Mrs. Virtue: wife, mother of three, and History teacher at Waterford High School who graduated in 1992 from Trinity High School. Trinity is a Catholic high school in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Virtue describes her experience as fun and full of sports.
In high school, Virtue had a good group of friends and had a positive impact on many school-related activities.
Throughout childhood, Virtue consumed her life with sports. Virtue says, “I played basketball starting in fifth grade, going through college. Softball from when I was eight all the way to around 18 years old, volleyball in high school, and in fifth grade, I played football until basketball consumed my life.”
As well as sports, in high school she also participated in the sophomore year class council, and junior year she was her class president. She also participated in PALE, a Peer tutoring program at her school, to help peers with schoolwork they might be struggling with.
Although Virtue was an involved and driven student and athlete, she sometimes did sneaky things, as most teenagers do. Virtue says, “The worst thing I did in high school was sneak my boyfriend in, or sneak out to go see my boyfriend. But he’s my husband now, so it worked out.” Virtue thinks that if that’s the worst she did in her teenage years, she was a pretty good kid, “And I never got caught.”
Whenever Virtue ever got in trouble, it would always have something to do with her boyfriend. She says, “Sometimes I would bend my curfew a little bit, just to see my boyfriend a little bit longer.” Virtue and her Dad always got along; she described herself as a daddy’s girl growing up. Unlike her mom, Virtue says, “My mom didn’t like my boyfriend, so we didn’t get along well until I moved away from Pennsylvania.
Throughout childhood, Virtue had a great relationship with her siblings; they were enormously close. “When someone went to college in our family, everyone cried. I remember my little brother holding onto my leg so I didn’t leave.” The only issue Virtue had with her siblings was over clothes with her sister, similar to many sisters.
Virtue also had a pet dog that had a big impact on her childhood. Her parents got her this dog because, before it, she had an imaginary friend named Kelly, and they didn’t want her to be weird anymore, so they got her a dog and named her Kelly. It worked.
Virtue thinks highly of the people she surrounded herself with in high school, “a couple of them I still talk to now, I met all my friends in sports or athletic groups, I also did a lot of school-involved things that I gained friends from.” And when she wasn’t doing sports or school-related things, they would hang out at a pizza place or the movies.
Regarding her high school experience at Trinity Catholic High School, she seemed to love it. She even said, “I think my high school was the reason I wanted to become a teacher. I love the experience I had there, and it is why I love teaching so much now.” It helped that Virtue was a very good student. She took all the AP (Advanced Placement) and honors classes and got very good grades. Though she wasn’t the strongest student in geometry, “I was terrible at geometry, that’s how I met my husband, we both had to go for extra help and started growing closer.”
The only job Virtue had in high school was babysitting. “I would babysit for neighbors, and that would be the money I spent for the week, then in the summers I worked at a place called Summer Playground, just watching kids.” Virtue described this summer program as similar to Camp Dash.
Virtue’s first car in high school was a Ford Escort. “It was my mom’s old car, and I liked it; I had it through college.”
Most people have a favorite or most memorable year in high school. This year, Virtue was in her senior year. “Both the boys and girls made it to the state championship. Lots of news coverage about us.” Though they both ended up losing in the championship, it was a year to remember for her.
If you couldn’t tell, basketball was her main focus: “I got voted most athletic, I scored 1000 points for my basketball team in total, I had 1121 points throughout my high school career.” In the spring of her Junior year of high school, she committed to UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County). She was set on this future from an early age.
A piece of advice Virtue would give to students now, “My Nana always used to say that ‘Everything happens for a reason’, so even if things don’t work out the way we want them to at first, we can always learn something from that experience and trust that it’s all just part of the process to lead us right where we are supposed to be.”
