Isabella Leutsch—a beloved student within the student body and the ‘27 class—spreads positivity into every action made since she walked through LHS’ doors in ‘23.

Whether it’s by putting her love into her crochets of little animals that she makes during her free time, or simply into the fun games she plays during her leisure moments, Isabella has fun whenever she can.

For crocheting specifically, she believes that “More people know that I crochet, more than I do draw.”

Outside these activities, she brought up a weekly dinner she has Sunday night with family and that she “gets to see family a lot, which is very nice.” 

Not only a family woman, a creative student, but even a student athlete that she goes into later on…? Wow!

Well, not even just that—but a student that has a job. Yes…J.O.B…a very scary assortment of letters for students like myself. A job at possibly one of the most popular places in Ludlow: Dunkin’.

Working on Saturdays and Sundays, Isabella recounts multiple aspects of her job:

“I got the job without an interview with Jessica—” to which I cut her off when I found out there’s actually a part of Ludlow that calls Jekka ‘Jessica.’ AKA: a woman that I feel like doesn’t need an introduction if you already know her.

Continuing with how she got the job with no interruption this time:

“My aunt knows her, they’re friends. No interview, randomly one day without being scheduled and just made me serve the donuts for like three hours.”

Simply doing the job for money (and for her car insurance) Isabella mentions the concerning aspect where “people will just quit a lot then they’ll come back and it’ll repeat.”

Besides wanting to pay off her car insurance, she mentions a later dream she has is to have a “House…I really want a little house. A little dog and cat, and maybe I’ll still have Larry,” Larry is Isabella’s pet leopard gecko. 

Academics

We’ve all heard the warnings from now-seniors and just about anybody that had a slightly challenging junior year: it’s the worst of the four.

Even Isabella points this out as her experience has been “definitely a lot harder” in comparison to her sophomore year. There’s AP courses, state-recommended exams for college, hell, even just sports to worry about all at once.

Sports has also been one of the issues she mentions taking a “stupid amount of time,” at the beginning of the year before becoming used to it. She reiterates: 

“I got my homework done at like 10 PM at night because I wouldn’t do it (or anything) before practice. I’m the number one procrastinator…”

Isabella references her job once again, and while she had it last year it “wasn’t that serious.”

Though, with her positive attitude to quite literally everything, she states that:

“I’ve gotten used to it, like a rhythm…”

Although…her rhythm from honors chemistry into AP Chemistry hasn’t been so rhythmic:

“Not that bad—actually no. AP chem from honors chem is so scary. Like, it’s so much harder than honors. I don’t like it, but it’s nice, but it’s hard.” To which I share the same sentiment…since I came from standard chemistry into AP chemistry this year.

Despite making it seem as if AP Chemistry was her biggest challenge for this year, she actually specifies it’s math. Math from the previous year, honors algebra II, and this year’s AP Precalculus.

Isabella makes the claim that her solution to her challenge was that she “studied more.” Which of course, I do believe, given her academic achievement of this year she was most proud of receiving a 96 on one of her precalc tests…and yet when I asked about her study habits…

Exact words that I received: “You don’t wanna know my study habits…”

There was two steps, if we’re able to call it that:

• “Study everything the night before.”
• “Do my homework on time,” with an added “kind of.”

The most concerning bit was that she hadn’t studied for “either mock exam (AP chem & precalc),” though I would be hypocritical if I didn’t say I hadn’t studied for chem either. 

It’s not even to say that Isabella hates chem despite what she’s been saying, she had actually revealed the opposite. She even recalls Mrs. Valentine, the AP and honors chemistry teacher, being one of the two teachers that had an impact on Isabella:

“At the moment, I would say Woodman’s and Valentine’s class. I feel like I can actually pay attention sometimes, well not so much in Valentine’s, but I actually like the classes though. They make it interesting—they make it something I want to do.”

Extracurriculars

Starting out with her clear loyalties, loyalties that came out on top over less important clubs to her like art club that she had “done for like a week…”

It’s not to say she purposely missed out, she hadn’t, but it was due to her sports schedule that kept her from coming back:

“I really did it during the winter. It was really the only time I could do it during freshman year until volleyball ended in the fall and before softball season started in the spring.”

Her “loyalties” that I had been referring to was her sports of course. Again, another student at LHS balancing between AP courses and time-consuming sports. Come to think of it, she even plays varsity for both of her sports when playing-season comes along during the fall and spring.

“I do softball and volleyball, and varsity for both. I’ve been in varsity softball since freshman year and volleyball this year.”

Isabella cares for not only the sports alone, but for her teammates as well:

“I love all the people on my teams—they’re all nice.”

As for the fall, a time where students of all grades are supposed to readjust to the new school year at LHS, Isabella is already making scores within our gymnasium for varsity volleyball.

Plenty parts of the sport come to mind for as to why she continues to play in the first place:

“A big thing for me is the people on the team, we all get along.”

