Throughout his four years at La Salle, senior Ashton Torrey has balanced academics, faith, friendships, and his own business, which he said prepared him for a self-built future.

Torrey has found his time at La Salle to be “very inclusive,” and said the relationships he has built have shaped who he is today.

“I made a lot of friends and people I consider family,” he said. “I think these four years have changed my life and how I will live through college.”

Adjusting to the new social atmosphere of high school, academics were a struggle starting off, he said.

Despite this, Torrey found his place in many of La Salle’s classes, notably Innovation Design Lab, Art Foundations, and Economics, which all connected to his love for creativity and finance. He really enjoyed the creative freedom in his design class, even making a cat house for his English teacher Ms. Anna Hooker.

Torrey has always had a passion for entrepreneurship driven by his family’s rich history with starting businesses of their own and by a late-night hobby of trading crypto with his cousin.

“I just began falling in love with it,” he said. “It’s kind of nerdy, but it’s alright.”

This entrepreneurial mindset did not end with crypto trading, but led to Torrey starting a pressure washing business as a side hustle. This began after he made over $200 for a single, two-hour job with his friend. Seeing the profit potential, Torrey got a loan from his mom to buy his own pressure washer, and began knocking on doors.

“I had knocked on 60 doors, and I got one [job],” Torrey said. “It’s difficult, it’s tedious, it’s very time consuming. But when you are doing the job, it goes by pretty quick.”

In addition to school and work, Torrey has made many memories with his friends through La Salle’s snowboarding and golf teams, and sometimes simply driving around with his friends.

He has snowboarded with La Salle for all four years. His favorite part was “going to the mountain with [his friends], just listening to music and hanging out,” he said. “It was a lot of fun.”

Faith has also played a major role in Torrey’s life, being raised a Greek Orthodox Christian. His time at La Salle has only strengthened his faith.

“I have a spiritual battle every day,” he said. “I pray a lot.”

Torrey also found faith at La Salle in an immersion to California, which was “about vocation,” he said. In this immersion — where four people were chosen — Torrey got to meet with a group of other Lasallians to interact and connect through prayer and shared faith. He said that the prayers before each class and Mass services helped him grow closer to both his friends as well as staff members.

After La Salle, Torrey will attend Gonzaga University where he hopes to study finance. While he is excited for college, he said he is sad to leave behind the place he has spent the last four years and the relationships he has built along the way.

Despite this, Torrey knows he is ready for what comes next, he said.