Smithtown West 2013 Graduates Set High Goals for Their Future

Smithtown West's graduates took the final instructions to set their goals high for the future as they tossed their caps into sunny skies above. 

Smithtown West High School held its 98th Annual Commencement Exercise on Thursday night to award diplomas to the more than 400 graduates. 

Superintendent Anthony Annunziato welcome hundreds of family members and friends who packed the football stadium bleachers to cheer on the graduates as they took their walk across the stage. 

Annunziato shared with the Class of 2013 a quote from Star Wars director George Lucas who when asked if there were any noble heroes left today said there were, in the teachers, parents, nurses and soldiers and other everyday people. 

The superintendent encouraged the Class of 2013 to make the choice to become a hero. 

"Everybody has the choice to be a hero or not be a hero every day of their lives," Annunziato said. "Seniors, as you enter the next phase of your life, our world is in desperate need of heroes. Choose to be a hero every day." 

Next, the graduates themselves voted to elect valedictorian Mark Ren as the Honor Speaker of their class. Ren recounted the different milestones of the Class of 2013, their shared athletic and academic accomplishments over the past four years. 

However, he warned them that commencement is not the end, but the beginning. 

"Today as we commence our lives as graduates, adults and leaders, we inherit the world of our parents and the world of our children. We inherit the right and duty to make the best of ourselves and for each other out of that world," Ren said. 

He passed the mic to Nicholas Mangano to give the Senior Class Presentation.

Mangano shared a lesson he learned in his AP Physics with his classmates. Despite learning to firing a missile at 45 degrees will give it the greatest horizontal distance, he encourage his classmates to set their aim on the skies above. 

"The people who really matter will be the ones who shoot at 90 degrees. I want you to be these people. Knowing the potential risk of failure but embracing the possibility that you may just shoot your marble all the way to the moon," Mangano said. 

Click through our photo gallery above for pictures from Thursday's graduation.