![Reaching out. Christopher Lesh, student at Central Catholic High School, serves ice cream during the event on March 2, 2025, at the Portland waterfront. Central Catholic was just one of the schools that sent student volunteers out to cook, prepare, dish, and serve food. Interact club’s co-president Rachel Gerber, junior, plated the food during the event. “I like how direct the contact is,” Gerber said. “You’re there [and] you’re just doing something good. It’s simple, it’s easy, you can feel good about it.”](https://wlhsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/interact-1-edited-1200x744.jpg)
*WEB CONTINUATION: This article originally appeared in Volume 105 Issue 3 of our news magazine, Amplifier.
At graduation on June 3, it is tradition for the class valedictorian to make a speech to the graduating class and their families. This year, it will be Sam Hatler, senior, making that speech.
Hatler’s journey to become valedictorian began in his freshman year, when he unexpectedly took Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry as a science instead of Biology, the usual science class for incoming freshmen, and received an A, placing him at the top of his class in grade point average (GPA).
“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s funny, I wonder if this will last,’” Hatler said. “I wasn’t actually planning on becoming valedictorian. I just wanted to take classes that would challenge me and that were fun. [In] sophomore or junior year, I realized [that] I could become valedictorian. That’d be a pretty fun thing to talk about in 10 years.”
Hatler is currently planning to attend the University of Washington to study mathematics with the intention of entering the engineering industry, but is also on the waitlist for Princeton University, which he plans to attend if accepted and given sufficient financial aid.
Out of the 19 AP classes Hatler has taken, his favorites were AP Computer Science and AP English Literature and Composition.
“I hadn’t done any programming before [taking AP Computer Science],” Hatler said. “Since then, I’ve done a lot of programming practice. I helped my dad program something to check his work website and let them know when overtime comes up. [AP English Literature has] allowed me to read a lot of books that I probably wouldn’t on my own, like ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Jane Eyre.’ It’s just fun to use that class to go over these classic books.”
Outside of academics, Hatler participated in many extracurriculars, including playing on the JV tennis team where he swings up to varsity, practicing the Korean martial art Subak in which he is a double black belt, and competing in the school’s rendition of the Amazing Race.
“My favorite thing was the Amazing Race,” Hatler said. “I did that with Theo Morganson, and we thought we were going all the way. We made it pretty far, but in the last week, we ended up getting out. But it was overall just a really fun experience, and I’m glad I did it.”
In his graduation speech, Hatler has a message that he wants the hundreds of graduating seniors, their watching families, teachers, and those performing at the event to be taken away.
“I really want to make sure that it has kind of the message that there are a lot of things that you can do in life, but that you can’t do all of them,” Hatler said. “Life is short, so it’s really important for people to find the thing that they would be happy knowing that that’s what their life is, and pursue that. I also want to say that West Linn High School is pretty good, I enjoyed it, and that everyone here was super lucky to go to such a good high school.”
