Noah Azzaria-Byrne was at work when he heard the news. The soon-to-be Cochrane High graduate had been selected as the valedictorian of the 2025 class.
Busy with the hustle and bustle of work, the news didn’t sink in until he sat in his car after his shift. “I thought, ‘wow, this is crazy that it’s all culminated in this,” he said. The next day, at Cochrane High’s athletic and academic awards ceremony, he was publically announced as his class’s valedictorian.
In the school gymnasium, in front of the rest of the school, faculty, friends, and family, Azzaria-Byrne accepted the highest academic honour bestowed to only one high school graduate per school. Moments later, a high school staffer began to read off the names of the students who won an award for top marks in each core class. His name was called again, and again, and again.
Aside from being chosen as the class valedictorian, Azzaria-Byrne had also won the academic award for Physics 30, Math 30-1 and 31, English Language Arts 30, and won the Cochrane Lions Club Award and the Inter-Pipeline Fund Discover Award.
Azzaria-Byrne has been involved with student-body leadership for two years and worked with a farmer teacher to develop an app that allowed the Cochrane High football team to communicate more effectively on the field. “I was glad to contribute to the team without actually participating in a conventional way,” he said.
He added that he unfortunately missed the deadline to join the speech and debate team.
Next year, Azzaria-Byrne will attend the University of Calgary where he’ll study engineering, and is leaning towards software engineering as primary area of study. From the outside, he has all the trappings of someone who will excel at university, but does he think he’s ready?
“Of course not,” he said. “I think anyone who says they are is wrong. I’m super excited– a little nervous– it’ll be a new environment.”
Joining new schools is an experience Azzaria-Byrne has gone through before. For the last four years he’s been a student at Cochrane High, but before then he was a student at the Ecole Notre-Dame Des Vallees, a francophone school in Cochrane’s west end.
“When I came to Cochrane High it was a new community,” Azzaria-Byrne said. “It was wonderful to be welcomed and to integrate myself into that community. It’s been really fantastic and it’s been a very welcoming school.”
Next year, Azzaria-Byrne and the rest of the Cochrane High graduating class will go on to bigger and better things. In the next few weeks the day will come when he and the rest of his class are to be honoured at their graduation, but far from that, Azzaria-Byrne said being a student at Cochrane High is not just about the individual accomplishments or the academic accolades.
“It’s not about the awards,” he said. “It’s about making the contributions we’ve made and continuing to do so.”
