No ‘fancy exit.’ Midlands seniors long for lost moments after COVID-19 cancels prom

Before quarantine brought the shared experiences of pajama-clad virtual meetings, social distancing parades and binge watching Tiger King, high school prom was one of those experiences that many Americans — no matter their class, race, hometown — had in common.

Adults remember their senior prom. Younger students watch their friends fuss over their dates and details. And those who stay home from prom — well, at least they had the choice.

But the class of 2020 is stuck inside, whether they like it or not.

The State reached out to high school students from throughout the S.C. Midlands to shoot pictures of them in their prom attire and to get their thoughts on having one of the biggest events of the year canceled.

Tyler Nolan, 17, Columbia High School

Like many seniors, Tyler Nolan had been waiting her entire life for senior prom. But she’s missing out on more than just her last high school dance.

Nolan is a member of the senior leadership at Columbia High and was supposed to have a solo in the Richland 1 Honor Dance. Rather than performing in the district’s annual dance festival, she is issuing refunds to students because senior field day was canceled.

Beginning in the fall, Nolan plans to spend two years at Midlands Technical College and another two at the University of South Carolina to become a pediatric inpatient nurse, she said.

Despite having her senior year uprooted, Nolan has a positive attitude.

“Our generation got a life lesson that sometimes you don’t get this big, fancy exit, and things change,” Nolan said. “I feel like it’s kind of helped in a more realistic way that things aren’t always going to go the way you want.”

Allison Branham, 17, Dutch Fork High School

As the coronavirus quarantine grew longer and it became clear school activities wouldn’t resume any time soon, Allison Branham took her prom dress out of the closet and tried it on. She did her hair and put on makeup that she would have worn for prom.

“Just so I can get dressed up once,” Branham said.

After high school, Branham is planning to go to Brigham Young University in Utah. But as she prepares to start that next chapter of her life, she said she is leaving behind her high school experience without closure.

“It’s really hard. It’s such an odd feeling,” Branham said. “I went through four years of high school to get to this moment.”

Ricky Williams, 17, River Bluff High School

As disappointed as Ricky Williams was to miss out on his senior prom, the agony of not being able to complete his final season on the baseball diamond might have been more devastating.

Williams, a pitcher/outfielder for the Gator baseball team, and other seniors throughout the Midlands had their spring sports season cut short because of the coronavirus. He was part of two River Bluff state runner-up teams in 2017-18 and the Gators were expected to contend for another title shot this season.

Williams signed to play baseball at Clemson in November and is scheduled to report to school in August.

“The prom situation is something all high school seniors look forward to and reflect on your senior year,” Williams said. “But the thing is baseball season. Missed my teammates and missing out on senior season and just what we could have done this year. We had a good chance of making it deep in playoffs.

“Just tried to stay positive throughout this. We can’t do anything about this and stay positive. For me, I am blessed to play at a college. I feel for players looking to play at college and those who would have been in their final baseball season. I wish for them the best.”

Khai Truong, 18, Brookland-Cayce High School

Khai Truong, 18, has seen his extracurricular schedule dwindle in the weeks since COVID-19 shut down South Carolina schools. Truong, a senior at Brookland-Cayce High School, was in the National Honor Society, track and field team, and Latin club.

At the end of April, if not for the pandemic, he probably would have convened with Latin clubs from across the state. He would have probably finished off his senior track season in those same running shoes he’s had since middle school. He would have gone to prom with his date, who is now “relieved” she doesn’t need to find a dress, he said.

The end of his senior year isn’t what he envisioned, Truong said. For the past two months, he has spent his days at home, working on assignments for his Advanced Placement classes and preparing for this year’s abbreviated, online AP exams. He’s had to scrounge up materials from around the house to use on ceramics class projects.

Truong, president of Brookland-Cayce’s e-sports club, could at least keep playing virtual sports. His team, a combination of Brookland-Cayce and Airport High students, was seeded No. 6 on the East Coast before it was knocked out in the playoffs a few weeks ago, he said. But most everything else is different.

Many of his friends will stay in South Carolina for college, Truong said, so he isn’t worried about never seeing them again. But he had been hoping to honor his favorite teacher, Pete Grivetti, at a special graduation ceremony for some AP students. Grivetti is one of the reasons Truong plans to study secondary education at Winthrop University in the fall, on a scholarship for future teachers.

“I want to change people’s lives like he did for me,” Truong said.

Jack Ostergaard, 17, Irmo High School

There were a few false alarms, Jack Ostergaard said. Irmo High School’s prom was initially scheduled for April 25, but the pandemic threw a wrench in those plans. It was moved to May 23 instead. But before May had even begun, prom was cancelled and Ostergaard was “bummed out.”

He had made plans to go in a group with his friends from the International Baccalaureate program at Irmo, a “tight-knit” group of academic strivers. The one bright spot was that Ostergaard had gone to junior prom, so he knew what to expect from the event, more or less.

The whole COVID-19 whirlwind was shocking to him. One Thursday he was in class, and eating lunch with friends. The next week, he’s relegated to his home with his siblings — in eighth and tenth grade, respectively — and his mother, an Irmo High School teacher.

“It’s been a good chance to sort of slow down,” he said, especially before embarking upon an exclusive international business program at the University of South Carolina’s Honors College in the fall.

Karisma Virk, 18, Spring Valley High School

Karisma Virk is glad she wasn’t planning to wear her prom dress just once.

She knew when she bought it she had other plans, even after Spring Valley High School canceled its 2020 senior prom. Virk plans to wear the same dress in the Miss South Carolina pageant — which fortunately has only been postponed due to COVID-19, rather than canceled completely.

But that’s the rare bright spot for the senior when so many markers of her final year in high school have been taken away in the last two months.

A member of Spring Valley’s student council, Virk doesn’t even have memories of students’ last day at school. She had traveled to Greenville with some of her classmates for a state convention of high school student governments when they woke up in their hotel rooms to a double whammy of bad news: the convention was canceled, and they also wouldn’t be going back to school on Monday.

“We thought, ‘Oh, this will last for two weeks. We’ll still have graduation. We’ll still have prom’,” she said.

She will still get to see her classmates one last time before she heads off to the University of South Carolina, when Spring Valley holds a socially distant graduation in the school’s football stadium, with each student limited to two guests.

“I’m definitely bummed out,” she said. “I have friends who are going to USC with me, but others are going to college out of state, going into the military, starting work. This would have been the last time we were all together. We’ll graduate together, but we’ll be six feet apart.”

Khalil Catlin, 18, Dreher High School

Khalil Catlin had finally worked up the nerve to ask his crush to the prom.

His aunt helped him decorate a black and gold poster board adorned with pictures of his hopeful prom date, balloons and the words: “Every king deserves a queen. Will you be my queen for prom?”

And she said yes.

Catlin delighted in preparing for his last big dance, he said. Picking out the tuxedo, planning the day itself — he enjoyed all of that, he said.

But just a few weeks before his senior prom, it was canceled.

“It kind of hurt, but it wasn’t the worst thing,” Catlin said.

Catlin, an honors student at Dreher High School, is looking forward to the fall, when he plans to major in mechanical engineering at S.C. State University.

“I didn’t really look at the bad side of it,” Catlin said of having prom canceled. “I enjoyed the process of getting ready.”

This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 10:48 AM.