- July 12, 2025
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Summer break is here, and with it comes our annual feature, Summer School Zone, where local students take over our Observer School Zone section and write about topics of importance and interest to them and their peers.
The three writers joining our reporting team this year are Avery Bangsund, Ava Petroski and Kasey Bilodeau. Each student has a passion for writing and telling local stories about those in our community.
Avery Bangsund, 18, is celebrating her graduation from Foundation Academy.
“It feels so accomplishing,” she said. “I’m ready for the next step in life. It’s amazing to see all my hard work finally pay off. It’s a breath of fresh air.”
In August, she heads off to college at West Virginia Wesleyan University to major in communications and play soccer.
Sports are a passion for Bangsund, who earned 22 varsity letters in high school participating in varsity cross country, soccer, track and weightlifting.
Knowing she thrives in smaller academic environments and the demands of playing D1 sports would limit her abilities to be involved in other activities, Bangsund decided a D2 university would be the best fit for her.
Bangsund plans to major in communications with the hopes of getting an internship at a local newspaper or broadcast station her freshman year to jumpstart her experience in journalism.
“Getting an internship out there, even for any of the sports teams, would be ideal for me in college,” she said.
Her dream job is working in sports broadcasting, covering any sport and being able to interview players and coaches.
But before August, Bangsund is looking to make the most of her last summer before she goes off to college.
She said she wants to spend as much time as possible with friends and family and is looking forward to her annual family trip to Minnesota.
She also is focused on recovering from when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament and both meniscus during a soccer match.
Ava Petroski, 15 and a rising sophomore at Olympia High School, has a deep passion for marine science.
Her love for marine science has inspired her to take two science classes rather than just one her sophomore year. One is a marine science class, and the other is Chemistry Honors.
“I love being in the water,” Petroski said. “The water is kind of like a happy place almost, but I also really love working with marine animals and learning about the ocean.”
This drive to learn more about the great, big blue has led her to another year of participating in a marine science camp at Sea World where she will have the opportunity to work with the animals, including a shark diving experience and cleaning out the stingray tanks.
Other than science, Petroski spends her days diving into the world of writing, whether it’s an article for the Observer Summer School Zone or a screenplay to be brought to life on stage.
Petroski won an award for playwriting in a state competition for theater in eighth grade, and she also has submitted plays to Valencia College. The college’s theater students then acted out her submitted plays.
“It was so surreal,” she said of seeing her plays on the stage. “It was only my second time, but I was like, ‘Oh, would it feel different seeing it the second time rather than the first time seeing it on stage?’ It’s still amazing every time something I write is being performed.”
She will be participating in the summer production of “Mean Girls” with Breakthrough Theatre Company this summer.
Kaey Bilodeau, 18, was homeschooled and has graduated from high school.
She’s looking to the future, deciding what her next steps will be with thoughts of studying cosmetology in college so she can have the flexibility to study but also travel.
Although she said she’s good at cosmetology, her real passions lie in writing and science.
In school, she always loved psychology as well as language arts and literature.
“I love the challenge, working hard and solving problems,” Bilodeau said.
When it comes to writing, Bilodeau likes to break topics down and think of a logical argument to explain an opinion or point of view. She even started to review books online in February. She also loves writing about people and places.
“I just wanted a way to talk about how I really enjoyed these books but more publicly, and that was something I could do that was free and easy and on my own timeline,” Bilodeau said of writing book reviews.
Bilodeau would like to be a published author by the time she’s 20 years old as well as, at some point in her life, hike the Appalachian Trail and live abroad somewhere like the United Kingdom. She already has written a couple chapters of her book, which is centered on a little town like Winter Garden with a focus on the small-town relationships and the psychological quirks that make the place so special.
In her free time, Bilodeau has fallen in love with cycling, and she tries to compete when she has the opportunity. This year, she did a mini triathlon and a 10K. She hopes to be able to do a 100-mile bike race with her mother.
