Growing up in an oil town can create a number of unique opportunities. Watford City may be the center of it all too with their remarkable community facilities and school amenities.
Ally Cross, Macee Franz and Kanyon Tschetter are three young leaders who have risen to the challenge of improving their community and themselves.
As Ambassadors the three have each had unique experiences that combine work, school and life. The opportunities are designed to incorporate industry, government, education and social awareness.
Ally talks about her passion for nursing and being active in basketball, volleyball and track. Ally also started a Pen Pal Program with High School Students and Elementary Students that generated great success with reading, writing and engagement.
Macee is pursuing an interest in social work. Currently she is on the County Community Coalition, which is a designated seat at the county’s table for high school students.
Macee is also an exception figure skater active with suicide awareness runs and other school activities.
Kanyon has already begun his work in the trades by engaging in a cooperative work experience with Silver Fox Pipeline.
Kanyon is also active with the local youth and excels in baseball, football and basketball.
Below is the raw, unedited transcript from our artificial intelligence translator.
Jason Spiess
Welcome to the saturday Morning Storytellers edition here on the crude life live from the Missouri Inn and suites in Watford City just concluding up rib fest. Here is our work hard play hard summer destination week continues alley cross macey France and canyon cheddar joining us here all in Watford City High
School and uh, we'll start with Macy France Wildcard Guys look at that. We're starting over there. Macy. What year are you gonna pull you up to the mic? Here. There you go. I'm
Macee Franz
a senior this year.
Jason Spiess
Senior this year. All right. So what kind of activities are you gonna be into this year? Do you know
Macee Franz
yet? Um, I'll be doing track and figure skating and then obviously the ...
Jason Spiess
you're gonna be in the master program, huh? All right. Well, I'm gonna talk to you about our environmental ambassador program, which we're working with Pat wit. Uh, make sure that there's environmental options for you kids as far as the environmental energy options for the kids out there as well. How about in the community, what types of things are you active in?
Macee Franz
Um, I'm active in the coalition meetings that we have at the courthouse and I've been active in like multiple like 5K runs like the suicide awareness run in the county world. One in the center one. What's
Jason Spiess
a county county community coalition? It's
Macee Franz
like where we get all together and talk about like how things benefit the community. Like what we can do for like the parents to help benefit the kids or like the kids benefit the parents
Jason Spiess
and you get invited to that. Yeah,
Macee Franz
there's three of us. I get to go and sit in on it and there's like cops there and like a lot of different people from the community.
Jason Spiess
That's outstanding. I mean there's, that's diversity right there. That's inclusion. That's getting given, you know, your generation of sit at the table whether they listen to you or not, it's up to them, but at least they're giving you a platform. That's fantastic. So how long you been doing
Macee Franz
that? Okay,
Jason Spiess
great, Great. Uh, let's go to canyon cheddar since he's holding the miC ambassador chair for 21 22 school year boy. What kind of things you got planned?
Kanyon Tschetter
Um, me and Pat got a lot of stuff planned. Um, you know, Pat, he's always looking ahead
Jason Spiess
kind of a whip cracker motivator, isn't he? What's your background by the way?
Kanyon Tschetter
Um, I'm originally from Watford City. I've been here my whole life. Um, I've always played sports. Sports is kind of my passion. I've been playing basketball since probably the kindergarten and baseball and football. I also play
Jason Spiess
okay. And sports sports sports. We say it three times because it's so important. We gotta say it three times on our show. Yeah, actually five times. A lot of times we say it. How about, what are you looking at doing after high school, what kind of career wise, career wise?
Kanyon Tschetter
Um, I'm into the trades right now. I don't exactly know what I'm gonna do yet, but the
Jason Spiess
trade is always trade then you already are doing it.
Kanyon Tschetter
Yeah, the trades is always a good option to go to. Well it
Jason Spiess
is because you're getting your foundation done. What kind of trades are you into right now?
Kanyon Tschetter
Um, so this year I'll be working with Silver Fox welding and that's something new for me. I took a welding class last year and I liked it so I thought I might as well try that out.
Jason Spiess
There are a lot of kids your age welding,
Kanyon Tschetter
There's quite a few. Yeah, yeah. Especially in Watford.
