Life after Mercy: How students are moving on after school’s closing

Disbelief and shock spread throughout the Bishop McGann-Mercy community in March when the news hit that the Riverhead Catholic high school was set to close at year’s end.

For the Class of 2018, they suddenly became the final group of seniors that would ever celebrate graduation. For the younger students, they faced an unexpected reality: They had to find a new school at which they would continue their education. For some, that meant attending their local public school; others chose to continue their Catholic education at schools in West Islip and Huntington. We caught up with several former Mercy students to see how the transition has gone. These are their stories.

Chris Atkinson
Grade: Senior
School: Riverhead High School

Chris Atkinson of Riverhead, 17, faced an abrupt transition for his senior year of high school.

He had attended a Catholic school his entire life before enrolling at Riverhead High School.

“It’s definitely a lot different, because you’re used to having a lot of close friends,” he said. “I had a lot of friends since kindergarten that went to Mercy, and now most of them went to St. John [the Baptist Diocesan High School]. That was the hardest change.”

When he found out in March that Bishop McGann-Mercy High School was closing, he was in shock and worried about where he would go next.

“I didn’t think it was true. I didn’t think it was really happening,” Chris said. “I remember waking up the next day and I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually happening.’ ”

The commute was the biggest factor in deciding where he would finish high school. He also has a younger brother who’s now a sophomore, and it would have been a huge commitment for his family to coordinate the two boys’ schedules.

“I miss a lot of the teachers. Since the classes were a lot smaller, you had a special relationship with the teachers,” Chris said. “There was a little joking around since we knew them.”

At Mercy, he played on both the basketball and baseball teams, and he misses his coaches.

“I shared memories from freshman year up until now and I’m not able to spend the last year with them,” he said.

He also played football as a freshman and sophomore. At Riverhead, he will play baseball in the spring but opted not to play basketball. After Mercy closed, there were no offseason workouts to attend, so when it came time to try out for basketball, he didn’t feel prepared.

“I went from not even 500 students to almost 2,000 kids, so there’s a big difference there, like in the class sizes,” Chris said.

A plus side to transferring, he said, is that he’s now taking more college-level classes that, unlike AP classes, don’t require an exam to receive college credits before graduating.

Paul Schmidt 

Grade: Senior

School: Riverhead High School

Paul Schmidt, 18, of Wading River had to decide whether to follow many of his friends to St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School or start fresh at Riverhead High School. Ultimately, he chose the latter.

“I had friends that I grew up with, family friends that went to Riverhead to help me through the process,” he said. “Definitely leaving was rough because I went to school with kids at Mercy for 10 or more years.”

He started his final year of high school in Riverhead in September, but was missing his lifelong friend.

“My best friend went to St. John the Baptist in West Islip, so it was tough not going to school with him because we’ve been going to school since kindergarten,” Paul said.

When he first realized the school was closing, he remembers the entire Mercy community becoming extremely saddened by the news.

“It was the talk of the school the whole second half of the year, about how our school was closing,” Paul said. “It was like walking into a wake when Mercy closed.”

The long distance from his home to the nearest Catholic school was a key factor in his decision.

He led an active career at Bishop McGann-Mercy, playing football and baseball. He was also in the Red Cross club, weightlifting club and cycling club. At Riverhead, he didn’t join any clubs but hopes to join the baseball team this spring. He opted not to join the football team since his part-time job kept him occupied.

The biggest culture shock was the sheer size of the school and number of students inside.

“There is just a lot more people and the hallways are a lot more crowded,” he said. “Everyone’s really nice to me though. All the teachers were asking me how I was doing and they helped me a lot.”

“At Mercy, everybody knew each other and it was kind of like a family, and that’s the way I liked it,” Paul added.

At Riverhead, he meets new people every day. “That’s great too, though,” he said.

Fiona Merrill
Grade: Senior
School: Southold High School

About an hour of convincing and a disappointing look from her mother.

That’s what it took for Fiona Merrill of Southold to realize Bishop McGann-Mercy was no more.

“I was in a tutoring session, and I got a text from my friend, and as soon as she texted me that the school was closing, I was like, ‘Oh, very funny prank,’ ” she said. “When my mom picked me up from the tutoring session…I immediately broke down.”

For the rest of the school year, Fiona said, it was all she and her friends could focus on.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said.

For Fiona, Catholic school wasn’t an option, because the distance to Saint John the Baptist, which also operates under the Diocese of Rockville Centre, was simply too far, she said.

“I came to terms quickly that the most realistic thing for me would be to go to Southold,” she said.

Although she’s always lived in Southold, Fiona said that when she started at Southold High School, she felt like a newbie.

“My first month, a lot of my teachers were like, ‘Where did you move from? What was your last school?’ ” she said. “And I’d have to be like, ‘Oh, my school shut down.’ ”

Fiona said few people knew how much she struggled to transition from Mercy to Southold. She tried to get through it with a smile, but that didn’t help, she said.

“I kind of tried to put a funny twist on it when I explained [the transition] to people,” she said. “I made people think I was handling it well. Which ties into my transition being so hard. Not even my friends realized how hard of a transition it was for me because I was brushing it off.”

A big part of Fiona’s school involvement at Mercy, she said, was being junior class president. She was also the chairman of Mercy on a Mission, a club which raises money for charity. But Southold students picked their class president prior to Fiona’s entry, and a similar charity club doesn’t exist at the high school.

