Having known Odessa High School valedictorian Anastacio David Pando since first grade, salutatorian Gabriel Haley seemed resigned that his friend was going to be the top student.
They will walk the stage, along with their fellow seniors, at 8:30 p.m. Friday, May 26, at Ratliff Stadium.
In first grade, Haley said he and Pando were in a chess tournament together. Pando came in first, so that was a harbinger of things to come.
Pando is going to Texas Tech University to major in microbiology and go into the medical field. He plans to go into dermatology.
Haley is going to Yale University. He’ll be in the general humanities area. His main focus is going to be literary analysis.
Haley said he’s not the type to pay too much attention to rankings.
“But I remember at the beginning of junior year, I heard the IB seniors talking about logging into Naviance and finding their rank. I looked at it and I wasn’t too far off. I was like, I can do this, so I started grinding. You might not have known, but I thought it was tacitly implied that David was number one throughout junior and senior year,” Haley said.
Pando said he didn’t want to check too much because he didn’t want to be bombarded with questions. He was focused on school.
Pando said his parents wanted him to do his best, but they weren’t going to be angry if he wasn’t at the top.
“I don’t know if either one of us was necessarily playing the GPA game …. I know we’re both very internally competitive. When we tried to get high enough to where we (didn’t) see anyone else on our level. That’s where we met each other again,” Haley said.
Pando said his brother Alex is at Tech studying to become an ophthalmologist.
“I’m glad to go there … It will facilitate my next step in life,” Pando said.
