Seminole Ridge High School valedictorian Annika Collado is ready to leave the Hawks’ nest and soar with the Eagles at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. And she’ll be swinging for birdies, too, as she peruses her out-of-the-classroom passion — golf.
“I committed to golf like I did to my academics,” said Collado after being named SRHS’s top scholar for 2025. “I put homework and golf on the same level.”
Collado has been successful at both, earning a 3.98 GPA and a 5.28 weighted HPA while playing on the Seminole Ridge golf team and reaching the district and regional tournaments all four years. During much of that time, she also was caddying at Pine Tree Golf Club in Boynton Beach and working with younger players as a junior coach with First Tee of the Palm Beaches.
Collado said while she may not try to play on FGCU’s golf team, she’ll certainly continue to pursue the sport at the club level.
Joining Collado on stage will be Jake Wallace, who was named Seminole Ridge’s salutatorian. Collado’s mother, Kim, and Wallace’s mother, Brenda, both teach in the Seminole Ridge math department. Wallace declined to be interviewed for this story.
Collado and Wallace are two of the 542 SRHS students who are scheduled to graduate Thursday, May 22 at 1 p.m. at the South Florida Fairgrounds.
“Both kids are exceptional students,” SRHS Principal Robert Hatcher said. “Every principal wishes for a school full of students like them.”
Hatcher explained that the selection of valedictorian and salutatorian is based on weighted grade point averages — “both of which were ridiculously high.”
“Since fifth grade, I’ve been at or near the top of my class,” Collado recalled. “I want to study. I like to learn. It just kind of evolved — getting straight A grades as a goal… Then, in the summer before my junior year, I was first or second in my class and realized I could [be valedictorian]. So, I strived for it.”
The decision to go after that lofty goal was hers, Collado said, not something pushed onto her as the daughter of an SRHS teacher. In fact, it was Kim Collado who often encouraged her to “take a breather” from her ambitious study schedule.
“She loves to read… and she has always been good at school,” Kim Collado said. “She has always been very internally driven since she was little.”
What Kim Collado did pass on to her daughter was a love for the certainty of mathematics.
“In a lot of subjects, the answer can be this, or it can be that,” she said. “In math, there is always [a specific] answer. I like that.”
Away from the classroom, Collado’s father, David Collado, who works for Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue, introduced her to golf at age 8, and she embraced it.
At age 13, Collado also embraced First Tee of the Palm Beaches, a youth development organization that teaches “core life lessons” — such as honesty, integrity, sportsmanship and more — through golf.
“Annika has done great things for us,” First Tee of the Palm Beaches CEO Carl Mistretta Jr. said. “And she has benefited from everything First Tee has to offer.”
Those benefits include attendance at national leadership summits, a chance to meet golf legends Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, and a partial four-year Evans Caddie Scholarship through the recently established Scotty Foundation for people associated with Pine Tree Golf Club who are “passionate about positively impacting their lives and the game of golf.”
“Annika is a good player… and she likes to volunteer with the little kids,” Mistretta said. “We like to see the older kids giving back.”
Collado said the life lessons taught through First Tee “go way beyond golf” and have allowed her to bond with some of kids she coaches on the putting green.
Hatcher said that is typical of Collado.
“She’s a friend to anyone who needs one,” he said, which is reflected in her leadership of the Students for Students Club, which helps new and other students find connectivity in a school with more than 2,300 students.
While the mathematics of it may not add up monetarily, Collado said that despite the high-income career her academic standing could lead to at a major university, she is opting for a smaller college and a child psychology major.
“I want a job that’s fulfilling… [that] I have a passion for, not just for the money,” she said.
