MARYSVILLE – Two senior girls from Marysville-Pilchuck High School, along with classmate Kyle Yund, have been named the Marysville Kiwanis-Soroptimist Girls and Boy of the Month for October.
Brielle Sydow and Emily Anderson are best friends and are so alike in qualifications and personality that the two community service clubs couldn’t pick just one winner.
Sydow is M-P’s valedictorian with a 4.0 grade point average. She wants to go to Cornell or Temple in Japan and major in either social services or business. She wants to work for a company or start one that helps people in need.
For community service she tutors students in math and chemistry. She hosted an international exchange student last summer and was a “conversation pal” as she has taken three years of Japanese.
Sydow is a lifeguard and works at the M-P pool. She also is a swim instructor.
She has been dancing since age 3, and started teaching others last summer. She enjoyed watching her pupils improve, but also likes helping her adopted little sister grow.
“I want to help her in everything she does,” Sydow said.
She also has been in band for seven years, playing percussion and now is on the drumline. Six of those years she’s been in the 0-period jazz band.
Sydow has taken many AP classes and was in the 94th percentile in SAT scores.
Anderson admits in middle school she didn’t have the best work ethic and was anti-social, but that all changed when she became friends with Sydow.
She has a 3.9 g.p.a. with her only A- her freshman year in math. She ranks fourth out of 306 students and also has taken many AP classes. She has taken two years of Spanish and has been on the drumline for two years, after being encouraged to join by Sydow. Like her best friend she is on the National Honor Society and has done community service work there.
She said she also has volunteered helping with band, marching band and Winterguard.
“They are always looking for help” to do behind-the-scenes jobs, she said, like moving expensive equipment around.
Anderson tutors mostly sophomores and freshmen.
“A lot of kids at this school need help,” she said, adding students like getting help from her because some teachers may intimidate them.
Anderson said she loves math and science but is not sure if she wants to be a scientist, doctor or something else but she knows she wants to help people.
Her colleges of choice include UW, Western and WSU.
Like Sydow, Anderson is a swim instructor and lifeguard. But she’s taken that sport even further, competing on the swim team since her junior year. She prefers the longer freestyle races and even qualified for the district championships. But she has competed in every event, earning the title, “Iron Woman.”
Yund wants to attend Boise State, Western or Central and major in psychology with a double minor in communications and music.
He hasn’t even taken a psyche class, but he’s always been interested in how the “mind works,” and friends have told him he should become a counselor because he’s “easy to talk to.”
Much of his high school years have been spent playing alto saxophone. He’s been in wind and jazz ensembles, along with the marching and pep bands.
He also directed some of the bands and was master of ceremonies at the Band Banquet. He indexed and organized the music library, was president of the Band Council and was in the pit orchestra for “The Drowsy Chaperone” and “Shrek.”
Yund was a member of the Six in The City Jazz and The Dominant 7 Jazz combos that performed at fund-raisers, school events and local markets. He has completed AP, College in the High School and Honors courses all four years. Yund has had various jobs, doing house cleaning, yard maintenance and working at two law firms performing various duties.
He said he learned most of his leadership skills from being a Boy Scout.
“I like to observe, and learn from other people’s mistakes,” he said.
He volunteered over 500 hours helping other Scouts. He’s held various leadership positions, and earned his Eagle Scout by building portable benches for the band.
