Ingrid Lira, a worker with Las Vegas Entertainment Productions, cleans chairs as they set up for Wednesday nights outdoor graduation at Las Vegas High School Tuesday, May 23, 2023.
Sunday, May 28, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Las Vegas High School, at more than 100 years old, has traditions that go deep — but they don’t have to go far.
While almost every other high school in the Clark County School District gathered in a cavernous off-campus arena this past week for graduation, Las Vegas High met Wednesday on its football field to send off its seniors.
It took professional event organizers spending all day Tuesday setting up the rented stage, audio and visual equipment, and enough white folding chairs for all 650 graduates, plus faculty and the alumni who lead the graduates to their seats to a soundtrack of“Pomp and Circumstance.”
Then, school staff camped out on the field Tuesday night to keep watch until sunup.
With Frenchman Mountain aglow in the early evening sun to the east and the Strip twinkling in the distance to the west, teachers returned to staff the event, taking tickets and guiding the standing-room-only crowd to every inch of the bleachers and track.
A mural facing the stage offered an inspirational takeaway for the moment: “Together, we have experienced life. Separately, we will pursue our dreams. Forever, our memories will remain.”
Only at Las Vegas High.
“We like to call ourselves the pride of the East Side,” said Principal Ray Ortiz.
Assistant Principal Mark Parantala, who oversees athletics and facilities, said families can’t come onto the floor at arena graduations after their kids toss their caps for photos and hugs. Nobody can dawdle at all, as the crowds have to keep it moving so the next school can come in and reset the room for its ceremony — this year, at either the Orleans Arena or the Thomas & Mack Center. Those graduations took place on six consecutive days, with the last ones Saturday.
Parantala has been at Las Vegas High for four years. He planned to be on the field for the full overnighter, where teachers play games — board games, video games, disc golf in a course set up in the maze of chairs.
“If we didn’t have all the support we did from the teachers, we wouldn’t be able to graduate on the field,” he said.
When Ortiz interviewed for the job as principal a few months ago, one of the first questions administrators asked was how he felt about on-campus graduations. He was, of course, enthusiastic. And he would grasp the importance of tradition, as a Las Vegas High graduate himself, class of 1991.
CCSD has more than 60 high schools, mostly in the urban valley. The smaller schools in the rural reaches of the county graduate on campus, as do highly specialized programs. Las Vegas, at Sahara Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, is the only large city high school to do so.
Las Vegas Highd ates to 1904 when students took classes in a tent north of what was then the town’s center. The Clark County High School, renamed Las Vegas High in 1919, had several homes around downtown Las Vegas before moving in 1930 into the art deco building that now houses Las Vegas Academy of the Arts. Las Vegas High remained there until 1993.
While the current campus is a relatively young at just 30 years old, it is packed with history. The theater lobby is a school museum. One of its central exhibits is the letterman jacket of Richard Bryan, class of 1955, a former Nevada attorney general, state senator, governor and U.S. senator.
On Tuesday, as the field was being set up, another tradition was unfolding across campus in the cafeteria: the Golden Grads reunion for the class of 1973.
On display there was Sir Herkimer’s Bone, the bronze-painted cow bone awarded annually as a traveling trophy to the winner of the Las Vegas-Rancho football game (Las Vegas is unbeaten in the matchup since 1996). It sat alongside a 1973 yearbook. Notably, there was also a rack of golden graduation gowns — at every Las Vegas graduation, alumni who graduated 50 years prior don the gowns and matching caps to lead the procession.
High school sweethearts Jim and Pam Monaco dropped by. While they couldn’t make it to graduation, they were happy to reminisce.
Young Pam had a crush on young Jim, who was in her English and government classes, so she asked him to walk at her side at their graduation ceremony — these dates were a tradition at the time, and girls asked boys. He said yes, and the rest is family history, set in motion by graduation.
Classmate Diane Wickberg traveled from her home in Flagstaff, Ariz., for this year’s graduation.
At the reunion she wore her letter sweater, which she earned for playing golf for the Wildcats and being a batgirl for the baseball team. She came back the next night to wear a golden gown.
Her brother, who graduated from Las Vegas in 1968, joined the 2018 graduation, so she would too.
“I made it twice,” she said.
Golden Grads also got commemorative diplomas and the pleasure of the company of this year’s junior class officers, who hosted the reunion.
The juniors still have a year left before their last hurrah, but the appeal of the setting is not lost on them.
“You spend your last moments of high school on the field instead of a random parking lot,” said junior Rhanalya Guial.
Freshman orientation also takes place on the field, said junior Tori Henry.
Then, “Senior Sunrise.” Then, graduation.
Only at Las Vegas High.
“I think it’s really sentimental,” Henry said. “You start here, and this is where you end.”
