AS YOU sit with your cup of coffee, possibly snow-bound for a few days this week, think about a high school senior from the Peninsula School District who has made a difference.

There are many of them out there, and anyone — fellow students, teachers or parents — can nominate a graduating senior to be one of our community’s Students of Distinction.

Our annual awards program will hit its milestone 10th year this May at Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church, and nomination forms will be at school offices this week.

As in years past, we’ll honor 36 seniors from Gig Harbor, Peninsula and Henderson Bay high schools, and they’ll be featured in one of seven different categories: academics, the arts, business and entrepreneurship, science and technology, community service, athletics and overcoming adversity.

It’s our way of showing off how well-rounded students in our public school system can be, and we’re amazed with their accomplishments every year.

Along with our sponsors — Olympic Property Group, Franciscan Health System, Peninsula Light Company and Kitsap Credit Union — we’re planning a celebration where the students will be the stars. Their names will be up in lights on projection screens, and their activities, and their stories behind them, will inspire those who attend.

Nomination forms will be accepted at each school office for a few weeks, and officials at each school will make the final decisions.

From there, we’ll begin a nine-week series of feature profiles — four students each week — that delve into personalities, backgrounds and what drives each one to be successful.

Each of the 36 seniors will be honored as Students of Distinction, and they will be given a small scholarship we hope will cover their first-semester books as they head off to college next fall. In all, more than $10,000 in post-secondary scholarship money will be awarded.

One student in each category will receive an extra bonus as determined by a panel of community judges, who will meet with students in respective categories in April and come to a consensus.
It won’t be easy.

As one of three panelists last year for the science and technology category, I can attest to how difficult it was to select one student above several others.

We had future engineers in our room on that Saturday morning at St. Anthony Hospital, students who went to a special summer academy to learn about how NASA works. Plus one who wanted to rededicate her life to physical therapy after she suffered a back injury that kept her away from basketball, the sport she loved.

In the end, we settled on a student who had served hundreds of volunteer hours at the hospital and had aspirations of becoming an emergency-room physician. What set him apart was his entrepreneurial spirit in his own neighborhood, where he often would spend his weekends doing service projects for those who needed a little extra work done.

Phenomenal talents. Unbelievable community spirit. Fabulous stories of grit, determination and knowledge.

We can’t wait to learn about this year’s class.

Brian McLean is the editor of The Peninsula Gateway and The Puyallup Herald. He can be reached at 253-853-9245 or by email at brian.mclean@gateline.com. Follow him on Twitter, @gateway_brian.