St. Louis U. High was awarded with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Headliner Award for Best Private High School last Wednesday. Members of the community nominated SLUH, who later received the most votes of any other nominees. 

A replacement for the Post-Dispatch’s Reader’s Choice Awards, the STL Headliner Awards are an annual community-voted honor which helps determine and recognize St. Louis’s favorite businesses. This includes restaurants, clothing stores, coffee shops, salons, entertainment venues, and more.

Nominations began in May, and the top five most-nominated institutions in each category moved on to the voting phase, which was open for four weeks in July. Winners were selected based purely on the number of votes received, and, in the Best Private High School department, SLUH won by a healthy margin.  The top vote-getters in each category were officially notified of their victory last Wednesday, Sept. 7, with an official announcement in the paper set for later in the month.

In receiving the award, SLUH beat out other highly-ranked area schools such as John Burroughs, MICDS, Cor Jesu, and Visitation. Though there is no way of officially knowing, SLUH’s candidacy was almost certainly boosted by both its status as the area’s largest private high school and its extensive alumni network in the region.

 “Our alumni are all over the region,” said Principal Ian Gibbons, SJ. “They're very proud of the school, they stay in touch, it’s amazing.”

Given that it was the first year of this particular contest, and that SLUH was nominated by members of the St. Louis community, few in the building actually knew of the Headliner Award until relatively late in the selection process. Consequently, members of the administration were pleasantly surprised to learn of the award.  

“It’s a brand new award,” President Alan Carruthers said. “And honestly, a lot of the previous knowledge we had of it was relatively limited.”
“To be candid, I didn’t even know this was going on at the time,” Gibbons said. “I don’t know any faculty that did.” 

With the distinction of Best Private High School now bestowed, SLUH holds the unique ability to market itself as such: St. Louis’s top institution for secondary education. Already, Gibbons has begun to mention the award in speeches and on campus tours.

Said Gibbons, “I work at a big suburban parish, St. Joseph’s in Manchester, and a lot of the parishioners congratulated me, and they knew about it, and that’s just a random group of people talking about it. … I use that in my narrative to a number of other folks as well. I joke that when I go to St. Joseph's in Manchester, my homily just always happens to be about SLUH, I throw in these little factoids. And we have a record number of boys coming from that parish this year. Part of it is those narratives, people say ‘I want my son to go to the number one private high school in St. Louis.’”

Still, for Carruthers, it is important not to get swept up in the grandeur of the award.

“I think that awards are always a reminder that you're doing something right,” said Carruthers. “But, like I said, I think one of our great challenges as an institution is to also remain humble. We’re inspired to do so by St. Ignatius, constantly going through a synergy cycle of reflection, action, and discernment. It’s also a point where you are reminded to step back and reflect on what makes us successful, and what we still have to work on.”

Gibbons also expressed hope that the free publicity which SLUH gained through the award can help mitigate the effects of the recent downward trend in Catholic school enrollment over the past few years.

Said Gibbons, “There’s a lot of competition for private schools. There’s only so many kids out there, and there’s a demographic trough now, where there’s actually less kids being born these days than in the past.  (In St. Louis), we have nine all-girls schools, seven all-boys schools, plus all the diocesan schools, and all the public schools. So dividing up all these kids, there’s a lot of competition. To be named the best private high school in the region by the main paper in the region, that’s a very good thing.”

One group of the SLUH community who immediately took immense pride in the announcement were the students, for whom the award confirmed their preconceived notion that SLUH was, in fact, the best. After a graphic was posted to SLUH’s Instagram account notifying followers that SLUH had won the STL Headliner Award, many students reposted it, proudly announcing the news.

Some students were unfazed with the win. “SLUH’s already a well-known name,” said freshman Wyatt Ogier. “It’s been here for 200 years. It’s not much of a surprise.”

Although the Post-Dispatch has yet to formally announce the recipients of this year’s STL Headliner Awards, readers of the paper will be notified of the victors in Sept. 25’s Sunday Edition.