Jason Spiess
Okay. What do you guys just kind of weld stuff on the side just for fun. Yeah,
Kanyon Tschetter
I mean some kids will bring their pickup in and do stuff on there. That's what I was thinking.
Jason Spiess
Yeah, you guys in the demolition derbies too and all that. No, no. Okay, that's a different kind of welding. You'll get to that. How about baseball? You mentioned you're in baseball. I used to be a baseball player. What position did you play?
Kanyon Tschetter
Um play I'm a catcher and um whenever I don't catch I kind of just play wherever my coach really wants me to.
Jason Spiess
Okay, okay. I was a catcher as well and then I played first base and pitcher. Okay, but
Kanyon Tschetter
I don't I don't
Jason Spiess
pitch, you don't pitch. Okay, I was I started as a pitcher but then catcher because basically we didn't have a catcher on our team and when you're, you can play any position, you just end up there. It sounds like you ended up
Kanyon Tschetter
there. Yeah. You got to be a different, you got to be a little bit crazy to play catcher. Sometimes you
Jason Spiess
do. Oh, and you got to realize your knees and the stance and all that different stuff because you're squatting for nine innings.
Kanyon Tschetter
Yeah. And some of the things can get along sometimes.
Jason Spiess
Yes, they can, you know, getting around the horn basically just a stretch the legs as a catcher. So anyway, have you got a favorite team in the majors?
Kanyon Tschetter
Um, my dad like ...
Jason Spiess
had to pro tryouts with the reds and the braves and they both told me I'm too slow. Gotta race at least the second off my 40 time. And I looked in the mirror and that ain't gonna happen. Okay. That was a cross country runner. So I ain't in the spring game there. But so are you looking anywhere for college
Kanyon Tschetter
when you're done? Um, I'll probably end up staying in state. I might go to like try to find a jUCO somewhere and work my way out. Are
Jason Spiess
you looking to pursue sports? Yeah, I could tell. Okay. Yeah. You might want to look at it at a tech school. I mean, you've already got, you know, I don't know which tech schools have sports outside of Georgia. Tech, but I know that they do some do so
Kanyon Tschetter
yeah, I know they, they're pretty good with like the trades and everything? They talked to me a little bit about baseball. So that's always an option for me.
Jason Spiess
That's right. Got a great jUCo, don't they? Yeah, they do bismarck state used to, I'm not sure exactly. I gotta refresh myself there brock Lesnar was there. That's why I don't know about bismarck state, but that was a wrestling program. So uh, well I wish you luck on that. So the ambassador chair for 2021 we're gonna circle back to you throughout the year to find out what's going on.
Get an update on what's going on. But I ask you to hand the mic over to Al I know. I'm sorry. Allie cross. Right. That's who we're talking to now. I got a little mixed up there. So uh, what's happening? And you're, you're a what year?
Ally Cross
Junior?
Jason Spiess
Junior. Okay. Are you an ambassador program as well. Okay. When did you
Ally Cross
join? I joined last year. Like middle of last year. Okay. And
Jason Spiess
what types of things are you doing in there?
Ally Cross
Um, right now we have the buddy program, which is where high school students go and eat with elementary students once a week. And I incorporated the like having pen pals in it. So I talked to the good shepherd home and horizon assisted living. And they gave us resident names.
Jason Spiess
Yeah boy, I'm getting, I'm getting confused here. Some words I think are too old. But are you actually writing like handwriting with a pen?
Ally Cross
Yeah, they have a prompts that I give them like what are you excited for this summer? And they just write to them and I deliver the letters, type it
Jason Spiess
or write it, write it. Oh my word. That's outstanding. True story here. Um Was it grand rapids? Minnesota? I think it was for hibbing anyway, somewhere up in northern Minnesota. A friend of mine's grandson was the valedictorian and that means he's the smartest guy in the class, right? At least it used to. And G. P. A. Wise anyways and so his grandma gave him a, you know card graduation card with money and this and that he was grandma. Can you read this to me? Because she wrote in
cursive. He was the valedictorian of the class and he couldn't read cursive. So it obviously wasn't on him. That was a systematic problem there. So kudos for continuing the communication on all forms, whether it be sign language written language, you know, I mean I see we're going backwards to Egyptian emojis now as a society. So good for you for keeping kids writing. A lot of schools don't even do handwriting anymore for typing and keyboarding. So
Ally Cross
Yeah, I have about six pen pals right now, like on my personal life and a lot of them write cursive. So
Jason Spiess
for real, my son, he started in monastery and they teach you cursive because that's the natural way that we write as a species. And then when he got to middle school, he stopped in monastery, they made him do block writing. Like, like whatever. Writing, whatever that's called handwriting, whatever.
