The stretching of muscles perfectly accents the words that drop from friends’ mouths and with every change of winter slush to summer rain, the laughter grows as do our miles together. Every year, every season beckons the beginning of running once again with friends surrounding you. Bonding over pain of the workout but also somewhere between the smiles and the occasional tears, a stronger connection arrives and you realize that these aren’t just track friends, just soccer friends, just sports friends. No, they’re actual friends who share a unique bond that sprouted from the stretching of muscles.
Yet, once senior year arrives, there seems to be a distinct shift in preference of what to do. Excuses and lingering thoughts crowd some seniors’ minds, deciding to abandon their sport. These senior athletes have spent hours upon hours with since their freshman year in their final year of high school because what’s the point of playing a sport you won’t do in college?
Sports, like any other club or activity, fill up students’ lives. So, even when senior year rolls around, in most clubs, seniors choose to stay. I mean, why shouldn’t you if you’re doing something you love and have devoted previous years to?
But sports, it seems, are something different if you aren’t a top player or runner. It seems like it’s almost too easy, too refreshing to jettison sports senior year since so many students mutter “It was just to get me into college.”
Yet, even when people do sports “just for college,” it’s impossible not to love them (okay, at least parts of them). The friends, the laughs, the support, the runner’s high, the stupid yet so poignant memories you can never part with. Yes, the workouts can suck. Yes, practice takes up two to five hours, six days a week and game or meet days easily become a commitment until 10 p.m. But there’s a kind of magic that happens during all of those mundane, chore-like activities.
For me, doing track for most of high school, I too said “I swear I’m going to quit if…” or “I’m a senior; why do I do this anymore?” But I completed my senior year season, grudgingly at times, but also with some smiles too.
Too many instances, my friends and I would joke about 800 or mile times and about how we were going to just not show up to practice or this meet, but we’d always end up being there. For some reason, you can never seem to find a good reason to quit track when it’s near 30 degrees outside and the meet isn’t even half over at 7 p.m. and you’re all huddled in the field for warmth. Or in the middle of running 800s on Blueberry Hill after yet another round of snowfall. Or while you have a huge test to study for yet you’re out on the forest preserve paths, six miles of trees and a blossoming burn in your chest. It’s in those moments, the most difficult ones, where the thought of leaving track never comes to mind. During the waiting, the before, of everything is where we all complain, but during it, you can’t think of anything else to be doing.
Track is enthralling. It’s tough, running six times a week with workouts and weight room work built in (along with the lovely amount of homework given nightly while trying to figure out college and your life in general). So it seems like it’d just be easier to leave it behind. Except you can’t.
Because running on your own simply will never feel the same. With the team there, you know they’re your competitors during practice and your friends before and after them. They push you to be better, to strive, to push yourself and others. There’s a kind of magic that endurance running provides.
I’ve been running cross country and track since third grade and I’ll be the first one to tell you that I’ve never been on varsity; I’ve never been the fastest girl. But I can promise you that I did running for more than just the appearance it gave me on college applications.
I realized that, firstly, my friends, the people I wanted to hang out with, were all the girls on the team. Getting to hang out with them after school, on weekends, or during random times would have happened either way but with our sport, we also got a closer bond and better laughs. There’s something special that happens when you let someone run with you. Running is such a solo thing yet it becomes entirely intimate the second you add someone else since you pace each other, guide one another, and eventually reveal thoughts to each other.
But the longer I ran, the worse my asthma got. The worse my shin injuries got. I kept being told by too many doctors that I should give up running, that my body wasn’t built for it. And freshman year, I remember thinking “Why am I still trying to do this?” And now I can answer it clearly.
Running makes me feel good. It’s as simple as that. It adds confidence into my step, actually helps strengthen my lungs, and gets me outside. Running awakens new thoughts in my head (aided by friends’ laughter or the forests’ whispers), but it also helps me hide and tuck away the pieces of my life I’m not ready to sort through yet.
Running is a cumulation of friendship, of strength, of confidence, of happiness. I guess that’s why it’s hard for me to see why so many students choose to throw their sports aside senior year just because they won’t play it in college or that they did it because their parents made them or whatever. Let the spirit, the adrenaline, the runner’s high, the happiness of being able to do something carry you through it. Sports are a lifestyle once you spend so much time on them, not simply just a way to pass time after you devote your heart and legs to a horribly perfect activity.
