Senior Retreat is arguably the best kept secret among Cathedral students. The Retreat is only available to seniors and starts on a Tuesday afternoon and goes until Friday evening. There are normally 4 or 5 opportunities to go spread throughout the year.
The Freshmen, Sophomore, and Junior classes all have their own retreats, however, no retreat is as beloved as Senior retreat. The process of what happens on retreat is kept under wraps by the Cathedral educators, but also by the students themselves that have attended in the past.
The public knows very little about what goes on but most students know a few things. Students know that senior retreat is a phone-free zone, it’s supposed to offer an escape from everyday anxiety, making the internet unaccessible. The retreat attendees are split into some sort of smaller groups, while it’s not certain the number of kids in each group, it’s known that the larger group of around 60 seniors is somehow split up.
These smaller groups have also been said to split up friends. Retreat leadership asks around the school among students, teachers, and coaches to put people outside of their comfort zone. Mr Dave Neeson, Director of Campus Ministry and leader of the retreat said, “Going on retreat should be a time for kids to let go of normal stress and have some time to reflect, it’s a time they can jump out of the fishbowl that they normally swim in. Once they remove themselves, its easier to reflect.”
The odd thing about retreat isn’t the odd details that are known about it, but the students that come to its defense. Students that have attended the retreat are advocates for all of the abnormal things that make senior retreat special. Normally, if a huge group of teens were told that their phones would be taken away for three days, they would roll their eyes and revolt.
The retreat is such a special experience for almost every student that has gone before, many former students have claimed that it changes their perspective, they don’t talk about it in hopes that other people will have the same experience.
Neeson said, “These students don’t gossip because they lack respect for what they’re gossiping about. Respect isn’t the reason they don’t talk about the retreat. They don’t talk about the retreat because they want the retreat to be as productive as it was for them. The Retreat is less of a secret and more of peers trying to ensure that their friends have the best retreat possible.”
There are still three more senior retreats coming in the 2024/2025 school year.
