Senior Lilly Tiller has lived in Oregon her whole life, coming to La Salle from St. John the Apostle Catholic School. 

Her favorite class at La Salle has been Statistics, taught by math teacher Mr. Kieron Redford, which she is taking this year. She loves the class because of how Mr. Redford allows her to have fun while doing math at the same time. “He is just overall a super good teacher that makes me want to learn,” Tiller said.  

Tiller’s favorite subject at school has been religion, specifically World Religions, taught by religion teacher Mr. Tom McLaughlin. “I think the biggest thing I learned was that every religion is pretty similar in its own way,” Tiller said. “There is so much hate in the world for religion, even though they have similar beliefs.”

At La Salle, Tiller has been heavily involved in the International Thespian Society, serving as the vice president last year, helping improve the theater, and finding ways to bring more attention to it. This year she has stepped down from that position, but she has still been helping out in any way she can, such as helping with costumes and set design. 

Tiller has also been involved in two sports at La Salle: swim and dance, with varsity letters in both. Her athletic life began long before La Salle, as she has been dancing since two years old and swimming since the eighth grade. 

She started dancing when her mom signed her up for classes. “My mom thought it was so cute that two-year-olds were wearing tutus, so it was more for her at first,” Tiller said. “When I got older, I slowly fell in love with it.”

Though she has stopped dancing for La Salle because she is so busy, Tiller still dances around 20 hours a week at Van De Veere Productions in West Linn where she has made many friends and connections that deepen her love for dancing. 

Tiller also loves being a dancer because of the way that it allows her to show her emotions. “It is like [being] an artist, when you draw and make whatever you’re feeling,” she said. “It is like the same thing with dance, but with your whole body.”

On the other hand, swimming was something that Tiller joined because of her friends who were doing it. Ever since she started, she has found it fun overall and has seen development in all of her strokes. Tiller enjoys swimming with the La Salle team specifically because of the tight community and supportiveness. 

“I like the cheering and when everyone is so happy when you just drop a millisecond,” Tiller said. “It’s those kinds of experiences that make me enjoy it.”

The person that inspires Tiller the most is her mother, who has taught her many life lessons that she will be taking with her in the future. “She definitely influences me to be a strong, independent woman,” Tiller said. 

Due to her mom’s influential example, Tiller wants to be an FBI agent once she graduates college. Tiller is also very passionate about helping out others, so this career path will allow her to do that in an interesting and interactive way. 

“My biggest thing has always definitely been that I want to help other people,” Tiller said. “I have always wanted to help people that can’t help themselves.”

In the near future, Tiller will be attending the University of Oregon. One reason for this is that it is close enough to her home, so she can go back whenever she wants to. 

She also fell in love with the community there and how everyone was so nice. “The biggest thing is that I was closer to home because I wanted to go to see my little brother’s football games and stuff,” Tiller said. “But I also loved how big it was and the community around it was really cool.”

While anticipating what is coming in the future, Tiller reminisces on the closing chapter of her high school life. Her favorite memories from high school have been helping produce the play, “Clue,” which was a lot of work, but she felt that “once you saw it on stage, it was one of the greatest feelings knowing that someone could do that,” she said. 

In the final stretch of her senior year, one of Tiller’s goals was to finish strong with “The Sound of Music.” Since this was the last show she was involved in at La Salle, her feelings are bittersweet, realizing school is close to ending. 

Tiller’s future advice for younger classmates based on her four-year experience is that “the biggest thing is finding what makes you personally happy because no one can make you happy like you can,” Tiller said.