Mountain View golf’s Kaiya De Silva takes school spirit to another level

Kaiya De Silva, a Mountain View High School senior, is not only proud to represent the school as a member of the girl’s golf team but takes pride in helping recognize all of her Toro classmates and their contributions.

Golf has become a platform for De Silva to not only connect more with her grandfather but an opportunity to connect with other students. It’s helped her gain pride in playing for a team that doesn’t get the same recognition as the other sports at Mountain View.

“It’s just been fun because we’ve rotated out planning team dinners, we planned out our uniforms and designed them, and this year we decided to get team golf bags and get our last names embroidered on them,” De Silva said. “It was something our school necessarily hasn’t really done before because the girl’s golf team doesn’t necessarily get as much funding as the boys football team, for example. I feel like getting those things boosted everyone’s spirits.”

Wanting to get more involved with the school, De Silva ran for the Mountain View student council back in her sophomore year.

“The reason I wanted to be in student council was because I saw everybody else on campus and they had their own little niche,” De Silva said. “I’ve always been a very social person and I really wanted to find something that was my own and I could meet multiple people.”

After falling short in a race with one of her close friends, De Silva looked away from the student council and set her eyes on the school’s yearbook committee. Since that decision, De Silva has grown within the group. She’s now editor in chief and has an appreciation for everyone putting together the yearbook.

“There are literally my favorite people ever,” De Silva said. “I come in every morning — yearbook is my first and second hour of school — and they just make me smile so much. They’re so hard-working, and they’re always eager to go try new things and learn new things.”

Her appreciation for the group was on full display when she organized a meeting with Mountain View’s principal and athletic director for the purpose of recognizing the amount of extra time outside of class the yearbook committee puts into covering Toro athletics.

The meeting resulted in all of the students working on the yearbook receiving a varsity letter.

“I already have my varsity letter from all my other sports and extracurricular activities so it wasn’t really that I wanted a varsity letter,” De Silva. “I know that a bunch of my editors have quit their sports because they wanted to do yearbook. I just looked at how selfless that they have become and just decided that they deserved it.”

Outside of working on the yearbook and practicing golf, De Silva is also a member of the National Honor Society, taking part in community service outside of Mountain View.

“We’ve been running the elementary school fall carnival and doing donation drives for refugee camps and setting up refugee homes,” De Silva said. “It’s just really cool to play like a different part in our community rather than providing entertainment that a sports team would do — or like yearbook, which is faceted towards sharing stories.”

De Silva has plans to attend Utah State University and pursue a career as a veterinarian but will always continue to be a social butterfly and put her extra time back into her community.

“My biggest thing is always be kind to people, because you don’t know what’s going on in their lives,” De Silva said. “You being happy and showing kindness in that moment could go a long way.”