School life / Senior year at Old Rochester Regional, a February ceremony, 2024
Old Rochester's Seniors Voted on the Best Sneeze
In February 2024 a Massachusetts class handed out superlatives in a packed auditorium. Most Likely to Succeed was on the list. So was Best Sneeze.
On February 7, 2024, students and families filled the auditorium at Old Rochester Regional High School in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, for the class of 2024's senior superlatives. Sippican Week, the local paper, printed the full list. It runs to more than forty categories, and I have read it the way other people read poetry.
There were the classics. Most Likely to Succeed. Best Dressed. Class Clown. Most Likely to Be President.
There were the practical ones. Most Likely to Get in a Fender Bender in the Parking Lot. Most Likely to Talk Their Way Out of a Ticket. Most Likely to Be Late to Graduation.
There were the forecasts. Most Likely to Leave the Tri-Town and Never Come Back. Most Likely to Come Back and Work at ORR. Most Likely to Drop Their Phone in the Toilet.
And there was Best Sneeze.
Best Sneeze. A whole class of seniors had noticed, over four years, whose sneeze was best, and agreed on it, and voted. A transcript has no column for that.
Winners gave short speeches. The student who won Most Likely to Come Back and Work at ORR told the room: "I don't know why I like it here, but I do." The ceremony's host, the school's former athletic director Bill Tilden, then got a surprise award of his own, Most Likely to be the G.O.A.T. He told the seniors they were the G.O.A.T.
At other schools the vote is run like an election. At Archbishop John Carroll High School, near Philadelphia, the journalism class chooses the categories, a Google form collects nominations, and a second ballot narrows each to the top two or three.
I have spent three years building a résumé for the eldest. I have a spreadsheet with a column for leadership. Her class has been keeping a different set of records, and nobody asked me for input.
At dinner I proposed family superlatives. It went fast. The middle one: Most Likely to Eat Standing Up. The youngest: Best Shoulder to Cry On, which she accepted with a short speech. The eldest: Most Likely to Leave the House and Never Come Back, which she said was not funny, and then said was a little funny. My wife won Most Likely to Succeed, unanimously, by a show of four hands.
I won Best Sneeze. I did not know I was nominated. Apparently it is loud.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Brock Bruner, Class of 2025 Senior Superlatives, Fair Grove News, March 11, 2025 fairgrovenews.com
- Mia Sottovia, Seniors look forward to superlatives, The Carroll Times, January 19, 2024 thecarrolltimes.org
- Erez Ben-Akiva, Old Rochester class of 2024 awards senior superlatives, Sippican Week, February 7, 2024 sippican.theweektoday.com