Coming into my senior year I felt tons of different things but preparing was not one of them. Everyone around me seemed to have ideas and things that they wanted to do with their capstone and senior year as a whole but I just didn't have any ideas. I was already feeling very overwhelmed before anything had even started. I then met Mrs. Boutilier and she made everything so much easier to understand. There was no more pressure and within a week I had a solid idea and a good plan with some action steps. I felt at ease and was confident with how my project would shape out.
With football having my heart all my life I knew I wanted to incorporate it with my project. All four years I felt the community we built and how everything felt like a family and a big part of that was due to our weekly pasta dinners. With COVID we as a team weren't planning on continuing this tradition since only a few returners remembered it. Although this tradition was so impactful for me as an underclassmen I knew I had to bring it back, and that's what I did. My initial goal was to just bring back the pasta dinners with parent participation to the point where I don't have to do anything but have parents fill out what they want to bring and that's what I did. I had a bunch of football players and made us a family, that is more than what I could have ever asked for. I was not only able to feed an entire football team but just bring us together as a unit, it's created life long friendships and I'm sure of it. This wasn't enough for me though. I wanted more, so with the help of Mrs. Boutilier I learned about booster clubs and how schools around Connecticut raise funds for their athletic programs which really inspired me to do more. My next goal was to help the basketball team in a different way than I did for the football team. I decided to raise money for the basketball team.
My new goal was much bigger and took a lot more thought and work to accomplish. I decided to sell basketball fan shirts to all students to raise money for the team. The fan shirts allowed admission to certain games and created a higher student participation and overall a better school community which was my goal for selling these shirts. We raised over 500$ and with this money bought pizza for the entire team and staff that participated in our stay at Mohegan Sun for the state championship game which was an amazing experience on its own. I am very proud to say that I was able to create a community and family within the school itself but more importantly among us as a team. I was able to accomplish this twice with two different teams. This was a project that meant something to me. I felt very strongly about what I wanted to accomplish since it involved bringing a group of people together that are important to me. I'm proud of the work me and my partner Makhi have done together. Which brings me to now.
As of recently I closed out my project strongly with the team dinner and have been personally focusing on my next steps after high school. I will be attending Pace University next fall and will be going into business which is very exciting for me. My main focus has been school and spending time with my family and friends because this really is the end of my youth and that has been a very, very hard pill to swallow. I am a very emotional person and honestly scared of time and how fast it moves. My senior year has been everything and more of what I wanted. Athletically and academically my senior year has been amazing. I've accomplished so much athletically even winning the schools scholar-athlete award which the CIAC is in control of. Academically I've had much better grades than I anticipated. I'm top 11 in the senior class and have been inducted into the National Honors Society. I'm also a high honors student. This is all very important to me and I am very grateful to be in the position I'm in. Being a great athlete and a just as great great student is not common and a very hard thing to accomplish across 4 years of school. To be honest I'm scared, nervous, excited and all of the above.
This year has made me feel so many different emotions I can't even begin to comprehend what I might feel next. I'm scared of what's next but I'm also excited. A new chapter is ahead which means new people and new experiences which is so exciting. It also means letting go of people and experiences from my youth and letting go of those people who shaped me into who I am today, with good and bad experiences. I don't think I'm ready for that or ever will be but that is a part of growing, being able to be pushed out of your comfort zone and everyday experiences to figure out who you are meant to be. For now though, I'm just going to live in the present. Experiencing and doing anything and everything possible with the people who are important to me until I have to move on to a new chapter. This is all so new and different, different can be frightening but I'll be ready.
With football having my heart all my life I knew I wanted to incorporate it with my project. All four years I felt the community we built and how everything felt like a family and a big part of that was due to our weekly pasta dinners. With COVID we as a team weren't planning on continuing this tradition since only a few returners remembered it. Although this tradition was so impactful for me as an underclassmen I knew I had to bring it back, and that's what I did. My initial goal was to just bring back the pasta dinners with parent participation to the point where I don't have to do anything but have parents fill out what they want to bring and that's what I did. I had a bunch of football players and made us a family, that is more than what I could have ever asked for. I was not only able to feed an entire football team but just bring us together as a unit, it's created life long friendships and I'm sure of it. This wasn't enough for me though. I wanted more, so with the help of Mrs. Boutilier I learned about booster clubs and how schools around Connecticut raise funds for their athletic programs which really inspired me to do more. My next goal was to help the basketball team in a different way than I did for the football team. I decided to raise money for the basketball team.
My new goal was much bigger and took a lot more thought and work to accomplish. I decided to sell basketball fan shirts to all students to raise money for the team. The fan shirts allowed admission to certain games and created a higher student participation and overall a better school community which was my goal for selling these shirts. We raised over 500$ and with this money bought pizza for the entire team and staff that participated in our stay at Mohegan Sun for the state championship game which was an amazing experience on its own. I am very proud to say that I was able to create a community and family within the school itself but more importantly among us as a team. I was able to accomplish this twice with two different teams. This was a project that meant something to me. I felt very strongly about what I wanted to accomplish since it involved bringing a group of people together that are important to me. I'm proud of the work me and my partner Makhi have done together. Which brings me to now.
As of recently I closed out my project strongly with the team dinner and have been personally focusing on my next steps after high school. I will be attending Pace University next fall and will be going into business which is very exciting for me. My main focus has been school and spending time with my family and friends because this really is the end of my youth and that has been a very, very hard pill to swallow. I am a very emotional person and honestly scared of time and how fast it moves. My senior year has been everything and more of what I wanted. Athletically and academically my senior year has been amazing. I've accomplished so much athletically even winning the schools scholar-athlete award which the CIAC is in control of. Academically I've had much better grades than I anticipated. I'm top 11 in the senior class and have been inducted into the National Honors Society. I'm also a high honors student. This is all very important to me and I am very grateful to be in the position I'm in. Being a great athlete and a just as great great student is not common and a very hard thing to accomplish across 4 years of school. To be honest I'm scared, nervous, excited and all of the above.
This year has made me feel so many different emotions I can't even begin to comprehend what I might feel next. I'm scared of what's next but I'm also excited. A new chapter is ahead which means new people and new experiences which is so exciting. It also means letting go of people and experiences from my youth and letting go of those people who shaped me into who I am today, with good and bad experiences. I don't think I'm ready for that or ever will be but that is a part of growing, being able to be pushed out of your comfort zone and everyday experiences to figure out who you are meant to be. For now though, I'm just going to live in the present. Experiencing and doing anything and everything possible with the people who are important to me until I have to move on to a new chapter. This is all so new and different, different can be frightening but I'll be ready.