Three years ago, as a freshman, senior Will Cammell joined the freshman soccer team. In an effort to stay in shape, he and his lacrosse teammates joined despite little prior experience on their side.

“That was, up until this point, my favorite [sport] that I’ve ever done just because it was so fun, and the people made it great,” Will said.

Now in his final year of high school, Will repeated the process of joining a brand new team— this time with no company to share the rookie status.

Will decided to join the cross country team this fall for the first time as a senior and found it to be one of his fondest experiences of his entire high school career, developing new and old friendships.

“I’m really glad that I did [cross country] because that was actually my favorite sport I’ve ever done in my life,” Will said. “I think it all boiled down to two things, and that’s the people and the self-improvement. [You’re] going to practice every day and seeing the people that you genuinely want to be around. It was great being around genuine people that shared the same interest as you: running.”

Besides the valuable friendships Will found in the team, the sport itself was another appealing aspect of his experience with the team. As a longtime fan of running, Will enjoyed finally doing so competitively.

Moreover, that “self-improvement” was a highly motivating factor for Will, with the individualistic nature of cross country and the constant chase after beating one’s own personal record (PR).

The drive of that persisting goal carried throughout the season. In the end, despite never quite beating his own PR, Will left the season with a sense of accomplishment and no regret or bitterness.

“At the end of the season when I was super close to getting [my PR] but I never got it, I realized that’s totally okay because I did what I could,” Will said. “I gave it everything I had, so it just felt great knowing that I left nothing on the table. I just put everything out there.”  

Now with spring sports just beginning, Will is determined to enter his fourth and last high school lacrosse season with that unwavering ambition and energy.

Will has been playing lacrosse since fifth grade, always finding friendship and solace in the sport and its nature.

“I like the people, and also I think I like the physicality of it,” Will said. “It doesn’t really matter if you’re angry while you’re playing that sport or something. You can go out there, just hit people, be rough and just kind of get all your rage out from your day, and it’s nice.”

Last year, Will and the lacrosse team lost in the state championship game. The loss weighs heavily on the team, and that moment was certainly a pivotal learning experience for Will.

“When we lost in the state championship last year,” Will said, “I was looking left and right and saw a lot of my friends burst out in tears. I’ll always remember that moment because it’s something I was working for for so long. I was working for it for a third of the year, and it all just kind of went away in that instant, in that moment. I remember throwing my silver medal away in the trash right after the game, [thinking] ‘This isn’t worth anything to me. I didn’t work for this medal.’”

The defeat only emboldened and motivated Will’s drive.

“I think what I learned is [that] if you’re going to work so hard for something, you better capitalize, better finish strong,” Will said. “Get the gold, not the silver.”

That motto and spirit translate into more than just athletics for Will. As a two-year member of FHC’s news broadcast, FX, media and video have been a longtime interest for Will.

With passion stemming from watching his cousins’ and Youtubers’ videos, Will is captivated and intrigued by the concepts of film and editing; in turn, his passion and interest in watching and creating videos multiplied.

“I’d watch people like Ryan Nagle on Youtube or Sam Kolder, and I would look at their Youtube channels and see little transitions they would do and little effects they do,” Will said. “I’d try and recreate it myself. And then if I couldn’t do it, I’d look up tutorials on how to do it. That would always teach me little tricks, and now, I’ve got a bunch of different tools in my bag.”

Though Will’s media prowess was largely self-taught, he took the media classes offered at FHC in order to be a part of FX, soon becoming inspired by FX veterans of FHC’s past.

“I think the upperclassmen like Matt Wilson, Ian Kastner, and Jack Treiber– they’re all really good examples of people that I kind of idolized,” Will said. “I would look at them, and I’d be like, ‘They’re doing really cool stuff. They’re making cool things that are entertaining people. They’re also being really nice to people at the same time and just being good people.’ So I kind of wanted to be like them.”

That decision to join FX has proven to be a sound one, as it both feeds his excitement for the subject and offers a continually engaging classroom setting for Will.

“I’ve gotten to meet a lot of really interesting people, and it’s taught me how to work with people I don’t want to work with,” Will said. “So it’s kind of catapulted me into a professional setting, like a workplace. [FX is] just kind of a weird and interesting and sort of a different thing to bond over. It’s something you get really close to people while doing because when you’re doing a live broadcast, you get to yell at people and get closer to them in a way that you wouldn’t usually.”

Now, after just two years in FX, Will is creating this year’s senior video alongside senior Jake Lenderink. Although it is a great honor because of “the amazing people who’ve done it before,” the job, of course, also comes with a lot of pressure.

“I remember so many times after watching all three years’ [senior videos] before me, walking out of that gym, and people being like, ‘That sucked,’” Will said. “And now I’m in this position, and I’m like, ‘I can’t have people walking out of the gym saying my video sucked.’”

Nevertheless, despite that burden, Will and Jake are working hard to create the best possible culmination of their senior year.

“The more I show the senior video to people, the more confidence I gain, though, because I’ve given little snippets to people in FX of what it’ll be like, and it’s already made one girl cry,” Will said. “When [senior] Grace Kline started crying, I was like, ‘Let’s go; I got her.’ Because the whole goal of the senior video is to kind of make you laugh and make you cry at the same time— take you on a roller coaster. So I felt like I really achieved my goal there.”

As his time in high school comes to a close, Will looks to the future with hopes of studying film and video and business. A multitude of career prospects concerning film may appeal to Will, but regardless of his specific path, Will’s drive and passion will always persist.

“I don’t want to end up at a desk,” Will said. “I really want to go to work and say to myself, ‘I get to go to work’ instead of saying ‘I have to go to work,’ because the last thing I want to do is end up at a desk just selling something I don’t care about and trying to get people’s money. That doesn’t really sound like the best way to live for me. What does sound great is going to work with creative people that would never be anywhere else but there with you and getting to make videos and capturing people’s attention.”