RAD GRADS Engineering a new vision for life

Connor Petersen’s football dreams were crushed with serious knee injuries.

The former running back was devastated, but out of the pain and disappointment emerged a new resolve to win a bigger game.

Connor is graduating with a 4.40 GPA and is one of Lake City High School’s Class of 2025 salutatorians. Connor plans to study mechanical engineering at the University of Idaho this fall.

“It feels really good to be graduating,” Connor said. “Going into freshman year, I was looking for the top 10. Sophomore year, I thought maybe I could get into the top five. Then going into my junior year, I thought I should aim for the val/sal spot.”

The journey was difficult. Some of the painkillers he had to take after the surgeries hampered his ability to concentrate and stay focused on challenging subjects.

“There were countless times where I was staying up all night studying,” Connor said. “I had two knee surgeries. I was balancing recovering from injuries and schoolwork. It was rough.”

Connor is excited about engineering. He said he has always been fascinated with machines and how they work. As a kid, he would play with tinker kits to build things.

“I would take apart my watch, my alarm clock and video game controllers,” Connor said. “I wanted to see how they worked and then see if I could put them back together. If something was broken, I wanted to fix it.”

His favorite subject is math, primarily because it always comes easy to him.

“Math has one answer and there is a clean-cut way to get there,” Connor said. “Math has always come easy to me.”

Both of Connor’s parents work at Lake City High — Nate Petersen, who is the school resource officer, and Rachael Petersen, who is the activities administrative assistant.

“It’s great having them here,” Connor said.

He is eager to jump into the world of business this summer and start finding solutions to problems.

“I don’t want to wait to get my bachelor’s degree,” he said. “I am competitive like I was in football. I want to compete. I want to get my name out there and succeed.”