“For student government and Mercy on a Mission, I was so close to my advisers. I think that’s what I miss the most,” she said. “I’m trying to get involved in little ways at Southold.”

Although she misses her Mercy teachers, she said support from Southold teachers Jessica Ellwood — virtual enterprise — and Jason Wesnofske — video production — helped her adjust.

“From the beginning of the year, they were making sure I was OK, trying to make it the easiest transition possible,” she said. “They’ve been amazing.”

The best thing she can do from here, she said, is recognize that other students are struggling too.

“I know it’s been hard for a lot of people, not just me,” she said.

Karina Ellis
Grade: Senior
High School: St. John The Baptist

Karina Ellis of Jamesport was on a run when she received a text message from one of her peers at Bishop McGann-Mercy.

“You have to read this RIGHT NOW,” the text read.

Karina, 17, shrugged it off. When she got home, she said she started freaking out: Her high school was closing.

“I was wondering where I’d go, because the next Catholic school is so far away, it would be more than an hour for me to get there,” she said. “But, I’ve been going to Catholic school my whole life, I kind of wanted to graduate from one.”

She said she was torn between two options: St. John the Baptist Diocesan High School, a private Catholic school nearly an hour away, or early acceptance to Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. She had already completed the necessary credits to graduate, but she feared the abruptness of the transition.

But then, another roadblock. Immaculata told her because they didn’t have her SAT scores, it would be difficult to accept her.

“People already had their acceptance letters, so it would have been hard for me even though I already had all my credits ready, it all would’ve been very rushed,” she said.

With no other option, she fell back on St. John the Baptist.

Now, Karina wakes up around 5:30 a.m. during the week and drives five miles from her home in Jamesport to her bus stop in Riverhead. The bus picks her up at 6:10 a.m. for the trip to West Islip.

She said that once she started shadowing another student at St. John, she got the feel for the school.

“They were a little more strict than Mercy, they had more rules, different traditions, so I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to adjust to this,’ ” she said.

During the transfer, Karina was able to maintain her status in the National Honor Society, but could no longer hold the position of student government vice president — one of her favorite roles while at Mercy.

“The position was already picked last year for St. John’s, so I wasn’t able to be a part of that this year,” she said.

But the long distance between Jamesport and West Islip hasn’t stopped Karina from playing tennis. Karina said she was on the tennis team at Mercy and the tennis season at St. John the Baptist just concluded.

“I knew three other girls at St. John’s from out east that did tennis, so we were able to carpool on days we had off when we had games,” she said. “When we had games, though, it was a long night. Games were in Queens, so I wouldn’t get home till 11 o’clock at night.”

While Karina said she’s well-adjusted to her new schedule, she misses Mercy’s tightknit community.

“I definitely miss the family-feel of it,” she said. “We were a lot closer, because it was a smaller school, so I got to see friends more often.”

Although some of her Mercy friends now attend public school, she said, she’s still in touch with them.

“Just the thought of not being able to graduate with them is kind of sad,” Karina said. “I wanted to since I’ve been with them for so long.”

Katie Devaney
Grade: Senior
School: Saint Anthony’s High School

In her college application essay, 17-year-old Katie Devaney begins: “Change is the only constant in life.”

She goes on to chronicle the last eight months of her life, starting March 12 with an earth-shattering announcement. Bishop McGann-Mercy Diocesan High School, where she was a junior, was to close.

In September, she traded Mercy’s green and gold for Saint Anthony’s black and gold to finish her high school career.

“The hardest thing is not being able to graduate with everyone I’ve known since seventh grade,” Katie said from her Wading River home last week.

There were no signs of the closure she can recall. Her volleyball season had been impacted by ongoing renovations in the gymnasium. Parents sought to raise funds for a second bus for the school. A prospective student open house was scheduled for the following week after the announcement came.

Clutching a tissue, Katie wiped a tear away, nodding her head in disbelief. “I was furious. I didn’t know how they could just do that to us. Telling us over email was cowardly.”

There were happy glimmers amid the uncertainty. A junior prom was held for the first time last May. Commiserating, cracking jokes and enjoying the last moments of Mercy High became a bond among students.

Since September, Katie drives 40 miles each way to the Huntington campus — a cheaper option than busing.

The first day was overwhelming.

“I didn’t know a single person in my homeroom,” she said, feeling small as the bell rang and hordes of students spilled into the halls. Mercy enrolled about 350 students in grades 7-12. In June, Katie will graduate with approximately 600 others.

Fast forward a few weeks and Katie earned a homecoming nomination.

“All the Mercy girls nominated each other,” she said, flashing a wide smile. “I thought it’d be fun to try out.”

After an interview in front of 25 other students representing different sectors of the school, she made it to the top-five and was crowned Homecoming Princess.

Whereas Mercy football games felt like a close-knit family gathering, Saint Anthony’s games feel like the big leagues, she said. Attending them has become a new Devaney family tradition.

She’s confident that she made the right choice at Saint Anthony’s, where she’s gotten involved with the student council and the exclusive Kolbe Society, a student-led peer ministry group.

As she looks to the next chapter, Katie still struggles to strike a balance between nostalgia and optimism. There are lots of unanswered questions, such as what will become of Mercy’s campus. “It would give us closure,” Katie said, to know.

Writing out those thoughts in her college essay has been cathartic. “It’s made me appreciate what I have and where I’m at.”