Irvington Salutatorian Loves the Outdoors

Irvington High School salutatorian Lindsay Shapiro spends so much time outside, she’s decided to major in environmental engineering at the University of Delaware next fall.

“I love the environment,” she said. “I spend a lot of running outside, and I kind of have a connection with treating the planet the way it should be treated. And I’m also a very math- and science-based student, so I kind of wanted to combine my interests.”

In fact, much of the senior and Tarrytown native’s time is spent outdoors. Shapiro runs track and cross country at Irvington High. She’s currently interning with Groundwork Hudson Valley, a nonprofit environmental group based in Yonkers. Shapiro is also the youth representative on the Tarrytown Recreation Advisory Council.

And when she’s hanging out with friends?

“We are always generally outside; I’m a very outdoorsy person,’ she said, laughing while she mentioned that they play all sort of lawn games (Frisbee, croquet, etc.).

Shapiro loves sports, and she found that balancing that with academics was a challenge. But she said being active is very important to her.

“I think it’s important to be well rounded and not one dimensional, which is also something I tried to think about through high school,” she said, noting her involvement playing the saxophone in the band.

Shapiro also does a lot of community service. During her junior year, she took a service trip to Nicaragua during February vacation. Shapiro raised the funds to go on the trip without help from her parents—which she said was really important to her.

“It was kind of a hurdle to get it by my parents because Nicaragua’s not the safest country,” she said.

This summer, Shapiro will be working at a day camp through the Jewish Community Center in Tarrytown. She said her parents wanted her to be home before school started.

Shapiro will be the counselor to the youngest boys’ group, which she said should be interesting.

“I attended sleep-away camp for seven years and I was a counselor there for two, so I have experience with being a counselor,” she said.

She’s looking forward to graduation.

“It should be really nice just to address our class after all these years together,” she said. “I mean, Irvington is a pretty small town, so you know you get those odd-two new students each year, but basically it’s the general 162 kids that you’ve been with since kindergarten. So it’s a really nice day.”

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