On Friday, February 16, 2019, Ocean Lakes High School celebrated their 25th Founders Week Assembly and invited five students from each surrounding VBCPS middle and high school to join. This year, their theme was “Yesterday…Today…Tomorrow.”

“I think this is a great opportunity for our middle and high schools in Virginia Beach to bring some of their key student leaders who can also benefit from this message,” said Carlin Conaway, SCA adviser at Ocean Lakes, “and take it back to their schools and help better their schools. I think that is something that is important for Ocean Lakes, and we want to share that with other schools.”

This year their headline speaker was Kenyon Salo, the “James Bond of motivational speaking.”

“I love experiences, I love enjoying life, I love trying new things and I love saying ‘yes’,” said Salo during his speech.

“I am going to tell you something right now. There are people that would kill for 12 months of time who have only 12 days to live,” he continued, encouraging students to follow their bucket lists. “We always think we have a tomorrow. We always think we have a next year… just say yes.”

Kempsville had three students attend along with Tim Wolf, the student activities coordinator. One of these students was Magdalena “Maggie” Rosario, senior.

“[It was] very rewarding,” Rosario said. “And [I was] lucky to be able to hear what he had to say about life, and how he’s helped so many people, and how somebody, as a high school student, can do just as much as he could.”