On Monday, May 11, seniors attended their last awards night at Hays High School.
In previous years, the school hosted one awards ceremony for all grades on one night. However, since the awards ceremony mainly focused on the seniors’ accomplishments, the administration decided to change how they organized the ceremonies.
“In the past, there has been discussion about separating the underclassmen awards program from the seniors’ program,” counselor Amy Miller said. “With the new building, administration felt it was time to try something different.”
This year, seniors had their awards ceremony on May 11 at 6:30 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center. During the ceremony, they received their awards for academics, activities and athletics. They also recognized seniors for various honors and scholarships.
Instead of having the remaining ceremonies in the evening, each remaining class will have a separate ceremony during Advisory periods on May 18-20. To accommodate the ceremonies, the school will follow the Monday schedule with an extended Advisory. The individual award ceremonies are as follows:
Monday, May 18 – junior awards ceremony
Tuesday, May 19 – sophomore awards ceremony
Wednesday, May 20 – freshman awards ceremony
“The community may hear the name or be aware of the star athlete but may not be aware of the great musician or artist that is in our building,” Miller said. “The awards programs are an opportunity to showcase the talent that we have at Hays High School and allow the students to be recognized for their talents.”
Hays High Class of 1966 • May 26, 2026 at 1:52 pm
The Hays High School Class of 1966 sponsors an annual $500 scholarship award for students in each Class, Freshmen, Sophomore, Junior and Senior years. This fund was established by grateful 1966 alumni of Hays High School and it is intended to support $500 annual scholarships, one to each Class, $2,000 per year. It is cumulative and can be awarded to students who apply and qualify each year of their attendance at HHS.
In years past, we have sent representatives of our Class to present the awards. Because of an internal change, USD 489 has now spread out the ceremonies for the awards over 4 different dates and it is not feasible to send volunteers to each ceremony.
We intend to take action that will spread the word of these scholarships among students and parents and to give our classmates feed back on how their donations are being used to assist students.
In the meantime, we hope the readers of the Guidon notice this comment and will help publicize the availability of the scholarships and the names of the recipients.
We have received word that this year’s (2026) Hays High School Class of ’66 Scholarship winners are:
9th Grade Winner: Avery Kieffer
10th Grade Winner: Brian Prough
11th Grade Winner: Haley LaBarge
12th Grade Winner: Braylee Kinderknecht
Congratulations to them and to all students at Hays High School. It gave us an education to last a lifetime and we hope the same applies to you.
Our corny class motto still applies:
Tough As Nails
Hard As Bricks
Senior Class of ’66!
Gratefully,
HHS Class of 1966
[email protected]