Then: Hagerty opened in 2005 to a class of only freshmen. It was commonly viewed as the little brother to the much older and more established Oviedo High School, even dubbed “Oviedo East” in the community.

 “You definitely had a stigma. I mean, we all felt it. [People thought] ‘It’s no good, the sports stink,’” coach Josh Kohn said.

Having to jumpstart a culture from scratch, it took years for Hagerty to move past this reputation.

Now: With time and success, Hagerty developed into a unique school with its own culture, spirit, and community. 

“We’ve come a long way. Our students have come a long way. We used to be the homecoming opponent for everybody, and that’s not the case any more. We were always everybody’s senior nights in all the other sports, and that’s not the case any more. Now we make other people our senior nights and our homecoming opponents. So it’s nice to be on the other side,” assistant principal Christy Tibbits-Bryce said.

Then: Hagerty opened with a full offering of sports such as basketball, football and soccer. However, it took several years for the school to fully add varsity teams to the offered sports— It took longer for teams to be able to compete. In the early years, the school lost athletes who transferred to other schools for more established sports programs.

“Why, if I was a good athlete, am I going to go to the school that’s brand new when Oviedo has all the tradition and all the success over the years?” Kohn said. 

Now: With persistence, the school grew its sports teams to a competitive level. 

“Kohn was coaching basketball with a bunch of little ninth graders playing against Jones, who was a state champion for years in a row, getting destroyed,” Tibbits-Bryce said.  “Now, we’re beating those teams and playing right there with them, and playing with the Oviedos and the Lake Marys and the Seminoles.” 

Then: When Hagerty High School first opened, it only had a small class of freshmen. Coming straight from middle school, the first class had no understanding of what high school life and traditions were like. 

“We, as faculty and administration, had to basically take their hand and walk them through everything that was going to happen,” Sam Momary, the inaugural principal said. 

Now: The groundwork laid by the opening staff members of Hagerty paid off, eventually forming the Husky culture we know today. Student leadership became integral to this, with upperclassmen showing underclassmen the ropes.

 “We talked a lot about building a tradition of excellence. I think for a lot of us, it was more, ‘How do we build this culture of supportive excellence in the classroom, band field, athletic fields?’” assistant superintendent Mike Rice, founder of the band program said. “And I think that as the competition got better, as the students got older, and they started buying in more and having that feeling of, ‘This is our campus. It’s not Oviedo East.’ It was really cool to see that transition happen and students start stepping up in different ways.”

Then: The campus originally served as Lawton Chiles Middle School. It only had buildings 2, 3, 4 and the cafeteria. Different rooms served different functions—the current weight room was first a band room; the portables used to be a place for administration to work. In its early years, the smaller size was able to accommodate the smaller school population. 

“I remember when the bell would ring, and it’d be like, just a few 100 kids walking around this area,” Kohn said. 

Now: As the school grew, the campus did with it. Now, buildings 6, 7, 9, including the auditorium and competition gym have all been added, and the size of the cafeteria was doubled. This gave students access to far more and improved facilities on campus. It also gave the growing population of the school much more room.

 “You look out there now? It’s going to be packed,” said Kohn. 

Then: “I remember being in the gym, and it was just like, naked,” Kohn said.

It took the school years to win its first banner. It remained as the lone accolade to Hagerty’s name and walls for a long time.

“The whole gym was nothing but the one. At a high school you like to have a lot of sports banners—football and basketball and tennis and golf—and we had one banner, and it was the bowling conference championship.”

Now: Hagerty’s extracurriculars have brought home a multitude of different awards and banners. Most recently, the school’s athletic department earned the Seminole Athletic Conference Championship.

“I have moments when I look in there now and I think, ‘There really was a time when there was nothing here.’ It’s surreal to think that I saw when there was nothing. It’s been fun to watch it grow right in front of you,” Kohn said. 

Even after this improvement, the school’s athletics shows no signs of slowing down. 

“Our athletic standing in the district is at the top. It usually comes down to three high performing schools, the one right down the street, the one over there in Lake Mary, and then ourselves,” said athletic director Jay Getty. “Earning a spot on our teams is a challenge but it’s one our students accept.” 

In 20 years, the school has grown in many ways: in spirit, in community standing, in sports competitiveness, in the number of students and staff and even in actual size. However, the standard of excellence has been maintained throughout. 

“That was the goal and the vision that we set out with,” said Momary. “That was the goal we worked around. We talked about the culture that we wanted to build, the camaraderie and the spirit was all about excellence and about helping kids achieve their highest level. We worked everything around that vision of developing excellence in everything that we did.”