Christopher Bisom has been named the valedictorian for the Geneseo High School Class of 2009. Fellow senior Michael Possin has been named salutatorian.

Bisom is the son of Tim and Sherry Holmstrom. He plans to attend the University of Illinois in the fall.

Possin is the son of Marc and Mary Possin. He plans to attend the University of Notre Dame.

Both men will speak at Geneseo’s graduation ceremony on May 24. The ceremony will start at 2 p.m. on the high-school football field. If the weather does not permit an outdoor ceremony, graduation will be held in the high-school gym.

The Class of 2009 has approximately 220 seniors. “This is a class with a lot of individually focused students,” said principal Mike Haugse. “They’re a very determined group of individuals. They know what they want, and they know what they need to do to get there. For years, you’ve been able to ask them what they plan to do, and they’ve  known.”

Haugse said the class “set a very high academic bar” for the classes to follow. “This class had a record number of students score over a 30 on the ACT test. We’ve also seen the students score very well on the other exams, as well as the AP tests.”

In addition, the class has excelled in its extracurriculars. “There’s a state champion in this group, and a number of students have broken school records. Our music department also just placed second in the state. The nice thing about this class is that it has such strong academic abilities, while at the same time still having a high participation and success rate in all of our extracurriculars,” he said.

He added, “I’ve not seen as many cliques in this class. They seem to get along very well with everyone. This class also had some of our first LINK Crew leaders, and they’ve done a very good job making the culture and climate of the high school welcoming,”