During each year of high school, St. Dominic students attend a retreat put on by our campus ministry. Campus ministers Mrs. Lang and Mr. Struttmann work tirelessly to make our school community as faith-filled and inspiring as possible, which was certainly the case during the retreats for all of our freshmen and sophomores this past Wednesday.

Traditionally, the freshman retreat and the sophomore retreat take place on different days. In addition, the sophomore retreat has usually been separated into an all-boys retreat and an all-girls retreat up until last year; however, the classes of 2022 and 2023 had a completely different experience, as both retreats took place at the same time on Wednesday. This made the day much easier on faculty and staff, who only had to adjust their teaching plans for one day instead of two.

Rather than remaining at school for their retreat, the sophomores were split up into two groups, one of which went to the Knights of Columbus Hall in Flint Hill, while the other went to Immaculate Heart of Mary in New Melle.

Both sophomore groups heard talks about being children of God and how our self-esteem should be rooted in that rather than in superficial standards of this world. The experience of a co-ed retreat was certainly a special one, as we are a co-ed school, and it is important for us to grow as a whole community.

The freshmen also got to grow as a community, as they played games to get to know each other, did a scavenger hunt to learn more about their school and made blankets as an act of service.

At the end of the day, all freshmen and sophomores gathered at St. Dominic for a Mass said by Father Patrick to close out the day.

Thank you to Mrs. Lang and Mr. Struttmann for all the hard work they put into these retreats, and we hope that everyone had a fun and enriching time!