Morristown High School’s Salutatorian for the Class of 2023 has a plan. He just doesn’t have his whole life planned out.

Chase Theobald finished .003 behind Valedictorian Maggie Lutes when the final grades were tabulated. Both expressed their friendship never wavered despite the prestigious honor at stake.

“I think it was competitive,” said Theobald with a smile. “We are good friends. We knew whoever got it, we would be happy for each other.”

The son of Jason and April Theobald is headed to IUPUI to study Mechanical Engineering.

“It was close to home. I like the campus there,” said Theobald. “It surprised me. It’s really nice. And I have some buddies there.”

Theobald is currently working for an AG research business and enjoying the free time graduation has afforded him in a month that is typically busy for high school athletes. He was part of soccer, basketball and track and field programs while at Morristown and was a member of the National Honor Society, the National Art Honor Society and the Student Advisory Council.

As salutatorian, Theobald was asked to put a speech together for the graduation ceremony. He felt remiss if he didn’t mention his grandfather, Kevin McMichael, and fellow student Colt Andry, who passed away on April 17.

“I wanted to put my grandpa in there and have our classmate who passed away, Colt Andry, in there,” explained Theobald. “The theme was our community is pretty unique. There are not a lot of places around here that have such closeness and back each other up.”

The death of Andry and the rallying around Quinton Batton, who battled leukemia which forced him to miss the 2021-2022 basketball season, put plenty of stress on the small school student body.

“Like I said in my speech, we all came together and helped each other through it,” said Theobald. “I didn’t think anyone was alone through it. We talked it out. The community really made it easier.”

Theobald took long looks at the engineering programs at Trine University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and Purdue University but found IUPUI to be his “best option.”

While Theobald knows the classes will get harder as he pursues his degree, he has no plans to change his work ethic that brought him to the top of Morristown’s graduating class.

“I will have the same mindset that I had in high school,” he said. “Keep studying and working hard each and every day.”

This is the second in a series of feature stories from the Shelby County Post on Shelby County’s Class of 2023 valedictorians and salutatorians.

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