Golden High School’s The Golden One: 2024

Story and photos by Lila Qualteri

You know it, you love it, and it’s back for its 11th year, the Golden One. For those of you who don’t know, the Golden One is a pageant-esque talent show, in which Golden High School’s senior boys perform, to raise money for various charities. These acts range from comedy to musical talents. This year, the boys from the class of 2025 put on a performance that will not easily be forgotten. So what were the most memorable moments of the 2024 Golden one? Take a look!

The boys started off their performances with the always iconic, always hilarious, group dance. They typically dance to multiple pop songs, and this year there were multiple songs blended into one mashup. The boys entered the stage in rose gold satin robes. Putting on a performance that had the entire audience cracking up. Afterwards, the boys put their suits and tuxes back on and gave their speeches to the audience on why they should be “The Golden One”. The boys represented many different charities with Hope Chest being among the most common. Hope chest is a cancer support organization that makes sweatshirts for women who have had double mastectomies, and help them before and after surgery with their drains. While Hope Chest was not the charity that was supported by a winning contestant, the support for it continues to grow each year.

After the contestants introduced their charities and why the audience should support them, there was a hilarious display of carpool karaoke. For those of you who have never experienced the Golden One, carpool karaoke is where groups of contestants drive around singing songs, usually in a car, (sometimes in a moped), and hope that their musical talent and editing skills will win them the carpool karaoke portion of the competition. Group 1( Brakken McDougal, Wyatt Holtman, Riley Kopser, Logan Dorsey, Gareth Page- Roth,) ended up taking the win for their carpool karaoke, earning the most votes and the most laughs. Preceding this, everyone got to show off their amazing talents. There was magic, rapping, stand-up (or sit-down) comedy, singing, instrumental music and even some DJ work. When all of the contestants finished their acts, there was a miracle minute in which many people threw their money into buckets to support the charities. So after all of this, all the laughs, who won?

After suspenseful voting from the audience, Sean Ridley took the coveted title of “The Golden One” Ridley’s charity was the Freedom Service Dogs of America. FSD is an organization that breeds service dogs to help people with disabilities. Ridley chose this because this past November, his beloved dog Mojo passed away. He made a memorable performance on the drums and overtook the whole auditorium with his sound. When asked about how he felt about winning, he said “I feel great, glad I could help support my charity.” Sean said he was pretty confident going into the Golden One, but after seeing all of the other spectacular acts, his confidence was shaken Clearly he had no reason to worry.

While the Golden One can be a competitive thing, it is overall a very important thing to the Golden community. These boys are not representing themselves, they are representing a charity. All of the boys who participated this year did a phenomenal job and any who decide to better a cause are as Golden as they come. Congratulations to this year’s winner and all the competitors. See you again next year!

Congratulations to all of the contestants!

Noah Anderson – Foothills Animal Shelter

Sam Bontrager – Toys for Tots

Logan Dorsey – Hope Chest

Leif Hansen – Hope Chest

Wyatt Holtman – Hope Chest

Riley Kopser – Hope Chest

Brakken McDougal – Hope Chest

Charlie Lasell – Ray of Hope Cancer Foundation

Noah Limback – Hope Chest

Finn Lindhorst – Ray of Hope Cancer Foundation

Gareth Page-Roth – Protect Our Winters