And it's just, his handwriting is terrible because he doesn't practice it every day. He doesn't write. No, it's the text. You know what I mean? That sort of thing. So again, kudos to that. What other things are you active in sports
Ally Cross
at all? Yeah, I do volleyball, basketball and softball. Oh
Jason Spiess
wow. Okay. Volleyball, basketball and softball. Softball. During the summer. Is that spring?
Ally Cross
It's both, we have a spring team and a summer team. Okay. Through the school. No, it's through the rough rider center.
Jason Spiess
Okay. Or whatever they're called now. They used to be called clubs back in the day. I can't even believe pen pals, still a word. I thought that would've, that would've went out with eight track and VHS tapes, you know? So what do you want to do and you grow up or after? Well, never mind. I haven't grown up yet. What do you want to do in the next five years?
Ally Cross
Um, I want to go to, I'm looking at University of mary and becoming a registered nurse.
Jason Spiess
Oh, great. That'll be outstanding. So. Okay. Well let's see. Let's bring her back down to Macy and let's talk a little bit about what, what types of advice would you have for kids that are moving in here or parents, this should be easy for you because you sit on a council that does this stuff all the time.
So right now we're talking to either the parents or you know, kids are listening to this. They might be, I guess on the radio. I just can't see a lot of kids downloading the podcast, the crude life, but maybe and you'll change that right here with me. What types of things should they be aware
Macee Franz
of? Um, I think you should just be aware of what's going on in your community like to get involved in anything you're interested in because I know there's a lot of things that kids are interested in and they're just too scared to do. So I would just get involved in anything and get to know people cause like the more people, you know the better.
And I've learned that a lot with Pat, it's like the more, you know, the more people, you know, the more like opportunities open up for you. So I just think get involved and start to get to know more people,
Jason Spiess
not even really even take a leadership position in there. Just get involved, get involved and and be a part of the energy that that, that a group can create, you know, like minded people thinking positive messages. You know, that's amazing to be a part of that. Uh Candy, how about you? You know, you are part of baseball teams and other sports teams, you know, that you're obviously involved. So it's been a second nature for you? Yeah, types of advice do you have?
Kanyon Tschetter
I kind of agree with Macy. I think just getting involved in clubs is one of the biggest ways to meet new friends and fit in with everybody else.
Jason Spiess
Okay, how about you? Ali cross, what kind of advice would you have the parents or all the kids that are listening to the show? You know kids love the crude life
Ally Cross
I think for parents just like encouraging your kids to do what they want because I know like I wasn't, I was kind of like a little bit scared to join the ambassador program because I wasn't sure what it was and then my mom told me I should join and so I'm glad that I did now because there's so many opportunities that have opened up for me. Okay,
Jason Spiess
great, great. Well, good luck with the ambassador program. Like I said, I'm gonna be checking back on this and throughout the year, seeing what's happening with that. And we are gonna be doing some energy environmental projects as well and, and so you can obviously find out more about that through Pat or if I'm back in town and we invite you to be part of that because we're gonna be doing some tree planting things and uh some, you know, we probably even get the principle involved
here from the high school with some of the recycling programs and that sort of thing. We're actually gonna be in Gillette Wyoming in a couple of weeks cleaning some trucking stops, truck stops, have you ever been to a truck stop lately? It's like the new garbage pit of the world man and all these covid masks are up against fences and edge of towns, they catch everything and you know these
trucking places, it's just so we're gonna help clean up that a little bit in Gillette Wyoming. So uh any final words? Anything you guys want to add? Anything we missed out on? No,
Kanyon Tschetter
I'm
Jason Spiess
okay. Oh there's the bat phone. Alright, thank you guys.
The Crude Life Podcast: Ally Cross, Macee Franz and Kanyon Tschetter