Evergreen High Class of 2026 Celebrates at Red Rocks After Shooting

Claire Naumer stood at the podium, the weight of a year pressing against her ribs, and tried to find the words that wouldn’t drown out the joy of a diploma.

Eight months after a classmate opened fire near Evergreen High School, killing himself and critically injuring two other students, the Class of 2026 refused to let the trauma steal their rite of passage. On Thursday, May 14, 207 Cougars filed into Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, their navy blue caps and gowns a stark, vibrant contrast to the red rock cliffs that have watched over this community for millennia. They were there to celebrate, yes, but they were also there to prove they had survived the stampede.

The shooting itself was a chaotic blur of sound and motion. On September 10, the bell rang, and suddenly, students were running. They poured out of the building, darting into the nearby woods, pounding on the front doors of neighboring homes, begging strangers to let them in. The gunfire lasted about nine minutes. It left two students with critical injuries and the 16-year-old shooter dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Now, the air in the amphitheater was thick with a different kind of tension — not the sharp, electric fear of the shooting, but the heavy, communal relief of those who had made it through.

“This has been an unimaginable year,” Naumer told the crowd. She struggled with the balance, wanting to honor the 12 years of schooling that led to this moment without pretending the shooting hadn’t happened. She couldn’t let the tragedy overshadow the day, but she couldn’t ignore it either. It was a delicate act of memory and celebration, woven together in real-time.

The town had stepped up, and the graduates knew it. First responders and victim advocates, the people who had been there in the immediate aftermath and stayed for the long haul of recovery, sat in the packed stands. They cheered as each student crossed the stage. Principal Skyler Artes took the microphone to remind everyone that this resilience wasn’t accidental.

“Through every challenge, this community has shown up with compassion, steadiness and steadfast devotion,” Artes said. He noted that because of the way the community had cared for the school, they arrived at graduation grounded, connected, and stronger. Their shared courage hadn’t just held; it had deepened.

It’s easy to talk about healing in abstract terms, but here, it was tangible. It was in the teary eyes of parents trying to keep their emotions from spilling over as their children walked the stage. It was in the swell of cheers that rose from the crowd, a sound that felt less like applause and more like a collective exhale. The shooting had taken a sense of security, that quiet assumption that the world was safe, and the community had to rebuild it from the ground up.

Some are still healing. The road ahead isn’t a straight line, and the scars — both visible and invisible, remain. But on this day, the focus was on what remained: the students, the teachers, the neighbors who had opened their doors and their hearts.

As the ceremony wound down, the sun dipped lower behind the amphitheater’s rim, casting long shadows across the seating. The air cooled, carrying the faint, dry scent of pine and dust that always seems to cling to the foothills. You could feel the exhaustion in the legs of those who had stood for hours, but you could also feel the lightness in the chests of the graduates, the sudden, terrifying, beautiful freedom of having crossed the finish line.