SEQUIM — Talk to Anna LaBeaume, and you cannot feel bad about the future.
And to this teenager, Sequim is neither a boring place to grow up nor a town lacking opportunities. On the contrary, LaBeaume’s world is resplendent with visual art, muscle and music.
2010 has been a year of exhilarations for LaBeaume, who will graduate from Sequim High School at 6p.m. Friday — along with some 219 other seniors gathered at the school at 601 N. Sequim Ave. — with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.404 and then, with $99,950 in scholarships, head to Linfield College in Oregon.
“Linfield has a great art and music program,” LaBeaume said in a recent interview inside the art room at the Sequim Community School.
“And they have a good track team, too.”
Ah, there’s a clue to where you’ve heard the name.
State champ — twice
A couple of weekends ago, LaBeaume won her second straight state title for shot put, with a throw of 43 feet, 10 1/2 inches at the 2A championships in Tacoma.
That was the longest throw of the entire season, not just the state meet, and it made LaBeaume the first Sequim athlete in school history to be a state track champion twice.
“That was the happiest moment of my life up to this point,” LaBeaume said.
“I couldn’t stop smiling,” she added, cupping her face with both hands.
But while she’s well-known for putting the shot — and says the event is flat-out fun — LaBeaume also takes great joy in putting paint to canvas, and putting jazz into the world.
Another highlight of this year was the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho, where she performed with the band from Sequim High and received a high compliment from one of the competition judges.
“He said, ‘Where is that baritone sax player? You? You’re such a stud,'” LaBeaume recalled, beaming.
She’d picked up the baritone saxophone just last year, having wanted to add it to her arsenal since she was a freshman.
LaBeaume also plays the piano, “for fun,” and the alto saxophone; the harmonica is her latest love.
“I’m playing that at home. My parents aren’t thrilled,” she said. “I’ll play pretty much anything that makes a sound . . . I like exploring.”
Ask LaBeaume who has inspired her, and she looks skyward.
“There are so many people I look up to,” she said.
Her parents, Jane and Peter LaBeaume, a second-grade teacher and a carpenter, respectively — they’re a given.
And there are her unofficial godmothers, Martha Rudersdorf and Joan Trindle of Sequim.
“They have been my great supporters,” LaBeaume said.
This being a small town, Rudersdorf — a longtime friend of Jane’s — turned out to be LaBeaume’s art teacher in middle school and in her last two years of high school.
Also a painter
This spring, LaBeaume has three paintings in the ArtPaths: Portfolio 2010 show at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.
Titled “Squid Hands,” “Splitting Headache” and “Mind Carnival,” they’re reflections of her bent toward experimentation with a splash of irreverence.
Working in watercolors and ink, like playing sports and playing jazz, are her tickets into “the zone,” a higher plane where the air is sweet and the body agile.
Merscher Memorial Scholarship
Among the awards LaBeaume received this spring is the Ben Merscher Memorial Scholarship, named for the Sequim man who was killed, at age 25, in a head-on collision with a drunken driver in October 2008.
Also winning the $500 award were Allison Cutting and Sarah Donahue.
Merscher’s mother, Mitzi Sanders, is a college and career counselor at Sequim High School, and has watched LaBeaume grow from girl to woman.
“She has so many talents,” Sanders said, “but she doesn’t like to hot-dog about it,” and if there’s a gesture signifying LaBeaume’s demeanor, it’s a shrug of the shoulders.
Rather than angling for the spotlight, “she’s always looking out for everyone else . . . people love to be around her. She’s just a magnet.”
As an artist, “I’ve seen her become much more confident,” Rudersdorf added, “and willing to try new things. She has developed a really nice balance between skill and imagination.”
Then the art teacher had to stop.
“I’ve known Anna since she was a baby,” said Rudersdorf.
“She is a beautiful and creative spirit. She cares deeply about people and about the environment, and she really lives that.”
LaBeaume has traveled to Seattle for environmental conferences this year, participated in green-school activities at Sequim High, and thought she wanted to major in environmental studies at Linfield.
But she’s also in love with making music. Interested in physical therapy. After going to the south of France last summer, she has a fantasy about being a baker in a little French town — and that’s not so far-fetched, since her uncle David LaBeaume runs a hot-air balloon company there.
She knows, of course, that she’ll have to choose a major or two at Linfield.
“There are so many options,” LaBeaume said, smiling and sighing.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
