Lucy Bierman's mother, Jill Bierman, taught English, speech, and served as student council advisor at Newton Community High School for thirteen years before becoming the principal of St. Thomas Catholic School. Lucy grew up watching that. Now Lucy is a senior at Newton, an Illinois State Scholar, and the student council officer her mother once was.

She spent her first nine school years at St. Thomas in a class of twenty students she'd known her entire life. "You know everything about them. Their parents, their grandparents, everything." Coming to Newton as a freshman was a different world — not just more people, but different kinds of people. "There were kids with different backgrounds, different parents, different family situations." Finding the right friends and figuring out where she fit took time.

Two things helped: drumline and the stage.

She joined marching band freshman year as a snare drummer. This is her fourth year on the line. This season, she's the lead snare. "I love my directors, Mr. Finley and Mr. Ridlen." Band opened the first wide circle of friendships. Musicals opened everything else.

Her first show was in sixth grade — the kids' choir in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She did it again in seventh. In eighth grade she and her older sister were in Beauty and the Beast together; her sister played Mrs. Potts. Since freshman year at Newton, she's performed every season, in everything from Oklahoma! to Newsies to the demanding, concert-format Six. Aunt Eller in Oklahoma! is her favorite role to date — funny, warm, perfectly in line with her personality. Six was something else. "It was really like a life-changing experience. It was a lot of work, but it was so much fun." In her junior year, she and two castmates became assistant directors for the junior high production of Frozen. "It was fun to see kids enjoy it as much as we do."

This spring, she leads Sister Act as Deloris Van Cartier — the Whoopi Goldberg role, all comedy and chaos. Lucy is Catholic. She's made peace with the irony. "I do joke to people that I am mocking my faith in a way." But when she's on stage, she said plainly: "I am acting. I change the way I talk, the way I appear, my beliefs." Opening night runs March 26th. Her sister is due with her first baby — Lucy's first niece or nephew — at the end of March. "She's due on my opening night."

Beyond performance, she's the FCA president this year and a student council officer. FCA in a public high school is a different lift than at St. Thomas, where faith saturated everything. "At first it was scary" to stand up in front of classmates and speak openly about belief. But it worked on her. "It kind of forces you to grow."

Volleyball, in her first two years, connected her mostly to kids from similar backgrounds. Band and musicals were different — a cross-section she couldn't have found anywhere else. It opened her eyes. She grew up with married parents, a faith-filled home, and every stability provided. Coming to Newton meant meeting students carrying things she'd never carried. "It's interesting to know them and then find out what they went through and just be like — oh, you've been doing all of this when you went through that." Rather than retreat from that distance, she leans toward it.

She described what happens when a student like her — visibly plugged in, a leader — approaches someone who assumes they're about to be judged. "One of my favorite things is the look on their face when I'm kind to them. Or just ask them about their day. Or just compliment them." The assumption dissolves. "They're just as important."

The career path came together in her sophomore year, during a three-hour conversation about what she wanted her working life to look like. She walked in undecided and walked out knowing: accounting. Tim Bower had made math feel like something worth pursuing — "he just makes math fun." Mrs. Marks, a math teacher since gone, had done the same. Last fall, she completed a career practicum at Weber & Company, a local accounting firm run by Kara — her dad's first cousin's wife, a family friend since childhood. "She is. I would put her up against anybody." She watched a young woman there finishing college and sitting for her CPA exams. Another family friend walked her through what the daily life and schooling path actually look like. "It was just, oh my gosh — that's exactly what I want."

Indiana State pulled ahead of SIUE and EIU for one reason, Kara put into words: when you visit a campus, watch the faces of the students walking the halls. At Indiana State, students stopped Lucy during her visit to tell her how much they loved it. She couldn't get it out of her head. She's been accepted, and this Saturday she interviews for ISU's business network scholarship — which includes funded international travel and internships. "It's nerve-wracking, but it's definitely something I need to do just to do it."

She wants to come back to Newton someday. The family is here, the roots go deep, and she's grown into exactly the kind of person a small town is lucky to get back.