Our Towns: Part 3 of 12

Last month I started doing a 12 part blog series over the final weeks of school to highlight our communities. So much has changed and continues to change in our school landscape, however I still want to focus on the great partnerships that make Vantage a special place.

Right before our school closure, many of our Antwerp students were excelling in their different hobbies outside of the normal school day. Jacob Savina, Hunter Grant and Owen Sheedy were part of the Antwerp basketball team that was playing in the Regional tournament, and Randall Mills had qualified for the OHSAA State Wrestling tournament. A couple weeks ago the OHSAA officially cancelled the winter sports tournaments. For seniors, like Randall, my heart goes out to them. Hopefully they know that the hard work that they put in to be successful will carry them far in their lives ahead. The same goes for all those spring athletes and students that participate in extracurricular activities like school musicals. 

In times like these it is so important to have hobbies that occupy your time, and maybe even inspire your days. Those hobbies could be anything; sports, woodworking, painting, welding, drawing, craft making, mechanics, programming, cooking, and the list goes on and on. 

For many of our students it is exactly these kinds of hobbies that draw them to attend Vantage. Many times these types of hobbies turn into passionate careers for our students. For example current students, Kaitlyn Titus and Ellie Wolf took their interests and have turned them into careers during high school. Both are participating in the early placement part of our Career Advanced Placement (CAP) program. Kaitlyn has earned certifications in the health field and is now working at Vancrest Healthcare. Ellie has also taken the knowledge from the Early Childhood program here at Vantage and turned it into a job at Precious Ones Daycare. These are just a few examples of great things our Antwerp students are doing!

It's no secret if you've read any of my previous blogs that running is a hobby of mine that has helped me throughout my life. However, during these last 5 weeks I've also turned to another hobby in the evenings and weekends to occupy my time and keep my mind busy. I've started to frame a couple rooms in our basement and run the electrical wiring for those rooms. These things have been very therapeutic for me. During this time, I hope we all can find some things that meaningfully occupy our time and give us some sort of normalcy. We will all get back together, until then, stay safe and stay healthy!