20-21: A yearbook to remember

New Ulm High School’s newest yearbook ‘A Year Like No Other’ was distributed last week and included many new features to both enhance the quality of the yearbook and, in some cases, make up for what was missing.

“It was kind of a battle because we didn’t have all [the pages] we usually put in,” says Gay Lynn Cowing, who led the yearbook production for the 20-21 schoolyear. “We had a lot of pages [set aside] for Battle of the Classes. . . once we realized it wasn’t happening, we had a lot of pages we had to fill.”

Many aspects of the school year were different than usual with the prevalence of COVID-19 in the school and surrounding community, much of which is tastefully documented in the yearbook with mask fashion and Covid ‘daily life’ pages.

The book’s table of contents reads: “Even six feet apart, we were brought closer together than we could have ever imagined,” sending a message of unity to students regardless of the circumstances.

Despite having many roadblocks such as limits on sporting audiences, difficulty getting permission to attend events to take photos, and not having a full school attendance due to online learning alternatives, the yearbook still flows along without a hitch with newly implemented features like ‘Then and Now’ pages and a ‘Year in Review’ page with the year’s worldwide news for the school’s future alumni to look back upon.