While Witney Workman’s curly red hair is spectacular, it is just one of the many outstanding facets of the Whitefish High School senior.  

She served as class president her junior and senior years, was on the Student Outreach Committee, and was involved in the Leo Club and the FREEFLOW club. She helped keep the school’s microgreen club going and she was in the National Honor Society. 

She spent three of her high school years working at The Farmers Stand and managed to participate in a season of soccer and run cross country. She also trained for and completed a marathon in the summer between her sophomore and junior year. 

“You think the race is going to be the hard part but no, it's the training,” she said. “The motivation and just forcing yourself to wake up and run 16 miles all the time. Sometimes you get to the end and you're like, ‘Why am I doing this?’  

"But after the race is over, it all makes sense,” she added. “That was a big accomplishment.”

Twenty days after high school graduation, she will head to New London, Connecticut, and the United States Coast Guard Academy. 

Her goal is to graduate from the Academy in four years with a degree in marine science and go to flight school. If all goes according to plan, she’ll then fulfill a 13-year service commitment.  

“I'm so excited. It's like everything I've dreamed of all in one place,” she said, adding she was torn for a while between the Air Force and the Coast Guard. “But I was more excited about the mission of the Coast Guard, being more of a supportive service and saving lives. That was a pull for me.”

Her love of flying began when a classmate and his father took her on a discovery flight. She sat in the left seat of the Cessna 172 and loved every minute of it.  

“From that moment on, I just knew it was what I wanted to do,” she said. “Now I’m hoping to make a career out of it.” 

Workman obtained her private pilot’s license and wants to move from flying small private planes to flying C130s, huge, four engine turboprop aircraft, in the Coast Guard. 

In 2015, when she was 8 years old, Workman and her family moved to Whitefish from Wisconsin, where she grew up playing in and around the water at her family’s marina. She traveled often and spent time near the ocean, too, and earned her advanced scuba certification. 

“Just being on the water, in the water, everything -- I've just always loved it,” she said. “It's been an interest for as long as I can remember.” 

She recalled a memorable trip with the FREEFLOW club to Oregon where she said they studied “estuaries and everything awesome.” Workman was involved in the agriculture program at school until both agriculture teachers retired and the class ended. 

“I've always been super all over like just environmental science in general,” Workman said. “I took AP Bio my junior year, that was my favorite class ever. After that, I was, I was pretty sure going into marine biology.” 

She said her mom, Tigrr and dad, Craig, are excited and supportive. She is the first of four siblings to go into the military, though her grandfather was in the Navy and is excited for her, too.

From land to air to water, Workman has had four remarkable years at Whitefish High School and is headed for bigger adventures.  

As for the element of fire, she responded, “I’m a ginger.”