With sports finally coming back this year and quickly coming to an end, that means it is the last time senior athletes will touch a high school field or gym as a player. As a senior athlete, you are looked up to by the younger players and you are the ones that keep them going and improving to get to where you eventually got. It is definitely a bummer on how sports this year happened with everything being short with no playoffs which makes it even shorter. A lot of these athletes may not even play beyond this level which is heartbreaking because you wish they could just get a little more than they did this year to feel complete with their high school sports career.

I talked to Kjera Schack, a senior Water polo player about how she felt when she heard that we might not have sports this year and she said, “It was heartbreaking and disappointing at the beginning of the year not being able to compete or even get equipment in the pool and having the season get canceled numerous times. It took me actually getting in the water to the game to realize how much I missed it and just how much the sport and the team and the coaches mean to me.”

Senior year started rough for all of us because that was our thought for about 8 months – that we weren’t having sports and mentally it sucked because it’s the year to get noticed and we missed out. Personally, I was so upset because I just missed it and felt that it was my last year to play. 

When you are in high school and you play sports, it feels like the field or gym is an escape from school or anything at home, and trust me I’ve been there and felt that. Covid has ruined a lot but to find out that we were having seasons made everything better and it showed cause people worked on grades and pushed themselves harder just to play. When I asked Sammy Augustine about what he’s taking out of his final year of high school sports, he said, “I’m just happy to be out there with the guys. Everyone knows they have to make the most out of it. Nobody is taking this year for granted.”

Being part of these teams isn’t just a team to most of them, it’s a family, and that’s why it is hard to see it all possibly be gone soon.

I personally don’t know what I would’ve done without this team and brotherhood that is formed during the time I’ve been here. It might sound cheesy but wouldn’t have traded it for any other team. We never really stray from each other and that could speak for everybody because of how crazy life gets for everybody. Shack said later on, “I’ve never felt that so heartfelt that I’m really just playing for a good time this year and I’m just so blessed to be able to play for high school one last time”. She pretty much speaks for every senior athlete this year even me.

So at the end of the story, everything comes to an end under good or bad circumstances and sometimes you just have to let it go but for now, you have to cherish every moment you get of this year.