Renaissance (young) man: LHS senior excels in academics, music & sports

LACONIA — Andrew Emanuel, senior at Laconia High School, has shown over the past few years that he is capable of anything he sets his mind to pertaining to athletics, academics and arts. Even under undesirable personal circumstances, he has excelled and become an example of excellence in the school district and the community at large.

Emanuel was going through the motions in life at the start of middle school, putting in enough effort to do well and get by; however, in the middle of seventh grade he lost his mother to lung cancer, which would forever change the focus of his life. In a matter of months, Emanuel found himself without a mother and with a grieving father, who slowly began to spend more time in Bow where he worked, than in Laconia with his son.

By the start of Emanuel's freshmen year he was primarily living alone an the family apartment with the potential to "indulge parties" and "late nights".

Emanuel, though, chose to take a more promising course, straying from parties and distractions. "I chose to behave in a fashion that I think would make my mother proud, despite how discouraging it is to think that she might not even know," he recalls.

Not claiming to be much of an athlete, but rather an uncoordinated, "chubby" teen, Emanuel chose to join the cross country team, as it was the only sport he knew of that did not him to be successful based upon natural skill, but rather dedication and effort. At the start of his freshmen year, he completed his first race with a final time of 24 minutes and 34 seconds, a far cry from where he wanted his time to be. Determined to improve, Emanuel said that going into his sophomore year he asked his coach, Andrew Mercer, what he needed to do to improve. Mercer provided Emanuel with a running schedule that he followed every day for the next year. Following the year of hard training Emanuel's technique had improved significantly, and by his senior year he was the only Laconia High School male runner to qualify for the 2014 NHIAA Meet of Champions with a personal record time of 17:42.

Emanuel continued to make strides in other facets of his life, including academics. By junior year he decided that pursuing a college education was the only way to ensure his future success; he packed his junior and senior year with rigorous AP and honors-level classes.

Although the class work did not all come easy to Emanuel, he preserved and maintained a high average in all of them, helping to raise his GPA over a 4.0 (A) by the start of his senior year, placing him 11th out of 166 in the Class of 2015.

Emanuel has also earned various academic awards, including the English Award for the Junior Class, as well as the N.H. Constitution Day Essay winner for 2013. When asked why he is so focused on academics, Emanuel replied, "I want to be able to look back and see that I couldn't have pushed myself harder, because I know a lot of adults that look back and say they wish they wouldn't have goofed off so much in high school."

In addition to Emanuel's passion for athletics and academics, he has submerged himself fully into music since his mother's death. Throwing himself into the arts, he began mastering the skills of clarinet and learning conducting skills from middle school music teacher John Cardin. After his entry high school, he began pursing excellence in band, becoming a drum major his junior year as well as band president.

Emanuel was also exposed to the art of jazz when he began playing alto sax at the end of freshmen year. The tenor sax came in his life for the first time during the middle of his sophomore year, when the jazz band was short a player. "I thought I was going to just fit into the jazz band and do my job for the ensemble, but I started to like it more and more, and was eventually appointed as section leader of the saxophones junior year."

Junior year, Emanuel made Classical All-State on clarinet sitting as eighteenth clarinet out of twenty four. This year Emanuel went out for Classical All-State again, ranking 11th on clarinet, 3rd on alto sax, and 1st in the state on tenor sax. In less than two years of playing the tenor sax, Emanuel went from a beginner to currently ranking as number one in the state. Emanuel's high rankings qualified him for the Chamber Festival, featuring the top musicians in All-State. He also was selected for Lakes Region Music Festival as lead tenor sax in the jazz band; and this fall played as part of the Plymouth State University All New England Band Festival as a first clarinet.

"My biggest inspiration has been my band director, Debbie Gibson, who has taken the role of not only my band director, but also as a mother figure," says Emanuel, "Ms. Gibson encourages me to do my best both musically and morally."

Emanuel is currently applying to colleges in New England as a Music major. He thanks classmates Michael O'Brien, Mitchell Baily, and Marissa McDermott, and their families, for supporting him and encouraging him throughout the years. When asked whether he thinks all his hard work has paid off he replies, "Yes, I like imagining how good it is going to feel to look back and see that I really tried my best to make my life and high school experience the best it could be."