By MADELINE REIDA

Staff writer

Marion High School’s Class of 2016 isn’t going to a diner or a ballroom for its class reunion. Instead, the class is having a hot dog roast at Marion County Lake.

“We used to have a lot of bonfires, so I’m really looking forward to it,” alumnus Bailey (Robson) Edmondson said. “It feels like a really small-town thing.”

Edmondson participated in basketball (which her father coached), cheerleading, and a school musical at Marion High.

“I did a lot in high school,” she said. “Each activity had a different set of friends, so it was a really fun way to know a bunch of people.”

Edmondson has been working at Heritage Christian Academy in Olathe as a school nurse and academic support coordinator since July. She has taken after her dad by becoming an assistant basketball coach.

She also manages a home bakery, inspired by working with Rachel Collett at CB Baked Goods as well as by serving a summer after college as head baker at a ranch in Colorado.

“I would be baking for 100 people, three meals a day, seven days a week,” she said. “It ended up being incredibly challenging, but I grew a lot that summer. That’s when I really started loving baking and thinking of how I could make it my own.”

Her parents keep her updated about school activities while she lives in the Kansas City area.

After five years, she still is close with many high school friends, who have become roommates, bridesmaids, and more mature people

“I feel like Marion had, at least when I was in high school, a close-knit group of classes,” she said. “I felt like those classes were definitely closer with one another, more than the stereotypical high school.”