VOORHEESVILLE — The arts are something this year’s salutatorian said she will take with her the rest of her life. Jennifer Lysenko played in the band, sang in the chorus, and acted on stage at Clayton A. Bouton High.

She plays the French horn, was a regular attendee at band camp, and was a member of the Empire State Youth Wind Ensemble. She started dancing at age three, ballet and jazz, and was the dance captain for this year’s production of Beauty and the Beast. Last summer she went to Europe with the American Music Abroad choral group.

The arts were the biggest part of her senior year, Lysenko said, while her academic interest is in the sciences. The other huge event this senior year was the Relay for Life, a fund-raier to fight cancer. The large turn-out was very moving, said Lysenko, the high school’s student chair of the walk-a-thon.
"Jennifer is extremely mature, motivated, and a compassionate individual," said Sherry Burgoon, a Voorheesville teacher who served on the Relay for Life committee with Lysenko.
"She’s the kind of person, when she decides to do something, she’ll get the job done," Burgoon said.
"She’s a committed person, who has no difficulty speaking with adults...Not only is she not shy, but very charismatic... She impresses people with her poise," Burgoon said.
"She is as nice as she is bright," Burgoon said.

Lysenko remembers her freshman year when the drama club had to perform Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in the high school commons, because the building didn’t have a theater. The drama program has made huge bounds since then under the direction of John Lopez, one of Lysenko’s two favorite teachers, she said.
Her favorite productions were Les Miserable her sophomore year, because it was the first year in the new state-of-the-art facility, and Beauty and the Beast in her senior year, because she became very close with her theater peers. "There was just so much positive energy" in that show, she said.

Lysenko wants to study chemistry and biology in college.

Math teacher Janice Luysocki, was a favorite of Lysenko’s; she studied under her for three years, including pre-calculus and calculus. Lysenko took seven Advanced Placement exams and other honors and university courses including physics, music, and French 4.

Lysenko is going to Washington and Lee University in Virginia. She said she’s ready to go south to the warmer weather.
"It’s the only school I applied to without visiting," she said. Her cousin who has just finished her first year there, kept giving it glowing reviews, and, when Lysenko finally went to visit in March, she said she knew right away that’s where she was supposed to go.

Lysenko thinks there is great potential for her cousin and her to become very close over the next few years.
"I’m very gratefull for my family," she said.
One person that’s hard for Lysenko to leave behind is her 15-year-old sister, Christine, who she is very close to, "We overlapped in a lot of school activities," Lysenko said, and the two loved to just sit up-stairs in their rooms and talk.