Sedona Red Rock High School senior Yonas Rahman wrapped up his time as the Larson Newspapers sports intern during the fall of 2024 and is planning his life after graduation.

Originally from New Jersey, Rahman moved to Sedona with his parents and two sisters in 2019. Although his parents are divorced, they made the move together to support their children.

“Adjusting to the slower pace of [Sedona] was challenging at first because every day in Jersey there was something to do,” Rahman said. “When I moved here, it was kind of boring … We should definitely invest in some more parks, or just more activities, like a rec center, something that kids could do.”

In the fall Rahman will be attending Barrett, The Honors College, at Arizona State University, and plans to study there for two years while majoring in finance — he is currently waiting to find out what scholarships he has earned. Afterwards, he hopes to transfer to a finance school on the East Coast to pursue an MBA.

“Growing up, I knew a lot of people that made a good amount of money but didn’t manage it properly,” Rahman said. “A lot of people that were very close to me were struggling with money, and it’s just because they would spend it on stupid stuff, and they didn’t budget properly. I want to do personal finance, so that I can be a financial consultant to help people that are making the

money but don’t know how to manage it, or maybe aren’t making the money and need a way to manage it. So I just want to be able to help people in that way.”

Rahman said he hoped his experience at ASU would resemble his time there last June during the American Legion Boys State leadership and government simulation program.

“I’m hoping that Barrett will be something like that by having plenty of opportunities for me to succeed, lots of learning and a strong sense of community,” Rahman said.

“I think what I’ll miss the most about Sedona is the closeness of everyone,” Rahman said. “Everyone kind of knows each other, and it’s like everyone’s a mutual friend, and it’s a very tight-knit community. Because when you go to ASU, and there’s 150 people at the school, and 50,000 people just at the one campus that I’m going to, you kind of lose that sense of community.”

He said that waking up at 8 a.m. every day would be what he expects to miss the least.

Rahman said that his hobbies include basketball, skiing, video games and thrifting in Cottonwood. He is a member of the National Honor Society and student council and said that his favorite classes at SRRHS were AP Language with Karyl Goldsmith and AP Calculus with Jim Vogler.

“Last year, I took Algebra II and felt like it was pretty easy, I didn’t have to challenge myself much,” Rahman said. “But this year, in AP Calculus, it’s a completely different experience. It reminds me of Goldsmith’s class. I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much math before. I’m picking up a new concept almost every other day. Now, with the AP test coming up in a month, it’s a bit nerve-wracking, but I also feel like I’ve learned the most in that class.”

Goldsmith originally approached Rahman about the opportunity at Larson Newspapers, believing that his experience in Advanced Placement Language and his coursework AP Literature made him a strong candidate.

“I had recently quit a job that I did not feel was suited for me anymore, and I thought I’d be a good fit,” Rahman said. “It was all sports stories, except for one story that I wrote for the [Lifestyles of Sedona]magazine, but I wasn’t able to do any basketball [stories] because I was on the basketball team.”

The internship was funded through a grant from the Arizona Media Association and Arizona Local News Foundation. Rahman said that covering sports while being enrolled at SRRHS posed several challenges.

“A lot of my classmates figured that out, too, because when they realized what I was doing, they’d say things like, ‘Don’t tell Yonas, he’s going to put it in the paper,’” Rahman said. “It was definitely hard, especially when some of the sports teams weren’t doing well. You can’t say they’re doing great when they’re not, but you also don’t want to criticize people you’re close with or who you know personally. It was challenging not because I wanted to be harsh — but because during games, we just didn’t play well … When you know all the players, it’s tough.”

While journalism isn’t his professional path, he cited the experience as making him want to work harder on his future because he was part of a professional environment.

“Even though it was a casual internship, I didn’t have to dress up in a suit … I had a lot of fun,” Rahman said of the experience. “It introduced me into the corporate side of journalism and how it works with the deadline, your editor is going to supervise. Growing up I never associated [journalism] with sports … I associated journalism a lot with politics.

“I was able to go to the homecoming game for Mingus, and I was able to be on the sidelines and do interviews. The experience made me realize how much work sports journalism is, and that journalism has a whole bunch of different avenues for people to explore.”

He added that the lifestyle reporting aspect of the internship also helped him gain a deeper appreciation for his peers.

“One of the people I interviewed was [fellow student] Nic McAtee. I knew he did mountain biking, but then I learned that he does sailing and off-roading,” Rahman added. “Because it’s such a small school you figure you kind of know everyone, but you have to talk to people to get to know all the crazy stuff that they actually do, that people have a lot more going on than you hear about.”

“Writing about Sedona uplifted my view about it,” Rahman said. “I always saw Sedona as kind of a boring place … but after doing the internship and getting more involved in the community … it made me realize that there’s so much more to Sedona than what meets the eye. It’s not all red rocks, but you have to explore to find it.”