The Excellence Awards are held at the end of each school year to recognize exemplary performance by students of all grade levels in each department. Students are ranked from excellent to superlative based on the number of departments they’re recognized in. Senior Ava Reynolds was the superlative student at this year’s awards on June 6, being recognized in visual arts, band, English, social studies and journalism.

“I guess as the years have gone on, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything differently, but I just kept working hard and so it was just kind of cool to see it come together tonight,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds has been at the awards since she was a freshman and enjoyed seeing her and her classmates’ accomplishments grow since then.

“Sometimes it’s easier to get an A than it is to be a great person. I think it’s really inspiring for younger students to see, as well as freshmen and sophomores. Hopefully it inspires them to keep working when they see these older students achieving and working their hardest and getting recommended,” Reynolds said.

Assistant principal Joseph Glick was a main part in coordinating and running the awards. This year, many teachers felt as if the ceremony went a lot smoother than previous years.

“Each department creates a rigorous criteria and then teachers meet, discuss and debate on the rating of their students. Each department must rank their seniors that they’re submitting or recognition. That’s where we get the outstanding senior from each department,” Glick said.

These awards are a chance for students to be recognized for doing well in whichever areas teachers feel they excelled. Along with core classes, other departments included marketing, business, instrumental music, journalism, family and consumer science, world languages, Theater, JROTC and several others.

“I think it’s a really great way to show the best and brightest students, but not only that, because it also [recognizes] students that work really hard. Some of the people that got [awards] tonight might not be the straight A student, but that doesn’t matter because they’re still an excellent students. It just kind of culminates everything, not just having an A,” Reynolds said.

One of the main purposes of the ceremony is senior recognition, so each department also chooses one senior as their outstanding senior. The last award of the night is the Paul Cogar Most Distinguished Senior award, given to the student that teachers from each department feel is deserving. Senior Jaymie Inouye was the recipient of the 2015-16 school year.

“I think it’s always important to celebrate the hard work and the accomplishments. Our students do amazing things in our school and we often times spend energy working with kids that are struggling, but it’s important that we recognize the kids and the families that are achieving great things,” Glick said.

Unlike many other awards, the Excellence Awards honor more than just the basic core classes, providing an opportunity for recognition and motivation in other subjects students are passionate for, or maybe are striving to work harder in.

“It’s really important to have these because these sort of awards and these sort of recommendations make students feel good about their work in high school. They can carry a little bit of pride and motivation into the future to do the same,” Reynolds said. “I am even more motivated to work hard in things like social studies and english, that I didn’t think I was that great at. So you might not remember the title, but you’ll remember the honor and the feeling.”