Over the last year, as the pandemic tore through the entire world, families were forced to quarantine and schools were forced to close. Students were put into an uncomfortable situation, to say the least.

Seniors were stripped of the privilege to participate in a spring sport and forced to finish the school year with online school that was whipped up at the last minute. The online schooling made it much more difficult to focus and really absorb the information. Due to the system being changed in such a short time, it was new to everyone.

     “The hardest part of dealing with COVID during the year was the quarantine,” sophomore Grant Mueller said. “Being quarantined and cut off from all your friends and family was difficult.”

In the course of the past year, COVID-19 seems to have brought out the best in the student body. From having to wear masks in order to keep school open to the students putting together their own Homecoming dance, students have had to adapt over the course of the year.

     Junior Mitchell Schwobe said, “The hardest part for me was the irregularity. Not being allowed to work with partners and not being able to share things like usual is something you can never really get used to.”

The sacrifices Chilton has made have not been in vain. If one looks around at the surrounding schools, Valders, Two Rivers and Sheboygan Falls have all had to shut down at least once if not more.

Chilton as a whole has not had to miss a single day. This is from most students’ willingness to wear their masks and follow social distancing guidelines. The teachers who helped enforce the rules also had a big impact in keeping the students in line in order to keep CHS open.

Sports and other clubs are another part of everyday life that has been impacted. Guidelines have been different depending on whether the sport was indoors or outdoors or if it required direct contact or not.

Sports such as volleyball, basketball and wrestling were all required to wear masks the entire time because they were inside. Sports such as baseball and track are — and football was — a little looser due to being outside.

Athletes have followed all of these rules very proficiently, getting close to full seasons outside of a few COVID-19 cases.

Other student-driven activities such as FBLA and forensics were all affected, too. Most notably for these groups was the lack of interaction. Instead of FBLA state being an in-person event, the entire thing was done virtually. There was a video conference Chilton’s state-qualifiers attended from the library.

“We were still able to Zoom call and listen to guest speakers,” said junior Alex Breckheimer, who participated in FBLA state during this wild year. “To still get the opportunity to listen to speakers/businesspeople and hear them

tell us what makes a good leader and how they got to where they were today was great even after everything it took in order to make it happen.”

Band and choir were a lot different, too, over this past year. Students in both activities weren’t able to perform in front of an audience for most of the year, requiring them to record some of the concerts early in the year. But as the year got further along, they held their final concert in the gym, only allowing two tickets per student for supporters.

What the students of Chilton High School have accomplished is truly unprecedented: making their own Homecoming dance after the school couldn’t throw one, still being able to have an awards night and scholarship nights, and having the privilege to attend school in general.

Two years ago, all of these things were thought of as a given. But in a year when the world was given one of the biggest reality checks ever, the students of Chilton didn’t fold. They rose to the occasion and made the 2020-2021 school year truly a special one.