She starts to describe a kind of moment that her team and the coach shares with one another post-game:

“We have this little thing where our coach [Campbell] gives us this stuffed lion keychain. After every game we would go around and say what certain things people did well.”

Basically, the teammate that got mutually voted the best would be able to carry it around until the next game. I thought it was a cute touch that it was a stuffed animal of a lion, Isabella seemed to agree as “It was very cute! We all chose beads to put on it too,” deeming it as a “team thing” they do.

She then went off to list fairly predictable stuff as well: 

“I like being competitive and active, I like the friendships too.”

Dialing into the spring however, Isabella recounts her favorite parts of being apart of the Varsity softball team:

“I love my coach [Missy] on the team. The JV are scared of her cause she seems mean at first and yells a lot, but that’s just how she talks.”

She goes as far to defend Missy from first impressions and state that “She’s real nice and you can tell she cares about the team.”

Besides her coach, Isabella deems one of her favorite parts of the game is her ability to “hit the ball with a stick…!” Obviously being light-hearted, but still—who wouldn’t want to do that as a sport?

If it wasn’t obvious already, Isabella is a very positive person. Even when asked about any issues she’s had throughout her career in LHS sports, she somehow has little to no poor attitude toward her challenges.

Her only major problem, that she was able to point out, was her memory:

“I’ll forget what I’m supposed to be doing and be yapping to somebody.”

There were also a few minor issues, though again, Isabella paid little to no mind to them and instead that she “never really gets upset about it…‘oh whatever, I’ll do better next time.’”

Which honestly, sounds like a dream athlete: a student that doesn’t get down when a game doesn’t meet their expectations? Wonderful!

She then pointed out that, “ I try my best as well, I don’t try to take it too seriously. Like, I’m competitive, but I don’t get mad over it.” 

Annually, like any other school, LHS hosts a senior night for every sport that we have. Not exactly specifying which sport, but more or so both, Isabella recounts how she’s already thinking about it despite it being far, far away:

“I’m excited but I’m really scared because I’m totally gonna cry. I’m either gonna be really happy or cry the whole time, but I’m really excited ‘cause senior nights are so sweet for both teams.”

Though she had been referring to both sports, she details the festivities the softball team has for their senior nights: posters and cups attached to the holes of the field screen/fencing.

Isabella went on to describe the almost nostalgic feeling of setting up senior nights for previous seniors, despite the ‘26 softball season not starting yet: 

“It’s like staying after with your friends and setting everything up and making the posters and getting to see all the seniors as kids, they’re always so cute.”

With that being said, she had also been “scared to see what pictures are gonna be on mine.” It’s not the most surprising thing to say, as she already said that the posters will have photos from her childhood…not from her 4 years at the high school.

Future

The future—at least by our interview—seems not only bright, but also incredibly scientific for Isabella. Even with the very few classes we share: only one…and it being AP chem…she brings up her interest in the science field:

“I love science okay…I may not pay attention in class but I do like science.”

When further questioned on which branch of science she had been thinking of, given that there’s so many careers one can go into with the broad term of ‘science,’ she answered that forensics specifically had been a “very interesting topic” for her.

Keep in mind—this choice was made far before LHS (revealed around class recommendations and general scheduling) had decided to create a forensics elective starting next school year.

Isabella had also made the brief comment that if she didn’t end up going for forensics for her major, or just job in general, she had hoped to do “something with biology, animals, or space.”

With that, the literal plans in the future came along. Simply asking what her plans were in five-years-time had resulted in a sudden: 

“Wait, how old am I going to be in 5 years?”

Either way, she listed off a handful of stuff she hoped to still be doing as she is now.

Basic high school student plans like being in college, and even still playing the sports she is now for her college…until she mentioned “probably still working at Dunkin’ with the Dunkin’ people doing Dunkin’ stuff making Dunkin’ drinks” where she then made the comment that she doesn’t “drink coffee unless it has sugar.”

Similar to a previous article, she made a slightly “unreasonable” aspiration to have during college: “I hope I have a house. I will pay for it on my minimum wage Dunkin’ salary, I’ll take out the craziest loan you’ve ever seen…”

With the mention of college, came the question of which college she was actually looking to go to. Keeping in mind that there’s over a 100 just in Massachusetts alone, it’s not surprising that besides asking for plans past academics, this is a question just as troubling.

Anywho, Isabella had colleges already in mind: “I was looking at Baypath, they have both sports & forensics programs. They seem to have a good community too!”

It hadn’t only been Baypath of course, especially since it’s recommended for students to have plenty of colleges in mind, but also Boston University or simply as put: “Anything related to science or sports that I wanna do. They’re the two main things I wanna see.”

With that, came a question that will surely be asked to all of my student interviewees…Isabella gave advice to students entering the same grade she is:

• “Focus on your grades—they’re very important, especially now.”
• “Pay attention in class.”
• “Have good friends and be around a good community/group.”