Still Teammates in Life

Good morning everyone, I’m tdrouin24 and I’m graduating from Oak Hill High School. And believe me when I say I’ve been looking forward to this week since I walked into the door freshman year and was greeted with a mask, hand sanitizer, and my temperature being taken. It only took 2 years to be done with those masks, and let’s be honest none of us wore them correctly. Wearing them during sports was probably a top 10 worst experience I’ve had, you cannot breathe and most importantly, it is NOT drip. Granted we wore them basically at our chins. 

All my life I have been involved in athletics, I enjoy the competition and I especially enjoy being around my teammates. No season goes by without me doing something with sports and I have made lifelong friendships doing so. But sometimes those friends drift away from sports as we grow up, which is fine and that doesn’t mean you can’t still be a loyal and trustworthy friend. I have a friend, let’s call him kparker24, and we’ve been close since the 3rd grade, we both played three sports; soccer, baseball, and basketball. The two of us stopped playing soccer in middle school because kicking a ball and running 200 feet back and forth was NOT enjoyable. This kid probably spent more nights at my house than his during the summer. It was amazing having to share a room with him alllll week. I remember playing wiffle ball 5 out of the 7 days of the week and loved having a hard plastic ball hit my leg as if it was going 97mph. Which isn’t really a stretch. 

Then, COVID hit in 8th grade, baseball season was ruined and it was difficult to keep in touch with everyone. If you’re an introvert it was probably the best few months of your life, if not, you probably went insane. I definitely joined every single Zoom meeting for our 8th-grade classes and did all of the work. Ha. When our first year of high school came around I was looking forward to playing basketball with him that winter. However, he told me he was thinking about being done with sports and just wanted to work at Borques instead. I was a little surprised but realized life had to go on. After that season I stopped playing basketball and focused solely on baseball. kparker24 and I still kept in touch and to this day, 3 years later, we are still really good friends. Sometimes too good. We never lost contact even though I continued with sports and he didn’t. 

The significance of this story is to share that you shouldn’t base your friendship with someone on something that won’t last forever, like sports. If you do, and you or they step away from sports or that one thing, your friendship could end and you may never know what it’s like to have a trustworthy and loyal friend, or how to be one yourself. kparker24 and I continue to enjoy each other’s company, we continue to be loyal friends and teammates in life. I look forward to seeing him on the sidelines during our senior year and hopefully during my baseball playing days in college next year.

Thank you everyone for your time, and remember, None y’all got a Lexus.

(Drouin, 2015)