2025-26 High School Essay Contest Winners

The Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture at the University of Portland is pleased to announce the award recipients of the 2025-26 Essay Contest.

Congratulations to the top winning and honorable mention essays!

• Lex Tarelo, "Keeper of Smiles" Tri - Cities Prep
• Sarah Kong Smith, "The Blended Comfort and Rhythm of My Second Home" Seton Catholic College Prep

• Genesis Mendoza Torres, "Braided Into the World" Tri-Cities Prep
• Brynn Lenz, "Forty-Three Thousand Two Hundred Minutes" Tri-Cities Prep
• DeLaney MacRoberts, "Let the Song Finish" Tri-City Prep

To all the faculty and counselors who help support this annual contest, please accept our sincere appreciation. We received many fine submissions from juniors at Catholic high schools along the West Coast and Congregation of Holy Cross high schools across the county. Essays are judged anonymously, without names or school affiliations. Information regarding next year’s essay competition will be posted in the Fall of 2026.

Again, congratulations to the winners of the 2025-26 Garaventa Center High School Essay Contest!

The Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture at the University of Portland exists to explore and deploy the fruits of faith, reason and imagination that constitute the Catholic intellectual tradition. We are especially committed to awakening and celebrating those gifts in young people, hence this annual essay contest, in which participants are encouraged to integrate faith, reason and the intellectual craft of writing a non-fiction, personal essay.