Every year during the anniversary week of alumni Hillary Lavoie’s fatal car crash, Shadow Ridge High School supports the Click-it-4-Hill cause by wearing yellow, signing pledges, listening to speeches, and the soccer teams play an annual “yellow out” game.
“Yellow was Hillary’s favorite color, and so we thought that just bringing a different color than what the school colors were, just representing Hillary as a whole,” said soccer coach and Hillary’s father, Brian Lavoie.
Both the Boy’s and Girl’s Varsity Soccer Teams play in yellow jerseys the week of the anniversary of Hillary’s crash. On the day of her death, September 26th, there is also a school-wide yellow out, where students and staff wear the color yellow in recognition of the loss of Hillary. This is a way to represent the cause by wearing her favorite color to show the Lavoie family love and support.
“Honestly the support means the world to me,” Ally Lavoie, Hillary’s sister, explains, “I live this life for my sister and to watch so many people embrace her and embrace what she was, her love and her spirit means more than anything I could imagine.”
The Shadow Ridge community does so much to support the family of Hillary Lavoie and is appreciated by Hillary’s entire family. Everyone remembers her as a girl who was full of school spirit.
“We do the pledges to help students remember that every time they get into a vehicle, they need to buckle their seatbelts,” explains Coach Kalah Williams. “After the presentations by the Lavoie’s, to all the freshman studies and health classes, the week leading up to the yellow out, it’s a great reminder to the staff working at Shadow Ridge and the students attending here that our main goal is to keep students safe. And then they pledge saying they will put their seatbelts on to help our campaign.”
The pledges that the soccer teams go around collecting are for an important tradition that Shadow Ridge does every year. Annually, students make promises to always wear their seatbelts and to make sure whoever is in the car with them is also wearing theirs. This helps to promote safe teen driving school wide, which hopefully reaches greater audiences as well.
Coach Brian Lavoie emphasizes, “The love and just the knowledge that Shadow Ridge has shown us over the last 15 years is wonderful, and we just feel like Shadow is part of our family now. The main thing, the most important thing, no matter what I say throughout the whole presentation is plain and simple. Seatbelts save lives!”
15 years ago, Hillary Lavoie died in a car crash because she was not wearing her seatbelt. As expressed by Coach Lavoie, it is always important to wear a seatbelt, as it can protect lives. Hopefully the annual reminder of this tragic event will encourage all students at Shadow Ridge to always wear a seatbelt and promote safe driving with others.
