Kistler, Lush win Penns Valley Snyder awards

From CDT staff reports

Alyson Lush and Hobart Kistler were the recipients of the James Snyder Award at Penns Valley Area High School on Saturday night. The award, sponsored by the Centre Daily Times, is given in memory of Snyder, a former CDT sports editor, who was killed in an automobile accident in December of 1957.

Lush

View larger

The award is given to the male and female letterwinners who also demonstrated excellence in the classroom as well as being a good citizen in the school and community.

Kistler and Lush tied for first in this year’s graduating class with 4.0 grade-point averages.

Lush has been a four-year member of the Lady Rams’ track and field and soccer teams, serving as co-captain of the latter. She also played basketball, indoor soccer and indoor track.

“I had a good time the whole time,” said Lush, the goalie for a Penns Valley girls’ soccer team that qualified for the 2008 PIAA playoffs. “I have been working really hard in sports. I think academics is more of my thing, I guess, but athletics has been a really fun part of my life.”

Lush also spent her high school career as a member of the National Honor Society, the National Art Honor Society and the Spanish Honor Society, has been a four-year member of the Yearbook staff and the Asylum Literary Journal and also was a member of the academic decathlon team.

She also has been involved in numerous community activities benefiting blood drives, the American Heart Association, the Women’s Resource Center and the Penns Valley Hope Fund. In addition, each of the last two years, Lush has spent a week volunteering in Wheeling, W.Va., with various community organizations building houses, tutoring students and cooking in a soup kitchen.

Lush will be spending the summer working on the 7D Ranch in Cody, Wyo., before she enrolls at Penn State to major in international studies. She has been accepted in the Paterno Fellowship Program. In the future, Lush would like to work with a non-profit organization.

“I will always love Penns Valley,” she said. “It’s an awesome place and awesome community. I don’t think you ever leave Penns Valley. Your memories will always take you back there. It’s going to be really exciting going to Penn State, and I’m looking forward to the opportunities there.”

Lush, who ran the 1,600 and 3,200 meters as a senior, said she will continue running recreationally. Her mother, Binky Lush, runs marathons and Lush eventually hopes to complete one herself.

Kistler spent three years as a member of the Penns Valley golf and track and field teams, reaching captain status for both squads.

He was the senior class president and Penns Valley’s only commended student in the National Merit Scholarship Program. He served as the treasurer and disciplinary chair of the student council, a member of the Penns Valley Area School District Strategic Planning Commission, chairman of the junior/senior prom and captain and state gold medal winner of the academic decathlon. Kistler is a member of the National Honor Society, the National Spanish Honor Society, placed third in the United States in the NASA Student Engineering Challenge in 2003, sixth in the state in the National Geographic Bee in 2005 and second in the state in the American Legion Oratorical Contest in 2008.

Kistler also gained Eagle Scout in 2006 and earned Order of the Arrow and served as a Rotary Exchange Student to Costa Rica in 2006-07, living in a primitive, rural part of the country. He also began interviewing World War II veterans in 2004 and has since recorded the stories of 94 soldiers, writing close to 500 pages of a book on the subject. Kistler interviewed president Jimmy Carter last month as part of his study.

“It started out with asking my grandfather (Robert Kistler) about his service and it was positive, so I moved onto to neighbors and friends,” Kistler said. “I’m approaching my 100th interview and I love it. I have never had a veteran who said he wouldn’t talk to me. I have so many stories and I have made a lot of friends.”

Kistler has received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. and plans to study naval architecture and marine engineering. He leaves for basic training in three weeks.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” he said. “I have had my mind set on the military since I have been five and it’s a goal I have been working toward for many years.”

Naval Academy students are required to play a varsity or intramural sport. Kistler said he’s planning to tryout for the varsity sailing team.

“I was never an outstanding athlete in either high school sport I played,” Kistler said. “But I enjoyed the camaraderie on the teams, especially meeting kids from other schools in golf. Although I’m going to be playing sports in college, I’m going to miss the Penns Valley atmosphere. Everybody can play, everybody has a great time doing it.”