WVHS Valedictorian Evan Grundfast

Warwick Valley High School’s 2025 valedictorian Evan Grundfast outstanding academic performances and GPA earned him top honors in the graduating class.

Among the various Advanced Placement and honors courses that Grundfast has taken, he said AP BC calculus stands out as one of his favorites.

“It’s a great experience. I think it really teaches you...how to adapt and how to embrace failure,” he said.

A highlight of Grundfast’s senior year was delivering his final presentation for the science research program, which he has been a part of since his sophomore year. Over the past three years, he has been researching a rare brain disease that he is very passionate about.

“I was essentially taking around 1,200 deidentified patient records and examining them to see if there was a relationship between the age at which someone was diagnosed with the disease, and how that disease progressed,” he said.

In addition to his academics, Grundfast played on the varsity tennis team for five years, fulfilling the role of team captain for three of them. He also enjoys martial arts and has a strong interest in programming.

Along with being the president of National Honor Society and the video game club, he was also involved in Mu Alpha Theta, the math honor society, and Model United Nations.

Grundfast said he intends to emphasize the importance of embracing failure and the understanding that nobody is perfect in his graduation speech. He also aims to reflect on the significance of a graduation ceremony as both a moment of appreciation and celebration.

“There were a lot of failures, and I think being honest about the shortcomings that I had and what to learn from before I go to college, I think that honesty is what really drove how I wrote the speech,” he said.

When striving for academic excellence, Grundfast said he was motivated by being in a competition with himself. “I had the motivation where if I felt frustrated, and I felt like I didn’t do as good as I could have, that encouraged me to work harder,” he said.

After graduating, Grundfast plans to attend Swarthmore College, where he will pursue a double major in biology and economics, follow a pre-med track with a minor in business.