Some people look back on high school and wish not to remember anything about it. Some people wish they could have stayed there forever. Some are quite indifferent about it. Personally, I look back at high school as an extreme array of feelings and emotions and a time of huge development and growth into the person I have become and the morals and values that I have today.

I want to say thank you to those high school coaches and teachers who dealt with me during those high school years and not only put up with me, but accepted me and pushed me to be a better person. There are a few of you who stood out beyond the rest, but you all had an impact on the person I am today. I couldn’t have made it through my high school career without you, and I oftentimes find myself thinking about you in college.

You pushed me to work harder than I ever had to. You pushed me to reach limits that I never thought were physically or academically possible. As a result, I was able to accomplish goals that I never dreamed of accomplishing and continue to do so as I move forward in my life.

Teachers: You made class interesting with current events and your stories. You let us get off topic but always knew when to get us focused again. You cared about what you were teaching and whether or not we understood it. You made me laugh. You made jokes and then sometimes told us to never repeat them. (I’m sure I repeated them but you never got in trouble, don’t worry). You showed us videos that had nothing to do with the topic at hand but taught us important life skills instead. Some of you even spent time away from your families to take a bunch of high school students on weekend trips where we would learn much more than in the classroom. I learned that studying was actually beneficial if I wanted to pass an AP exam with more than a score of 1. I learned how to take good notes. I learned that I wasn't the smartest person, but hard work in the classroom usually paid off.

Coaches: You wanted us to be the best athletes we could be. Sometimes this meant the goal was being sectional champions, sometimes the goal was being league champions, sometimes the goal was just beat that one rival school we let walk all over us the season before and sometimes the goal was just make it through one game at a time. But in any situation, you knew how to handle it. I know most of you didn’t coach for the money but genuinely cared about the sport and the athletes. You made us work hard but there was also time to have fun. There was punishment for poor decisions and poor performance, but we would have never learned if there were no consequences for our actions. There were heart to heart speeches that the only reason we paid attention to was because that meant it was that much less time spent doing drills. There were plenty of laughs, and plenty of moments worth all the time and effort spent at practice. I learned the value of teamwork and passion.

In both the classroom and in sports it wasn’t all happy, there were days when you brought me to tears. There were times when the only thing I wanted to do was quit. There were nights I stayed up way later than I wanted to trying to figure out what I thought the author meant, what you thought the author meant, and what the author actually meant, but in reality I was probably going to be wrong about all of it. There were nights when I sat on my bed with pages of notes, my notebook, and my textbook all sprawled out trying to figure out how to do even the first step of the 1^st of 58 math problems I was assigned for homework. And then after working on it and getting nothing accomplished in half an hour I cried into my pillow telling myself I would never be able to get into college because I was never even going to be able to finish my high school math homework. You let me fail at things, but always made sure that I learned why it was that I failed. There were nights I came home from practice and cried because of something that happened that day. But those sad and frustrating moments made me a better, stronger person.

The lessons I learned during your practices and in your classrooms are ones that I will always cherish and I just want to say thank you again for the impact you have had on my life.