By Bruce Mills, The Sumter Item
Photo by Abigail Pittman, The Sumter Item
Crestwood, Lakewood, Sumter High valedictorians share their journeys to top school honor.
The top seniors from Crestwood, Lakewood and Sumter high schools spoke recently to The Sumter Item on how they approached their studies, their interests outside academics and their immediate plans moving forward. [Read the excerpt below about Emma Ketchum, Crestwood High Senior and Dual Enrollment student with Central Carolina Technical College. For full article on all three students click the link at the bottom of the page.]
Crestwood High School senior Emma Ketchum ranked No. 1 in a class of 237 students with a 5.066 weighted GPA, which was over a 3.9 on the 4.0 scale.
A City of Sumter resident, Ketchum chose to attend Crestwood for high school because of the school’s chorus program led at the time by Debra Horton. She got to know Horton through the years through the district’s summer arts program, REACH, for students gifted in music, visual arts or theater.
Ketchum’s talent in the fine arts is music, and in the summer, intensive camp musical students learned and memorized various song pieces, often accompanied by dances for an annual REACH showcase event, she said. In the camp, students also learned the finer aspects of music theory.
Ketchum was All-State Choir every year at Crestwood and was ranked in the top 10 in the state in her voice part – sopranos – her sophomore through senior years.
She also sings in the main choir at her church, Trinity United Methodist Church, she said.
According to Ketchum, she developed her musical interest from her family and especially her grandmother, who is a talented singer and recorded some CDs in the past.
In the classroom, her success was a combination of intelligence but also “a lot of elbow grease and striving to succeed,” she said.
“When I do something and commit to something, I really like to put in all that I have into what I am working on,” Ketchum added.
She credits her mom and grandparents as her biggest supporters and influencers in life “both emotionally and scholastically.”
Ketchum’s plans now are to attend Columbia College in Columbia and major in speech language pathology to pursue a career as a school speech pathologist. The private college is one of the few in the state that currently offers a bachelor’s degree in the field and Ketchum has close to a full scholarship to attend there, she said.
She will enter college with 32 general education credit hours under her belt, thanks to pursuing dual enrollment in high school with Central Carolina Technical College.
To read the full article at https://theitem.com/stories/leaders-of-the-class-of-2026,443634
The Dual Enrollment program provides qualified high school students the opportunity to take college classes while still enrolled in high school. High school students may apply for Central Carolina Technical College (CCTC) Dual Enrollment online. Students can choose the form of Dual Enrollment that best meets their goals; University Transfer Track, Early College, and Career and Technical Education.
For more information on Dual Enrollment contact dualenrollment@cctech.edu or visit https://www.cctech.edu/admissions/dual-enrollment/