“The best is yet to come,” Mathews High School co-valedictorian Scooter Ransone promised his fellow graduates during Saturday afternoon’s 78th commencement exercises.

Family and friends packed the Harry M. Ward Auditorium, while others watched the event via closed-circuit TV in the school’s gym, as 89 young men and women became high school graduates.

“These past four years most likely represented the mixture of the most freedom and the least amount of adulting you had to do,” Ransone said, “but these years have represented little choice in comparison to what we will experience in the coming weeks and months. I believe that this freedom and the responsibility that comes with it will allow the students of our class to exceed anything they achieved within these walls.

“Our experiences at Mathews High School have been memorable. Some we will even remember fondly,” Ransone concluded. “So when people say that high school will be ...