Deer Creek High School opened with a ribbon cutting and a shower of blue, silver and white confetti Wednesday evening.
The school was bustling with activity for the first time, with around 300 students, parents, staff and other community members exploring the grounds.
Principal Justin Kelly was excited to see the school filled with community members at last.
“That was the fun part to me, is seeing how much of the community showed up, to see all the kids dressed in navy, silver, and white,” he said.
Those are the school’s colors and Deer Creek students participating in cheerleading, student government, band and other extracurriculars showed them off on their new uniforms.
Kelly said navy is for all the blues in the Heber Valley, including the skies, Emerald Lake in Mount Timpanogos and Deer Creek Reservoir. Silver is for the nearby silver mines in Midway and Park City, and white is for the snow-capped mountains.
Kelly also wore the colors, including custom Nike shoes that say “Deer Creek” on the back.
Superintendent Garrick Peterson said the opening was emotional, but satisfying.
“All of a sudden you start to hear the stories of kids and experiences that they're having here,” he said. “Kids having opportunities that they maybe wouldn't have had if we hadn't opened up a second school.”
The opening of the school doubles the number of Wasatch County students able to participate in student government, sports and arts programs.
Lillie Peery has two daughters who will attend Deer Creek as a junior and senior this fall. They wanted to go to Deer Creek for the sports opportunities.
“My junior's been trying out for things,” Peery said. “She just made the soccer team, which is huge, right, that she gets to do that. She wouldn't have before.”
Julia Cregor’s son will also be a junior at Deer Creek this fall. He plans to play lacrosse.
“Some of my older kids got lost in their bigger high school at Wasatch, which we loved Wasatch too, but I'm just so happy that we're having smaller crowds,” she said.
Peterson said kids also chose a their school based on relationships. That’s something he noticed after opening schools in Alpine School District, where he previously worked as a principal and director.
He said he has one child attending Wasatch and one attending Deer Creek.
“It's all about connection,” he said. “The people that they're already connected to, usually their friends, but it might be a teacher or a coach, or dreams of a different connection, you know, I'm hoping to go there to maybe connect with people that I don't feel like I've been connected with.”
Junior Chloe Gordon decided to attend Deer Creek for a mix of those reasons. She’s following friends, her tennis coach and wanted to participate in student government for the second year in a row.
She’s also looking forward to writing the first draft of Deer Creek’s story.
“Not a lot of kids get the opportunity to make their own traditions, and we get the wonderful opportunity to do so and make you know the first homecoming at Deer Creek and football games,” Gordon said.
Gordon and the rest of Deer Creek’s student government have been meeting throughout the summer, to get those traditions started. They chose the school’s slogan, “together we soar,” as a play on the Riverhawks mascot.
The group also created a motto, “Be the first.” It’s meant to help students build connections and support one another.
