By Lori Smith

Whether the cause is drama, girls, boys, or the high school atmosphere in general, not many long-term friendships last past freshman year. There are a few students who have found the key to keeping a great friendship despite the odds. 

Being friends since kindergarten, sophomores, Briana Burke and Morgan Stephens have managed to maintain a great friendship and separate themselves from the “typical high school friendship.” They have learned to trust each other by realizing that they have never steered each other wrong. 

“Last year we both began to sort of drift away from each other,” said Stephens. “It is hard to be friends and stay close when so much is going on, but we figured we needed to spend more time together. You only have a few friends in life.”

Burke and Stephens have had to deal with everything from classmates spreading rumors to attempts to instigate fights between the friends. Needless to say, the attempts failed, and the girls are closer friends than ever. 

“People have tried to break our friendship up, but we ignore the situations and move forward,” said Burke. 

One would think that it is hard enough to maintain a long-term friendship between two people, none the less, nine people. Seniors, Oliver Cherry, Ennis Coble, Micheal Davis, Darius Jones, Daniel Robinson, Brian Shepperd, Paul Strychalski, Nicholas Tigges, and Eric Wertz have managed the unthinkable. They have been friends since the fourth grade and have no intensions of ending that friendship, even after graduating and going to college. 

“When you know somebody as long as we have known each other, you can’t help but to be friends,” said Davis. 

The boys have attended elementary, middle, and high school together and are currently in the magnet program together. They have learned each other’s ways and developed a bond like none other. They can finish each other’s sentences or even know what one is going to do before he actually does it. 

Despite their many fights over food, weight, cars, and just about everything else, the boys know that they will always be there for one another. After an argument about a prior disagreement, where insults were made and food was thrown, the boys laughed it off as though nothing happened. 

“We always fight and Brian usually starts them, but we don’t even take them seriously anymore,” said the rest of the boys.