BV’s Clase plans to light up the world

Aubree Clase

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

When asked what she hopes to do in the future, Buck­eye Val­ley senior Aubree Clase is quick with an answer.

“When I sing and dance, my world lights up,” said Aubree, who hopes to take her enjoy­ment of dance to Broadway.

The dance cap­tain of the show choir at Buck­eye Val­ley, Aubree has been in both the thes­pian and drama clubs for the past four years and has been in seven musi­cals plus two high school plays in addi­tion to being in show choir. The tal­ented senior also has per­formed in six pro­duc­tions in com­mu­nity the­atre in Marion.

“Mar­ion gets me away from every­day life to a dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ment,” she said.

Aubree spends much her spare time improv­ing her art. She has taken tap dance classes for more than a year now, and is in her sec­ond year of voice lessons. With a back­ground in gym­nas­tics, Aubree also show­cases these tal­ents as a cheer­lead­ing for both the foot­ball and bas­ket­ball teams.

“I’ve danced and sung since I was able to walk and talk,” she said grinning.

But the busy high school senior’s list of activ­i­ties do not stop there. She is also a mem­ber of Young Life, stu­dent coun­cil, Teen Insti­tute and the Red Cross Club.

She’s also will­ing to do things to expand her com­fort zone. For exam­ple, to get out of her own world, Aubree also does stats for the school’s wrestling team.

I’m not afraid to go out on my own,” she said. “I love doing wrestling stats. I love math. It takes me away to my own place.”

As a 4-H mem­ber for the past 10 years, Aubree shines in another unex­pected area — show­ing hogs.

Aubree began with show­ing rab­bits and hogs for the first three years of 4-H.

“It’s some­thing I grew up with so I love it. I will miss it dearly,” she said, adding that she takes show­ing seriously.

That atti­tude has paid off and Aubree has the awards to prove it, includ­ing grand cham­pion gilt and reserve cham­pion medium weight gilt titles.

Look­ing ahead, Aubree has already com­mit­ted to Bowl­ing Green State Uni­ver­sity. She has a Dec. 2 audi­tion com­ing up with the music the­atre school. She plans to major in musi­cal the­ater with a minor in either psy­chol­ogy or pho­tog­ra­phy. But the­ater, and Broad­way in-particular, is her dream.

Psy­chol­ogy is an area that is impor­tant to Aubree: she con­sid­ered coun­sel­ing those with eat­ing dis­or­ders after bat­tling and over­com­ing her own eat­ing dis­or­der. Aubree said her eat­ing dis­or­der was diag­nosed when she was in mid­dle school. She explained that she did not eat on pur­pose. Run­ning track – a lot – it got to the point where she was just not hungry.

As her con­di­tion wors­ened, her body mass index even­tu­ally fell to 12.5. A 12 can be fatal, she said.

Ulti­mately, her par­ents took action and she was hos­pi­tal­ized for six weeks.

“It was an odd expe­ri­ence,” she said. “There were worse cases. There were no win­dows at first.”

Her par­ents stayed at a hotel at the out-of-state facil­ity the entire time. After the treat­ment, she cre­ated bracelets that she sells with the prof­its going to the facil­ity to help others.

Aubree said her par­ents were not the type to hide the prob­lem. Every­one knew, she said. With the entire fam­ily open about it, she said it was a “great, but ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ence. I would help any­one through it. I made friends, but I lost a cou­ple, too,” she said.

“I don’t regret my par­ents telling, being open. If I was in a bub­ble with my par­ents, I would have died,” Aubree said. She smiled remem­ber­ing that she received the most cards of any­one while at the treat­ment cen­ter — nearly 300.

Aubree and her father now speak pub­licly about the expe­ri­ence at speak­ing engage­ments, in hopes that oth­ers with sim­i­lar prob­lems will seek help, she said.

“It’s easy now for me to look for­ward. I’ve been undi­ag­nosed for six years now,” she said. “It made me stronger, more out­go­ing. I used to be shy, a tomboy. It brought me out of my shell.”

Being a senior is “def­i­nitely a lot dif­fer­ent,” Aubree said. She said it is hard to envi­sion her­self in this posi­tion as it felt like just yes­ter­day that she was say­ing good­bye to all the senior cheer­lead­ers. Now she is the senior.

Aca­d­e­m­i­cally, Aubree excels. She is tak­ing all hon­ors classes this year and is get­ting all A’s, she said.

“I guess the whole grow­ing up stage just kicked in. My junior year was more stress­ful. This year, I’m stay­ing focused, orga­nized,” she said.

Look­ing for­ward to her future, Aubree hopes to study abroad, intern with Dis­ney, then hope­fully work on a cruise ship and even­tu­ally Broadway.

“A lot of peo­ple just say ‘Oh’ when I say I am going into musi­cal the­ater. But I’m not going to stop. I’m going for the high­est point,” she said.

Aubree is the daugh­ter of Hal and Angela Clase of Radnor.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Nov 11 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.