebrated the 112-person graduating class inside the school’s gymnasium.

Though the ceremony didn’t occur until 6 p.m., some seniors, like Cole Haycraft, began trickling into the building nearly two hours earlier for the big event.

For Haycraft, he said “it felt like a normal day” until he and his fellow peers went through the graduation practice a few hours ago.

“You’re like, ‘Finally, I’m getting out,’ ” Haycraft, 18, said, “but then you go like, ‘Oh, I’m getting out.’ … You want to go like, ‘I want to learn a bit more,’ because you feel like you don’t know it all; but … it’s time to spread your own wings.”

The chance to physically walk across the stage in a graduation ceremony was something Haycraft and his classmates missed out on during their middle school years as the coronavirus pandemic took full effect in March 2020, just months before the students moved on to high school.

“We didn’t even have a graduation for eighth grade, so this is like our first time doing any type of graduation, I believe, for most of us … because Covid started at the end of that year,” Haycraft said. “... Getting the go-ahead and knowing that I have all my credits and everything, … having a lot of my family coming, I think (the ceremony is) going to go at least decent.”

Camden Lucas, class president and commencement speaker for the evening, was feeling “pretty good” about him and his class closing this chapter and starting new ones.

“We’ve been looking forward to this for forever,” he said.

Part of the Early College program with Owensboro Community & Technical College, Lucas, 18, already received his associate’s degree in science before getting his high school diploma.

“My mom keeps saying, ‘You’re doing it backwards — you got your college degree before your high school one,’ ” he said. “... I knew that from a very early age I wanted to be a patent lawyer; so for me, intellectual property (is) a (bachelor’s) degree plus three years of law school.

“I’m looking to spend another decade in school (when I was) a sophomore, so then it became, ‘How can I speed that up? What’s a way that I can eliminate the amount of school I’m in?’ ” Lucas said. “To me, it was trying to get some of that out of the way earlier.”

Though he spent a good amount of his high school years taking college courses, Lucas said he found the support and the bonds amongst his classmates were still present.

“With the Early College program, spending two years not even in the building, a lot of people are like, ‘Do you regret that?’ ” he said. “In retrospect … I (can) see where maybe there are some things I missed out on. But when you have a good group of friends that I had throughout high school, you make the effort whether you’re in high school with the same classes or not.”

Alexis Gay, another senior that was part of the Early College program, felt that it didn’t hinder her from having opportunities with her class.

“The high school experience to me isn’t the classes and everything,” she said. “It’s more of the football games, the dances, the basketball games (with my team).”

Gay will be moving onto Western Kentucky University to study accounting — a field that she’s been acquainted with since her youth, as her grandmother owned the Weber Store in Hawesville before passing away about three years ago.

“I had a cash register when I was 3 (years old) and I just always loved numbers,” she said. “I took an accounting class here (and) loved it, took accounting classes at OCTC (and) loved them and now I’m working as a co-op at Domtar, the paper mill, in accounting.

“I think I’m going to really like it a lot.”

Principal Ginger Estes was proud of the graduates, considering the nontraditional journey they had at the beginning of their high school careers, starting through virtual means.

“These kids have overcome so many challenges and obstacles, and they’re the kindest class I think that we’ve had,” Estes said. “... I think (their) grit and their perseverance will definitely shine.”

Lucas, who will be going off to the University of Louisville to study electrical engineering, touched on the “ability to dream” during his speech to his fellow classmates, in the hopes of encouraging them to expand their horizons and comfort zones.

“Covid kind of took that away from us; and now that we’re at the point of our lives where we’re approaching the next stage, we have the ability to do that,” he said. “As much as I love this community and everything it’s brought me and my classmates, to be able to step out of that, and to challenge ourselves and to try to do something that’s bigger than the county kind-of limits us to, I think, is the biggest advice that I can give.

“It’s stretching farther than we think our own limitations are.”