School alumnus Nic McAtee will be starting college at Northern Arizona University this fall.

“It’s exciting and sad at the same time to be graduating because I get to start a new chapter of my life and live on my own,” McAtee said. “But it’s also sad because I’m leaving — everyone’s going their own way, and I know I won’t see all the same friends I used to. And then all the annoying stuff that comes with adult life starts happening like taxes.”

McAtee said he planned to get a degree in psychology and later apply to medical school to become an osteopath.

“My goal is to get through all eight years of college without having a single piece of debt,” McAtee said. ”I got the Lumberjack Scholarship at NAU, which is one step closer to achieving that goal.”

McAtee said that he was most proud of maintaining strong academic performance and consistently earning As and Bs as well as balancing academics with athletic commitments.

“At the start of freshman year, I really wasn’t thinking much about school — I just wasn’t into it, but toward the end of the year, I met a senior who helped me change my perspective,” McAtee said. “He made me realize how important all of this really is and how fast it goes by. He taught me to appreciate the little things as much as the big accomplishments.”

McAtee completed certified nursing assistant and phlebotomy training through Valley Academy for Career and Technology Education in Cottonwood, which required him to wake up at 5:30 a.m. every weekday to attend class before a full day of high school.

He was also a member of the SRRHS Student Council, National Honor Society and Interact Club, while still working on his hobbies of skiing, backpacking, off-roading and mountain biking.

“I want to go into osteopathic medicine,” McAtee said. “I think it’s fascinating to study bones and how the body works. I’d like to be a family doctor who can also help patients stay healthy through more natural methods, not just medication.”

McAtee said his motivation was partly inspired by his faith in Christianity.

“I noticed that a lot of people don’t do medicine due to their religious beliefs … so being a DO doctor, that’s going to allow me to still be able to help them in a way that still fits their religion, instead of letting them suffer,” McAtee said. “So it just gives me a better way to help more people.”

“My faith inspires me to keep going and push through and endure the pain of just school, because school is not always easy, especially eight years of eight years more of school, it’s not gonna be easy, so it’s gonna help me just kind of stay mentally there all the time,” McAtee said.

McAtee also wants to climb the tallest mountain on every continent.

“Everest, Denali … I’ve always been a chaser of the mountains, and I read this book in middle school … about the youngest person who ever climbed all seven summits, and that kind of inspired me a lot to want to do that same thing,” McAtee said.

He has already hiked several 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado.

McAtee said he would miss math teacher Jim Vogler, athletic trainer Peter Brock and art teacher Andrew Ellis the most and “losing a lot in sports” the least.

“Just because we don’t have any feeder programs to feed into the [programs] that we have at the high school level, it’s kind of a bummer that we just don’t win very much.”

McAtee praised Head Coach Jim Filbin’s work with the winless Scorpion baseball team this season.

“As the team captain, my advice to my teammates was to just keep trying to improve, like don’t look at the score, but look at what you can do,” McAtee said. “Such as, ask yourself if you made any errors? Did you play your hardest? I would have them play to self-motivate and have them reflect on the game and I think that helped them a lot.”

McAtee was named the team’s Most Valuable Player and received a Foster Friess Scholarship from Lew Hoyt during the SRRHS Scholarship Awards Ceremony on May 19.

“He earned the title of team captain, and he took all responsibilities in stride,” Filbin said. “[McAtee] led by example. From the get-go, he asked questions on how to improve. He helped other players. He did everything we asked. He succeeded on the field, defensively, offensively, did everything that a coach could ask for.”

“I’d call it the golden-bitter-sweet years,” McAtee said. “Because these are the years that are a lot of fun, but then you also get to grow as a person a lot, and you get to see people change. So it’s bittersweet in the way that you get to grow in your own way. But then you also lose people based on the way that [they’re] growing. And then your senior year, you realize how fast those four years go and how fun they were and how now you’re telling yourself, ‘Man, I’m onto the next chapter.’”