MMI holds 121st commencement MMI conducted its 121st Commencement Exercises on May 23, as seniors were awarded diplomas by Brian G. Lucas ’84, chairman of MMI’s Board of Directors. The commencement address was delivered by Michael Watahovich ’61, who has dedicated his career to physical activity and education. He worked as a health and physical education instructor for the Hazleton Area School District for 31 years, teaching students from kindergarten to grade 12. He worked with the Luzerne Intermediate Unit 18 as a GED instructor, Job
Club supervisor and testing specialist, providing GED and psychological testing and driver training instruction to Pennsylvania CareerLink clients. Today, he is the fitness director at First Quality Nonwovens and performs clinical hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming (NLP) at Degenhart Chiropractic. Watahovich competed in a number of state, regional, national and international powerlifting contests, earning first place in many of those contests. He was inducted into MMI’s Wall of Fame for Athletic Achievement in 2010 and inducted into the Hazleton Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2011. Watahovich spoke to Michael Watahovich ’61 (standing before two banners honoring him as a 1,000students about what he point scorer and Wall of Fame recipient) described as “the Momentum delivers the Founder’s Day address during Factor,” saying, “While it commencement. may take 10 units of energy to get you moving in a particular direction, it takes only one unit of energy to keep you moving once you’re in motion. You have the principle of momentum working in your favor. … How do you use the Momentum Factor in your life? Well, it’s simple. You decide upon one key quality that you need to develop in order to accomplish one key goal that you want to accomplish. Then every single day, you work simultaneously on developing that quality and on taking steps toward the accomplishment of that goal. Once you put the ball into play, you keep the game going, every single day, without stopping.” He said, “When you set clear goals or objectives for yourself, when you dream big dreams and then determine to become the kind of person who’s capable of achieving the kind of goals that you want to achieve, you convince yourself, at a deep, subconscious level, that you’re absolutely unstoppable. You realize at last that nothing in the world can hold you back except your own thinking, and you don’t even let your own thinking limit your potential. See COMMENCEMENT, page 5
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