Kyler Rabourn has been attending Nederland schools since his elementary years. He fondly remembers a camping trip that he took with his fellow classmates in his 5th grade year, and that community has stuck with him since those elementary years.

Rabourn joined soccer in his sophomore year and basketball in his junior year and has been working at Crosscut for the last four years. However, the extracurricular activity that has truly stuck with him was theater during his junior and senior years. As an actor, he portrayed characters in the musicals Grease and Guys and Dolls, along with acting in the fall plays his senior year. He found a brand new community amongst other thespians, and he found the choir and theater director Elizabeth Evans an especially important and inspiring mentor.

Rabourn was so inspired by the process of acting and creating musical theater that he decided to major in musical theater at Casper College in Wyoming. He received a $4,000 scholarship from the school, and he plans to continue his passion fully.

Rabourn will miss the students and teachers at Nederland Middle- Senior High School, and he will miss the incredible community that has formed in the town. Rabourn felt that Nederland, as a small school, allowed him to have more personal relationships with his teachers than larger schools would have, and he especially loved taking classes with Kelly Strong and Daniel Wade. He also shouts out fellow graduates Charlie Rawlins and Skylee Berry for always sticking by his side, particularly Rawlins for helping him get through the tumultuous quarantine period.

To future and incoming students of Nederland, Rabourn says that it’s important to keep your head up and know that everything is going to work out in the end. Any person can be “a force to be reckoned with,” so it’s important to have confidence in yourself and what you’re doing. Finding a community has certainly allowed Rabourn to flourish and find his true passions, and he hopes that other students can keep being themselves. He also gives one more piece of advice: “[If] you ever feel down, look at Keanu Reeves.”

Congratulations to Kyler for moving on to the next chapter of his life!