Walking into your third-hour class, you get seated and slowly divert your attention to the bellwork given to you on your way in. As you’re processing the new subject in front of you, the announcements come on, and the pledge of allegiance is said throughout the school. Shortly after you hear news about upcoming events throughout the school.
Clubs have sign-up meetings, awards are listed, and the UNICEF volleyball tournament is brought up last. The name ‘Abby Rybicki’ follows and you’re curious if you heard it before or if that was just someone else.
“I was really interested in kind of getting involved in the school environment,” Student Council president Abigail Rybicki said. “I’ve always loved planning and coordinating events, so that’s kind of been my big interest, and that’s what I wanted to be part of.”
Rybicki has been part of Student Council for all four years of high school. After being a sophomore and junior class representative, she was elected by the council and advisors to be president her senior year.
“She was not going to run for president this year,” Student Council sponsor Rebecca Davison said. “She was going to run for vice president, I believe. And I sat down with her and told her why I thought she would make a good president. And she thought about it, and she decided to run for both president and vice president… and I’m happy that she did, because she won the presidency by a landslide.”
As president, Rybicki has been in charge of managing the general members and executive board of Student Council. She adjourns meetings when needed and steps in to cover roles that the 10 large executive board can not cover. Her oversight over the UNICEF volleyball tournament was because of this.
“Abby’s been doing amazing,” vice president Niko Knanishu said. “She has come up with a ton of different ideas and has been working with our advisors, our admin, on trying to implement them so we can have a successful Student Council.”
Rybicki’s vision focuses on bringing together the school and offering new event opportunities. She has been working hand-in-hand with Rider Nation at events like this year’s Homecoming pep rally to build unity through branches of leadership within the school.
“I didn’t know I was gonna be speaking,” Rybicki said. “I was very stressed, and it was intimidating. But, once you kind of get up there, everything kind of blurs for me, and I just kind of get really excited to be involved at Huntley and leave my mark and my legacy at the school.”
Rybicki has followed her passion for leadership to the executive board of National Honors Society as well as other organizations outside of the high school.
She runs the Fox Valley Leadership Conference with two other Huntley representatives and participates in multiple local and state leadership conferences. Her responsibilities, along with being on the Math Team, give her a busy schedule with meetings on the regular, but it all goes toward her goal of someday being a part of the Walt Disney Corporation.
“She’s doing a great job this year,” Davison said. “I jokingly asked her to fail this year so she could be the president next year. She said she didn’t think her mom would like that very much though.”
