‘Completely ecstatic’: 2026 Silver Knight Awards honors exceptional students
From working with hospital therapists to create a pediatric music program to starting a mobile library housed in a car, 30 South Florida high school seniors were celebrated Tuesday night for going above and beyond in their mission to help others.
The night’s honorees along with their families, friends and supporters packed the James L. Knight Center in downtown Miami during the 68th annual Miami Herald/el Nuevo Herald Silver Knight Awards ceremony.
“I’m really happy that what I do has been recognized,” said North Broward Preparatory senior Colette Marquez, 18, said of her Silver Knight for Art. “It’s surprising.”
During the event labeled the “Oscars” for local high schoolers, 15 students from Miami-Dade and 15 from Broward and Monroe counties were honored with a Silver Knight statue, a $2,000 scholarship from the Herald Charities Foundation and 25,000 American Advantage miles. Ninety other students who received honorable mentions earned a $500 scholarship and an engraved plaque.
One by one the winners took the stage, dressed in sparkly gowns, pressed suits and shiny shoes. The crowd whooped as each student walked up to get their prize. One woman from the audience screamed, “You look so good.”
The categories — art, athletics, business, digital and interactive media, drama, English and literature, general scholarship, journalism, mathematics, music and dance, science, social science, speech, vocational tech, and world languages — were judged by a panel of five leaders in each respective field. There were 43 judges in Miami-Dade and 37 judges in Broward and Monroe.
For her achievements in Science while attending American Heritage Schools in Broward, Camila Galicia was awarded the Silver Knight for founding the nonprofit Saving Our Sisterhood. Galicia noticed so many women were alone while accompanying her mother to breast cancer treatments. She raised more than $7,500 to create care packages for survivors undergoing chemotherapy or post-mastectomy recovery.
“My mother is here today,” Galicia, 18, said. “I won this for her and for us.”
She said it was inspiring to be surrounded by so many hardworking, compassionate students, and she was so excited to be recognized for her hard work.
Lucas Himawan, a student at Cardinal Gibbons, was awarded the Silver Knight for Drama after he attended and reviewed more than 50 shows at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, including Broadway productions, classical concerts, jazz performances, operas and ballets.
He was named stage manager at his school in his junior year, overseeing every student within a production, and created a program that cut down the time it takes to assemble the next day’s schedule from one to two hours to around 10 minutes.
Himawan, 18, said he never thought drama or performing arts would take him this far. No matter how hard life gets, keep pushing, he said.
“I feel just completely ecstatic,” Himawan said.
Kate Tessler was awarded the Silver Knight in the Digital and Interactive category. The Cushman School student in Miami-Dade is building an app, BeSafe, designed to allow students to anonymously report potential safety threats or concerns about other students.
In four out of five school shootings, at least one other person had knowledge of the attacker’s plan but failed to report it, according to data compiled by the Sandy Hook Organization.
Tessler, 17, said this is “just my beginning,” and she couldn’t express how excited she was about the victory and about the future.
“I feel actually like there’s a loss of words,” Tessler said.
This year, there were 678 students nominated from 90 schools across Miami-Dade County. There were 269 nominees from Broward and Monroe across 35 different schools.
John S. Knight, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former publisher of the Herald, instituted the Silver Knight Awards program in 1959 to honor those who excelled in academics and community involvement. Some notable winners include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Bill Conti, who is best known for his film scores in "Rocky” and “The Karate Kid” franchises.
A total of 1,555 Silver Knights have been recognized as of 2025. And this year a new group of 30 soon-to-be graduates accepted the award, posing the question: what might they achieve in the future?
These young people represent the very best of South Florida — “innovators, changemakers and problem-solvers whose impact reaches far beyond the classroom,” said Alex Mena, executive editor of the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald.
“Silver Knights remind us that the future is already in capable hands,” Mena said. “Among them could very well be the next Jeff Bezos, or a groundbreaking artist, or a scientist or a civic leader — but what makes them truly extraordinary is their dedication to improving the lives of others.”
This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 10:04 PM.
