Top HHS Seniors Share
National School Award
Their classmates and teachers would be the first to acknowledge that Joe Saginaw and Lenni Joya-Amaya are two of the top young people on Long Island, if not the state and nation. The pair of recent Huntington High School graduates earned national awards in recognition of an impressive run of excellence.
Messrs. Saginaw and Joya-Amaya are Huntington’s recipients of this year’s National School Development Council Award. Superintendent James W. Polansky presented the honor to the two teenagers during June’s senior academic awards ceremony in the high school auditorium.
“I wish there were more awards to give, as there are so many deserving members of Huntington High School’s Class of 2015,” Mr. Polansky said. “That said, Lenni and Joe have so routinely demonstrated their leadership, commitment and character. These young men are surely destined for great things. I am privileged to have come to know them.”
“The National School Development Council is a confederation of school study or development councils located across the country,” according to the organization’s website. “The Council embodies the philosophic and operational tenets of the school study and development council movement. Each of these regional, state, or county-based councils is, in turn, an association of local school systems that work together; usually in conjunction with one or more institutions of higher learning on matters of common concern.”
Salutatorian of Huntington’s Class of 2015, Mr. Saginaw will be attending the University of Michigan, where he intends to study mechanical engineering. Elected president of his class on three separate occasions, the teenager served as the overall student government president as a senior.
Founder of Huntington’s robotics team, Mr. Saginaw led the group as a junior and senior. The team advanced to the national championships last year and won the General Motors Industrial Design Award this past spring.
Mr. Saginaw played a key role in many school initiatives, even helping to build winning Homecoming Day parade floats. He was crowned Homecoming Day king last fall.
A four-year member of the Blue Devil spring track and field team, Mr. Saginaw specialized in pole vault. He played on the varsity soccer team for two seasons before deciding to work at Huntington Village based RMS Engineering as a senior.
A National Merit Scholarship finalist, Mr. Saginaw blazed a trail of academic excellence over the past four years. A member of seven different academic honor societies, the teenager was The Dispatch student newspaper’s technology editor for the past three years.
Mr. Saginaw competed on Huntington’s Quiz Bowl team since tenth grade. He was a Natural Helper throughout high school, helping classmates work through difficult personal issues. The senior served on the Huntington Public Library’s Teen Advisory Board for the past five years and captained a Relay For Life team since the sprawling fundraiser debuted at the high school in June 2012.
The owner of a long list of academic honors, Mr. Saginaw is a National AP Scholar with Distinction. He earned the National Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Award and was a finalist in the NASA REEL Science communication competition.
Mr. Joya-Amaya is equally talented. He plans to attend Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York in the fall, pursuing an academic major in Italian, Spanish, ESL and linguistics.
The teenager said the key to his success is “perseverance and the ability to recognize the importance of education in my future.” Mr. Joya-Amaya served as president of the high school’s Spanish Honor Society in 2014/15. He interned with world languages teacher Mercedes Pena after completing Advanced Placement Spanish as a junior.
An immigrant from El Salvador, the teenager excelled throughout high school, earning the designation of Distinguished Senior after compiling a minimum academic grade average of 90 in each semester of study.
Mr. Joya-Amaya came to America four years ago and rapidly mastered his studies here, completing a string of advanced classes. “He is such a great role model to all ESL students” Mrs. Pena said. “He has a passion for teaching. You should have seen him leading literary discussions in my Native Language Arts class. He is so confident in himself that anyone who sees him would think he’s a student teacher or perhaps even a teacher.”
Treasurer of the Italian Honor Society and a member of the National and English Honor Societies, Mr. Joya-Amaya was also a member of the yearbook and newspaper clubs and interned at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab’s DNA Learning Center.
As Messrs. Saginaw and Joya-Amaya prepare to head off to college, they do so knowing they have gained the respect and admiration of the entire Huntington High School community.