Coeur d’Alene High School: Lauren Valentine set her goal and achieved it – a CHS diploma

When Lauren Valentine started her freshman year at Coeur d’Alene High School, she was the new kid. She had just transferred from a local parochial school and it felt like everybody knew everybody – except her.

“High school did kind of throw me for a loop at first, even though it was a great place,” she said.

Then, only two weeks in, she came down with both mononucleosis and COVID.

These things, along with her ongoing issue with scoliosis, pretty much consumed her freshman year. She needed time to recover physically and took all her classes online for the rest of the year … and failed them all.

“I lost all motivation,” she said. “Before that, I was an honor roll student and had all A’s and B’s.”

Even so, she knew she wanted not to fall behind and to graduate from Coeur d’Alene High School – and she found the strength to do so, relying on rebuilding her inner focus and through the encouragement of people important in her life.

“I have never seen such resiliency,” said Kristi Zimmerman, school counselor. “Other students frequently look for alternate paths to graduation, which is fine, but she was goal-oriented – and that goal was to graduate from this school, on time.

“Everything we threw at her to make that possible, including supplementing with online work in addition to attending her regular classes, she was OK with. She didn’t waiver. Frankly, we don’t typically see students who are focused like this.”

Valentine said she wanted to graduate from Coeur d’Alene because she “loved the atmosphere when I first went there and didn’t want to consider any other school, especially an online one.”

Beside her laser focus on receiving an in-person high school education, she finds time to enjoy swimming, reading for pleasure and doing pottery. Plus she’s worked at a day care facility and is now a spa room attendant at the Coeur d’Alene Resort.

She’ll be going to the University of Idaho this fall, but even the application process there encountered what Zimmerman called a bit of a hiccup. She was denied admission. Her freshman year grades had caused that to happen.

Valentine was not deterred. She came to Zimmerman for help through the appeals process. “Once again Lauren’s perseverance came through,” Zimmerman said. “When she submitted her ISAT (Idaho Standard Achievement Test) scores, which came from her junior year, they were high enough to make her admissions appeal successful.”

Valentine, who played basketball through middle school, loves to be around and involved in sports, expects to major in recreational tourism and sports management at UI, with an eye toward becoming a sports agent.