School board honors coach, teachers

Hot Springs County High School Principal Catelyn Deromedi helped honor her husband, High School and Middle School Physical Education, Health and Activities Director Brandon Deromedi, during the Hot Springs County School District Board of Trustees’ Jan. 19 meeting, for his success in yet another one of his titles, that of head golf coach, not only for the golf team winning its fifth state championship in a row earlier this school year, but also for Deromedi himself winning the title of the 2022 golf coach of the year.

“Yeah, that’s definitely not needed,” Mr. Deromedi insisted, as Mrs. Deromedi led the room in a round of applause for him. “As I’ve stated before, all of my accolades come from what the kids have done. They’re putting in so much time and effort (that) this award should go out to them.”

The head golf coach did thank the school district board and administration for their support of the golf program, “giving us the ability to continue to grow that, (including) down in the middle school ranks, and hopefully establish us as a dynasty at some point.”

Hot Springs County School Board Chair Sherman Skelton then turned to honor the school district’s “top 10” teachers, so named because their respective classes of students ranked among the top 10 for their categories, when stacked up against other students through the 48 school districts in the state of Wyoming.

“These rankings represent their dedication to their craft, as well as the hard work their students have put into learning throughout the year,” Skelton told the Thermopolis Independent Record after the Jan. 19 school board meeting. “And our high school juniors had the second-highest ACT (American College Testing) composite score in the state.”

The fourth-grade English Language Arts team of Toby Emery, Vivian Georgius and Heidi Hunt taught students who ranked ninth in the state, and those whose students ranked seventh in the state included ninth-grade math teacher Forrest Christensen, fifth-grade math teacher Wade Holmes, eighth-grade science teacher Aimee Kay, and eighth-grade ELA teacher Jessica Powers (no longer in the district, since the scores are from last year).

The students of seventh-grade and sixth-grade ELA teachers Eric Kay and Jacob Strenger, respectively, scored sixth in the state, while the students of 10th-grade and ninth-grade ELA teachers Ayni Garza and Elizabeth Mertz, respectively, scored fourth in the state.

Sixth-grade math teacher Katie Despain’s students placed second in the state, while seventh-grade and eighth-grade math teachers Emmy Hergert and Stephanie Metz, respectively, placed first in the state.

Skelton noted that, when board trustee Clay Van Antwerp first came to the school district, “we didn’t have any top 10 finishers in our district, in any of our state assessments. At this point, 13 of the 20 measured areas are in the top 10 in our district, and a couple others are very close. There’s some really high-performing classes, with some really high-performing kids.”

While school sports are divided into various divisions, Skelton pointed out that, when it comes to state assessments of academic performance, “there’s only one division, and that means you play against the biggest schools and the smallest schools.”