After doing sports for years, some seniors are coming to the end of playing sports.
Many seniors don’t continue in college, and if they do, it’s a club or an intramural program. Once they graduate, a lot of seniors will be done competing forever. One of the seniors who have been thinking about this is senior Logan Tiggleman, who swims and used to do crew (rowing).
Logan has been swimming since second grade and started competitively swimming in third grade. He’s continued swimming since then because of the community that swimming brings.
“I chose to start competitively in third grade because a lot of my friends did it, and I was already on track to go into club [swim],” Logan said. “I chose to come back to club this year after taking a few years off because I missed the community of RAYS (Rapids Area YMCA Swimmers). I continue to swim competitively because I love racing, and I love my team.”
Once he finishes high school, he’s planning on continuing swimming with a club team but not with any school. The biggest reason is that there aren’t really many opportunities to swim with a team that isn’t a club outside of high school, so it led to Logan deciding to just do a club team. Another person who has decided not to play for a college is senior Addyson Casten.
Addyson has been playing basketball for about six years now, and she’s currently playing for our school’s varsity team. She’s always been a pretty competitive person and decided that playing against her brother wasn’t as fun anymore, so she ended up playing competitively.
“I decided not to play [for a school] in college because I want to give myself time to adapt to a new environment,” Addyson said. “I have spent so much of my time at practice or at games, and I am really excited to see what I can do in college without having basketball as a full commitment.”
Since she’s been playing for around seven years, she’s grown remarkably close with the others on the team—especially the other seniors. She’s most likely going to the University of Michigan, and she probably won’t end up there with her current teammates, so she won’t have the community that she has now.
“I have really conflicting feelings about almost being done with basketball,” Addyson said. “I am really excited to move on to something else, but I know I’m going to miss practice, games, and my teammates so much.”
Unlike Addyson and Logan, senior Eli Lipke is committed to Davenport University for soccer. He chose DU because he felt that it was going to be one of the best schools to play at for his playing career. Although college soccer is going to be much more different than high school varsity soccer, he’s feeling incredibly excited and optimistic about playing for DU. One thing that he’s not feeling great about is the fact that he’s leaving high school sports behind.
“Almost being done with high school sports is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to process in sports,” Eli said. “Hockey and soccer here at FHC have been the greatest four years of my life.”
Since Eli has been playing soccer competitively for twelve years, he’s thinking a lot about going from sports against people his age to playing people older than him. The switch is going to be incredibly difficult to get used to, and he’s going to have to learn how to play like all of the others. Although it’s going to be difficult, he’s expecting the best for college and he’s really looking forward to it.
“I started playing competitively because I love high-level competition, and I love to win at the highest level possible,” Eli said. “The speed and tempo of [playing in college] will be a lot quicker. The decision-making will have to be faster and especially the strength; a lot of these players are in their early twenties.”
Even though Logan, Addyson, and Eli are taking somewhat different routes with their sports, it’s going to be a difficult thing for all of them to get used to. They all had to make the hard decision of what to do with their sports, and now they all get to continue how they want to.
The transition from high school to college is a difficult transition. Not only that, but all of the senior athletes have to decide whether or not they want to continue their sport. Either way, they have to deal with the difficult fact that they’re leaving their teammates, games, and practices behind.
“I’m so sad that swim with the high school is almost over,” Logan said. “I feel really sentimental, and I’m just trying to cherish my last moments. We just had our last dual meet last week, and I didn’t even know how to feel. I feel super conflicted.”
