Extra extracurriculars

One by one, the highly motivated students in academics and extra-curricular activities received recognition Tuesday as part of the 49th annual Scholarship Awards Breakfast sponsored by the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce at the Island Hotel.

After nearly four years of endless hard work — and endless homework — at Newport Harbor and Corona del Mar high schools, 31 students received their few minutes of scholastic fame.

Proud parents cheered them on.

Proud principals shook their hands.

Their long list of achievements, as they were read off by principals Tim Bryan of Corona del Mar and Michael Vossen of Newport Harbor, would soon became an exercise in the art of memory retention — over plates of scrambled eggs and sausage.

There were so many accomplishments among these young people, from playing three sports to scoring perfect scores on standardized tests to abandoning the books for just a moment to venturing out into the real world to volunteer at places like Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach or Someone Cares Soup Kitchen in Costa Mesa.

“It makes you reflect back on your own times in high school and makes you wonder, ‘Did we accomplish this much?’” Vossen said.

And what exactly would the students miss most?

The answers unequivocally came up similar: great friends, the teamwork in sports, classes.

David Vu, of Corona del Mar High, narrowed down his favorite class to ceramics. Over the years, he’s made all sorts of art from his ceramics class. It sits in his house. It’s going to accompany him at UCLA.

If there was any sort of indecision on behalf of the students honored, it was which college or university they planned to attend, although virtually all of them have, hands down, the pick of the cream of the crop.

For some, their minds were already made up — Princeton, Yale, UCLA, USC, Berkeley or Stanford.

For others, they were still weighing their options.

Many of them, it would seem, had a general idea of what they wanted to major in and what they wanted to become later in life as opposed to when they “grow up.” They were going to be engineers, molecular research scientists, doctors, lawyers, surgeons, accountants.

Hannah Toohey, a member of the Associated Student Body and the voice every morning to come over the intercom at Newport Harbor, called high school an “awesome experience” but added that she is looking forward to college.

Said her mother, Kit, “She’s as much a leader at home as she is at school.”

Guest speaker Andrea Favilli left students with something to echo in their heads as they made their way out of the fancy hotel at Newport Center:

“Dreams are sparks to action,” Favilli said. “If you don’t dream there’s only one thing you are — asleep.”