By Hunter Hine, Staff Writer

On the evening of May 31, families filled the audience at Stephen Decatur High School’s Louis H. Taylor Stadium to watch seniors walk the stage and accept diplomas at the Class of 2023 graduation ceremony.

During a speech, Principal Thomas Sites announced that this graduating class broke a SDHS record by earning $18 million in scholarships and grants.

“I’ve been waiting all week to make this announcement,” Sites said.

Of the 363 students in the Class of 2023, 159 are going to four-year colleges or universities, 73 are going to two-year colleges and 9 are going to technical or trade schools. Also, 16 graduates are joining the military and 106 are entering the work-force.

In-state schools were shown favor among the graduating class, with 42 headed to nearby Salisbury University, 11 going to University of Maryland, College Park and another 11 moving on to Towson University.

The greatest plurality of students, 71, are taking their next educational steps at Wor-Wic Community College.

As people filed into bleachers and folding chairs before the ceremony began, baby pictures of each senior played on two screens beside the stage. The montage featured interjecting video clips of students in Decatur hallways recalling their favorite parts of high school and teachers saying goodbye to the graduates.

To begin the ceremony, 2023 graduate Jessica Beck gave an invocation, asking for a moment of silence for senior Joshua Alton, who died Nov. 29, 2022, after a battle with cancer.

“We thank the Lord for equipping these graduates with numerous and diverse gifts,” Beck said.

Following Beck, Senior Class President Stephen Wade gave the student address as rows of seniors sat facing him at the forefront of the stage.

The class dawned blue and white regalia, many with decorated graduation caps that bore DIY college emblems, flowers or poetic messages.

Wade praised the class as one of the best to walk the halls in recent years, and emphasized the old adage, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”

“Today would not mean anything without the journey it took to be here,” Wade said.

“We are all united by one thing,” Wade later said. “We are all Seahawks, and we’ll always continue to be Seahawks.”

Superintendent Louis Taylor, for whom the stadium was named and an alumni of SDHS, told the students, “I do bleed blue.”

Taylor highlighted the qualities of perseverance, courage and empathy, which he said is exemplified in the senior class.

“You have immeasurable opportunity before you, and as someone who has had his fair share of years to make my own mark on this world, I am so looking forward to see what you will do in the years to come,” Taylor said.

Sites said he spoke as both a parent and a principal, since his son was part of the graduating class. Then he recognized students who earned cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude, and recipients of the Governor’s Top Five Percent Award, just before introducing the commencement speaker, SDHS alumni Dr. Stephen Fell.

Fell graduated in 2001 with academic and athletic accolades, played soccer at Towson and was later drafted by the Baltimore Blast, a professional soccer team. He went on to coach at the professional level and earned a doctorate in physical therapy in 2012.

Now he owns Performance Science & Rehab and works as the physical coach of the senior men’s national soccer team, which brought him to the recent World Cup in Qatar.

Fell spoke about the value of persevering through uncertainty and finding growth in failure. He emphasized to the students that life is hard, and the reality of that cannot be changed. But, he said, every person has control over how they view challenges and how they allow circumstances to affect them.

“Will is our internal power that can never be affected by the outside world. It is the stubbornness we develop to not succumb to unhealthy perceptions and actions,” Fell said. “Where others give in, you continue. In fact, we need these challenges for the opportunity to build and reinforce it through life.”

After a performance of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now,” and the school’s “Alma Mater,” from the SDHS Chorus, Sites began the presentation of the diplomas.

Despite the request to hold cheers and applause until all the diplomas were handed out, many families succumbed to excitement and shouted praise from the crowd as they heard the name of their child, sibling or friend spoken into the microphone.

“May your lives be long, happy, healthy, productive,” Sites said after all diplomas were handed out. “No matter where life will take you, may there always be a little bit of sand in your shoes and a little bit of Decatur in your hearts.”

Sites told the students to turn their tassels. With a burst of fireworks from behind the stage, students threw their caps in the air, cheered, hugged each other and ran to their families.