Every year, right after seniors leave for Senior Project, five juniors are passed down the torch to conduct SHS’s announcements.. From 7:50-7:55 a.m., hundreds of students and staff members hear the familiar voices of seniors Noah Prample, Anya Evdokimenko, Andrea Sanchez Camacho, Anna Burchard and Lilah Anders before their first period classes begin.
These seniors, who were passed down the role of morning announcer from their friends, fill each and every classroom with the sound of news about clubs, sports, school functions, the groups daily entertaining bits–Musical Mondays, Wisdom Wednesdays and Fun Fact Fridays–and more every morning.
“It’s an elite group of people,” Evdokimenko said.
And, so far, people have loved them.
“It [has] a morning show feel to it, like a radio show sort of thing,” history and government teacher Bryan Ashkettle said. “It’s really authentic and silly, but they still get the announcements done.”
Senior Marissa Sordi shared similar sentiments.
“I just like the people,” Sordi said. “They’re being very creative for what they’re [saying to] give senior students of the day. If it’s a soccer player they’ll say: ‘give them a soccer ball.’”
The morning announcements have been at SHS since 2004 and have largely been the same, Ashkettle said.
This group has tried to change that.
“We don’t do just your good old regular Joe joke every single day,” Evdokimenko said. “We came up with our own original idea of Musical Mondays, Wisdom Wednesdays and Fun Facts Fridays. We started taking creativity and inspiration from teachers. We don’t just come up with all of this–we’ve included some shade, and some fame, for the teachers too.”
Prample agrees.
“We’ll ask the teachers for quotes, especially [for] Wisdom Wednesday or Fun Fact Friday,” Prample said. “We really just try to be as animated as possible. Because people in the past, not trying to attack them, we could tell they were tired in the morning. But we will be up and at ‘em, and we’ll always try to be as happy and giddy as possible.”
The group split themselves into two teams–Anders and Burchard as one, and Evdokimenko, Sanchez Camacho and Prample as the other. The teams switch on and off every day.
“We kind of just we’re like: ‘okay, we’ll split ourselves in half, but it’s gonna be a [group of] three and [of] two,’” Anders said. “And the group [was] like: ‘we know Anna and Lilah are best friends, and the rest of [the group is] really close, so let’s just put it in half so we can hang out with our best friends. That would be perfect.’”
All group members talked about how much fun they have working on the announcements. Evdokimenko said she enjoyed getting feedback from people.
“I [like] getting to hear if people laughed, [or] what they thought of it, afterwards,” Evdokimenko said. “And then also just having little, fun, good mornings [and] jokes. Having little bits. It’s just kind of [a] creative process.”
Prample said he loves bringing his vibrant personality to the announcements.
“My favorite part of doing the morning announcements is definitely just making everyone kind of annoyed that I’m so animated in the morning because I know all these people are tired,” he said. “And yes, I’m still going to be singing on the announcements sometimes. So really it’s just kind of fun to agitate people.”
Anders said the experience has also given her practice in valuable skills.
“I think it’s really fun,” Anders said. “It gives me another opportunity to practice speaking in front of people, reading off of a script you’ve never seen before, learning how to pronounce people’s names— which, is really useful in life to be able to come up with things on the fly, to be able to interpret a sentence as you go.”
But, of course, it’s not all just rainbows and sunshine.
“Honestly, when [the announcements are] not printed in time and then we have to scramble to get the announcements on the computer, which sounds like a first-world problem–but it really isn’t–[that’s difficult],” Prample said. “And then also figuring out Senior Student of the Day, that’s really hard. Figuring out Musical Monday, Wisdom Wednesday, Fun Fact Friday–we search the depths of the internet for that.”
There are other difficulties, but, overall, it’s not a terrible job.
“Paper’s fall sometimes,” Evdokimenko said. “I think stuttering, that’s a big one, messing up. Sometimes, there could be club announcements where teachers write stuff, it makes sense on [Google] Classroom posts, but it doesn’t make sense when you’re saying it out loud. So it’s like a whole thing trying to read it ahead of time…and you’re like: ‘what did they mean by this?’ So that’s another little issue. Other than that, it’s pretty chill. It’s a pretty easy job.”
The ease and cooperativeness of the announcements is shared by the other announcers, including Burchard.
“Me and Lilah are really good friends,” Burchard said. “So, it’s quite fun to work with each other, and we definitely have a rhythm I would say. It’s really easy to switch [on and] off. It’s never an issue or anything. If somebody wants to announce a specific announcement on a day when they’re not announcing, they can just come and do it. Not a big deal.”
So, why exactly did everyone want to be an announcer?
“Ever since I was a freshman, I really liked the announcements,” Sanchez Camacho said. “Even though they were cringey …, I had always kind of wanted to be one of the people that spoke to everybody at the school.”
Evdokimenko had a similar thought process.
“I just remember freshman year, hearing the announcements, I thought that would be so fun to just do all that and do the jokes,” Evdokimenko said. “I always wondered about the process. I was like: ‘oh, I really want to be on this.’ And so, I chose to find my way there.”
Burchard has done announcements in the past, and wanted to continue for her senior year.
“I did it in middle school, and I had fun doing it then,” Burchard said. “I thought it would be a fun thing to do. And, there was also kind of like a sense of trying to go past my comfort zone, I would say. Sometimes I forget that every morning I’m talking to literally the whole school on the announcement, but, at the end of the day, I’m kind of like: ‘just go for it.’ It’s just fun to do.”
Of course, as the 2025-2026 school year comes to a close, this group will need to pass down their titles as the morning announcement crew to current SHS juniors.
So, does anyone know who they’re passing it down to yet?
“We shall see, wink, wink,” Prample said.
Sanchez Camacho and Burchard said they are both still undecided.
“No one’s really reached out to [Anna and I] so far,” Anders said. “But, if anyone’s interested, come to us and we’ll be like: ‘cool.’”
Evdokimenko said she has an idea who she is going to pass it down to, but is waiting for that person to disclose it themself.
Ashkettle said that this group of people has made his mornings more entertaining.
“I’m in this room by myself in the morning, and I find myself laughing out loud sometimes,” Ashkettle said. “It’s clever. It’s witty. We need levity in our world right now.”
