Graduation takes on distinct feel when it’s a class of 17

By Ian Whitaker

Saturday, June 6, 2015 | 2 a.m.

In the locker room of Indian Springs School minutes before graduation, Gabe Scott sits on a bench, anxiously bouncing his knees up and down.

The rest of his graduating class, an excitable band of giggly, curly-haired girls and blue-jeaned boys in work boots, chat and snap selfies in the corner. Together they number just 17 students, the smallest graduating class in Clark County.

Scott flips through his smartphone. He had spent most of the day playing video games and Yu-Gi-Oh, a trading card game.

“I’m ready to get out of here! I’m ready to be done,” he said. “Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, I’m so nervous!’ Just let me walk out there! Let me get my diploma!”

The 17-year-old has lived his entire life 45 minutes north of Las Vegas in this rural outpost of Indian Springs, population barely 1,300. Like many who grow up here, he was born in Las Vegas and must venture back occasionally to stock up on groceries.

Driving through Indian Springs — abiding by its 35 mph speed limit — takes around 30 seconds.

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Graduations for high schools in Clark County are often so large they can only fit in places like the Orleans Arena and Thomas & Mack Center.

At Coronado High School, one of the largest in the county, 650 seniors will graduate. Coronado’s entire student body is more than 3,000 students.

“When you have 500 seniors, you’re just shotgunning names off,” said Brian Wiseman, principal at Indian Springs.

But here, like at CCSD’s other rural schools like in Sandy Valley and Moapa, graduation is more personal.

Total enrollment at Indian Springs, which includes the elementary, middle and high schools, is just over 200. Class sizes can be as small as four students.

On Thursday night, about 600 locals — roughly half the town — packed into the school’s red, white and blue-walled gym.

Many weren’t related to any of the graduates, but that doesn’t matter in a town where you can walk from one end to the other in 10 minutes.

“I know everybody in this room,” Scott said.

As the school band began a brassy rendition of “Pomp and Circumstance,” the 17 graduates filed out in blue gowns to a chorus of whoops and cheers before 15-year-old Halle Jackson played a distortion-drenched Star Spangled Banner on her jet-black electric guitar.

She’s lived in the town most of her life, and while she’s only just starting high school, she said she’s not in a hurry to get out.

“I like it,” she said. “It’s a small town, so you can get to know everybody.”

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Originally a 19th-century railroad waystation, Indian Springs is now a loose grid of mobile homes and churches, a Shell station and a tiny, family-owned bar called the Oasis.

The main employers in town are the school and Creech Air Force Base, famous for its status as the epicenter of the American military’s combat drone program. Many in the town, including Scott’s father, work there in maintenance and food service.

Other than that and a state prison just down the road, jobs are hard to come by.

Last year, the Air Force bought the remaining land along the U.S. 95 to expand its security buffer. As a result, the town lost a Chevron gas station and the only casino in town, a one-story stucco building that advertised $5.99 steak and egg dinners and provided around 20 jobs.

“I look at our enrollment numbers and I’m seeing them drop every year,” said Wiseman, the principal. He commutes every day from Las Vegas. “There’s no real reason for anybody to move here right now.”

Housing is inadequate, even though Wiseman said there are rumors of future development. Many are currently on welfare and unemployed. That has given rise to a drug problem, Wiseman said, which the community and school have largely kept from reaching the kids through strong anti-drug programs.

But in a town where everybody knows everybody’s business, it’s not hard to see. Many students personally know someone who has been affected.

“There’s a big, big problem with drugs in this town,” Scott said. “You see people that you know just die from it.”

Last December, Nick Vandever, an alumni and star baseball player, died of a heroin overdose.

“That really opened a lot of people’s eyes,” said Scott.

The school, which serves as the community’s beating heart, has tried to push kids in a better direction.

Teachers and counselors start talking to the kids about their future plans as early as middle school.

“We’re trying to push them into something positive in life and that usually involves leaving,” said Wiseman. “If they stay here, it usually leads to drugs and then jail.”

About 85 percent of the students are in extracurriculars, due in large part because Wiseman forbids the coaches and band director from cutting players. The goal is to keep the kids at school and out of trouble for as long as possible.

“If he can’t dribble, teach him how to dribble, otherwise some of those kids are going to go back to a dirty trailer filled with drugs and no food,” Wiseman said.

Most of the 17 graduates plan to head to college, including Scott and six others who are planning to go to the College of Southern Nevada. Together the seniors were awarded an astounding $122,000 in scholarships.

Still, some don’t have immediate plans after graduation, like Christopher Caldwell, 19, who hides behind thickly framed glasses and a bushy beard.

“I’ll probably stay around for a bit, then I’ll probably move somewhere else,” he said.

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In front of a gigantic American flag the school borrows from Terrible Herbst, the ceremony goes on.

Students thank teachers. Teachers thank students.

Then the lights dim, a small projector starts up. It beams images of the graduates laughing together, posing in class and smiling at home.

“These years here seem to have gone so slowly until today,” said valedictorian Zoe Crow, in her speech. “Now it seems as though they have all passed in the blink of an eye.”

Outside in the cool air, parents soothe crying babies.

“Now we look back and don’t even remember all the tedious work,” she said.

“Instead we remember hanging out in class, we remember our endless hours spent riding bikes as kids, we remember rushing through homework so we could go four-wheeling until the sun went down.”

Behind her, a small white poster bears the childhood palm prints of the seniors who have gone to school here since kindergarten.

As each graduate is called, so too are their parents. Per tradition, the student takes a rose and meets them in the center of the gym, offering the rose and collapsing in hugs.

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After the ceremony, pockets of loved ones swirl around the students. Hands are shaken, tears are wiped. Families disappear laughing into the night.

“I’m relieved,” said Scott. “I’m ready to go out in the world and be me.”

He’s leaving behind his mom, dad, brother, sister and three close friends he played Yu-Gi-Oh with. They will still be in high school while he’s studying nursing.

“Here it’s desert, desert, desert, oh, maybe some — nope, just more desert,” he said. “I wanna move to somewhere where there’s water.”

This year the class went on trips to California, which included a visit to the ocean.

“Everybody else was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool,” he said. “But I freaked out, I ran right into it screaming ‘Oceaaaan!’”