(Pavillion, WY) – Wind River High School sent 26 seniors across the stage Saturday in a packed gymnasium, with families filling the floor and the bleachers for the class of 2026’s commencement.
Teacher and coach Cody Kline gave the commencement address. He built his speech around grit, recalling the bitterly cold Tuesday of their freshman year when he made the class run the mile outside despite double-digit negative wind chills and closed highways. He said the lesson from that day mattered more than any mile time.
“Eventually, life stops grading you on a stopwatch,” Kline said. “Nobody is going to care if you ran a six-minute mile or a 12-minute mile. What people will remember is if you kept showing up when things got difficult.”
Kline told the graduates there was no perfect timeline, that some would go to college, some into the workforce, some into the military, and some would change their minds five times. He closed by saying what he would remember most was how the class treated each other.
Then salutatorian Logan Jensen spoke, sharing favorite stories from a class that has known each other since age six or seven. He recalled a middle school track meet where officials accidentally swapped his shot put score with classmate Troy’s, leaving Jensen with a first-place medal he still has. He also described a hacky sack habit that started after lunch one day and spread to hallways, fire drills, and track meets.
“There was never a dull moment,” said Jensen. “Whenever we found ourselves with nothing to do, we made something to do, and we had fun with it.”
Valedictorian Jasper Beutler took the podium wearing two different shoes, a cowboy boot and a Chaco, and refused to explain why until partway through his remarks. He spoke about how the class had grown up together before high school schedules let them personalize their classes, and said graduation marked the end of the life others had planned for them.
Beutler encouraged the graduates to find small victories to celebrate even on the gloomy days, things like getting out of bed and putting on shoes, even if they did not match.
“Many of us will rarely see each other after this,” Beutler said. “Regardless of whether or not we see each other again, we can still live on and see each other in the form of memories.”
In the middle of the ceremony, a compilation video put together by Kylee Miller and Aislynn Vroman played for the crowd. The video pulled together childhood photos of the class, with each graduate featured once between collages of friends goofing around as kids.
The 26 graduates then walked across the stage to close out the ceremony.
