As their final quarter approaches, it is a common sentiment among seniors to want to disassociate from anything related to high school when June rolls around, focusing more on their own futures than the community they are leaving behind. However, De Soto High School alumni and current University of Oklahoma students Jaycie Thaemert and Zach Yarbrough leapt at the opportunity to work with 300 high schoolers long after their own graduations at the High School Leadership Conference (HSLC), hosted by OU from Feb. 15-17. Sharing in this experience was junior Chase Culver, a student council member at DHS.

“I came to the camp as a junior [in high school], and being able to experience it from the opposite side, the side where you put in all of the work and you finally get to see the culmination of your efforts when 300 campers roll up was really incredible,” Yarbrough said.

Though Culver did not have much facetime with either De Soto grad during his 72 hours in Norman, Yarbrough was still able to see Culver’s impact through the group activities at the camp.

“We do what we call ‘Dancing with the Stars’ where each group performs a skit in front of the entire conference, and when Chase’s group went up to do the skit, Chase was the frontman and he absolutely killed it,” Yarbrough said. “It was so cool to see like, these are the kids that are coming out of De Soto. Hopefully, that’s what people thought of me when I came and I know that’s what I saw in him.”

HSLC was a chance for Culver to grow his leadership skills in a community of like-minded individuals from across the country, and then be able to bring back what he had learned to benefit student leadership at DHS.

“The most important thing I learned during HSLC was being adaptable through challenges and always giving everything and everyone all of my time and effort,” Culver said. “By putting yourself last and investing in the things you’re involved in, the environments you want to improve will positively progress.

Though, as impactful as the conference was for Culver, Yarbrough may have been even more blown away by his experience as a counselor, saying that HSLC “means more to me now than it ever meant to me as a junior.”