A pair of students who are about to become first-generation college students ranked atop the Fernley High School Class of 2025, which will receive their diplomas at the graduation ceremony at 7 p.m. Friday on the high school football field.
Valedictorian Carly Abrahamson and Salutatorian Keagen McKinney are also graduates of the Western Nevada Jump Start program, having received their associates degrees in May.
Valedictorian Carly Abrahamson
Carly Christine Abrahamson is the daughter of Tiffany and Dale Abrahamson. She is graduating with a weighted grade point average of 4.86. She received her Associates of Arts degree from WNC and plans to attend the University of Nevada, Reno to pursue a degree in criminal justice before transferring to a law school and becoming a lawyer.
Abrahamson has attended Fernley schools since she started kindergarten, attending Cottonwood Elementary School, Fernley Intermediate, Silverland Middle School and Fernley High School.
At FHS she was involved in the Upward Bound Program, a program that helps prepare first-generation college students.
“Because my parents never went to college, I didn't know the pathway to get there and in Fernley, there isn't a college, so we don't have that exposure,” she said. “They really help get you where you're going, especially since I'm interested in law and all of that.”
Abrahamson was also part of the academic team for four years and was a co-captain for three years.
She also volunteered in the community with things like Wreaths Across America and placing flags at the Veterans Cemetery for Memorial Day at the cemetery, along with the community service projects as part of Upward Bound.
Abrahamson said her motivation to succeed was from seeing her parents struggle and work 12-hour days on separate schedules.
“It just really pushed me to want to go to college and you hear college, you have to get those straight A's, you have to be the best and so that's really what fueled me,” she said. “It's not like I was trying to be a valedictorian. But I was always working towards the goal of being the best I could with my grades.”
Abrahamson said her favorite class at FHS was forensics, taught by Jody Ericksen.
“It's pretty much like crime scenes and to learn about fingerprints and DNA,” Abrahamson said. “We even did labs, and she set up a fake crime scene and we ran fake DNA and fake blood tests and it was just really amazing.”
Her other favorite was honors English her sophomore year with Nicole Nakashima. Most of the students in the class had also been in honors English together as freshmen, so Abrahamson said they were already comfortable together,
“And then the way she taught it, like, we did, we learned “The Telltale Heart” poem and did a whole mock trial and we had the defense and the prosecution and the jury,” Abrahamson said. “And we read “Life of Pi.” She helped us through it all, but also gave us kind of a free reign of how you want to express yourself in the class.”
Once she gets her law degree, Abrahamson said she’s leaning to criminal justice law.
“I would more want to do like a defense of, you know, people who are maybe wrongfully convicted or something like that,” she said. “I think our system has to be followed, but some areas could be improved, and I would love to be part of that improvement, to make it more fair to everyone. Because when it's fair, then everyone's safe and treated equally. And I think that's how it should be.”
Abrahamson has earned the Millennium Scholarship and a $3,500 scholarship from UNR, but said most of the other scholarships she has applied for haven’t been awarded yet.
Abrahamson said she would advise incoming freshmen that things are going to change within their four years of high school, so they need to give themselves the grace to change.
“Just really give yourself that grace to find out who you are and realize other people need that grace, too, where you're all kind of going through it right now,” she said. “So just remember, how hard it is for you, that's how hard it is for other people.”
Salutatorian Keagen McKinney
Keagen Patrick McKinney is the grandson of Coyla and Kevin McKinney. He is graduating with a weighted grade point average of 4.78. He received his Associates of Science degree from WNC through Jump Start and plans to attend the University of Texas in Austin to pursue a bachelor’s degree in geology then go to graduate school for paleontology and eventually get a PhD.
McKinney also attended Fernley schools since kindergarten, attending Cottonwood Elementary School, Fernley Intermediate, Silverland Middle School and Fernley High School.
McKinney said the Land Before Time and Jurassic Park movies got him interested in paleontology, the study of ancient life.
“My grandma told me if I became a paleontologist, I could play with dinosaurs,” he said.
McKinney was in the Upward Bound program his last three years of high school, and he was on the swim team as a freshman and sophomore.
“I spend a lot of time helping my grandparents out,” he said.
Last summer McKinney interned at the Bureau of Land Management as a wilderness intern in the Kanab Field office in Utah and went on paleontological dig with Dr. Alan Titus, one of the leading paleontologists on the West Coast.
“That was a great experience,” he said. “I wasn’t old enough to apply directly to the paleontology intern position, but I was still able to get that opportunity through asking and just weaseling my way into that dig.
The summer of his sophomore year he also interned at the National Park Service Pipe Springs National Monument near Fredonia, AZ. Pipe Springs is a fort built on top of a natural spring. McKinney helped build a replica trough that allowed water to flow through and worked on several restoration projects.
McKinney said his favorite FHS class was the same honors English class taught by Ms. Nakashima, but his overall favorite was his English class his junior year in Jump Start, bought by Curtis Kupferschmid.
“He was open to all discussions,” McKinney said. “You could argue with him, and he’d argue back. Not in a mean manner, but it was just a good class. English isn’t even my favorite subject, but somehow both of my favorites are in English.”
Outside of school, McKinney said his hobbies are working out and photography.
McKinney said he didn’t start out doing well in school and was in special ed classes for a while, but between second and third grade he went from below average reading level to college reading level. He credits the turnaround to his second grade teacher, Miss Kay.
“Miss Kay was a mean, mean strict woman,” he said. “I don’t think I’d quite be where I was without her. At the time I hated her because she was so mean, but looking back, she was mean out of caring.”
McKinney, who was raised by his grandparents, said making them proud is the motivation behind everything he does.
“They’ve given so much of their lives to raise me because my parents were unable to,” he said. “The least I can do is make them proud.”
McKinney said they both are fighting cancer. His grandmother has leukemia and is on medication, while his grandfather has state four prostate cancer.
“It’s tough going to UT-Austin knowing that his time is limited, but I don’t think he’d be very happy if I decided not to go to one of the biggest and best opportunities of my life,” he said.
McKinney initially struggled to think of what advice he might give younger students, but Abrahamson reminded him of the efforts he made to get his internships, and said his personality is to get out there.
“I would say you as a person is very out there, like every teacher you’ve ever had,” she said. “You wouldn’t have done your internships if you didn’t call and ask. I think that’s real inspiration of you, you wanted something, and you went out there.”
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