Deer Park’s Sitton taking hefty, diverse resume to WSU

Deer Park High School senior Ciera Sitton insists she’s pretty boring, but a close look at her accomplishments nixes that thought.

Class salutatorian. Class treasurer. Three-sport athlete. National Honor Society member. Key Club member. Oh, and she can create a working submarine.

Sitton, 18, has taken every advanced class her school offers in English, history, Spanish and math. She took calculus twice because nothing higher was offered.

She always has liked to build things and enjoyed the junkyard wars in her physics class. Groups of students would be given a box of parts and told to build something. She particularly liked the challenge of building a submarine.

“Our group did win because we were the only ones to get our submarine back to the top,” she said. “It was a tough one.”

She’s already had a chance to use the Spanish she learned. During spring break she went on a mission to Puerto Peñasco, Mexico, with her church, Life Center. It was a relationship-building trip rather than a project trip, she said.

“We got to hang out with the families from our sister church down there,” Sitton said. “A lot of them don’t speak English.”

She said she went because her mother and sister had gone earlier and loved it. “It was amazing,” Sitton said. “It’s really cool to go into another culture.”

She has been on the varsity volleyball and track teams for three years, and the varsity basketball team for two. Sitton said she likes track best, where she competes in relay, javelin and shot put. “I get to beat myself,” she said. “I like making goals and then beating them.”

Her favorite activity during school has been Key Club, she said. She joined her sophomore year at the urging of friends. “Mrs. Frost entices you with snacks at meetings,” she said with a laugh. “Who can resist donuts?”

Sitton said she had never really considered volunteering before joining Key Club. “It’s so much fun,” she said.

This year she organized a blood drive at the school and 64 units of blood were donated. “That was a lot of work but it was definitely the most rewarding experience,” she said.

When she was younger Sitton thought she would like to become a civil engineer. “I really like puzzles and putting things together and figuring out how things fit together,” she said.

Her plans changed after taking biology sophomore year. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, this is cool,’ ” she said. She researched careers that would combine her passion for building with her new love of biology and settled on biomedical engineering.

She plans to attend Washington State University in the fall.