The 2024-25 Girls’ Hockey Team. Photo: Mr. Michael Aldridge.
It’s not about what you do but who you do it with. That’s a lesson we have all learned from our time at Northwood. We all come here for our own purpose: hockey, skiing, soccer, or outdoors. We all came here because we’re athletes and want to do something we love. We’ve all been doing our activities since we were young; that’s what drives us. We do it for our younger selves who had dreams of being where we are now.
As we’ve grown up and moved from team to team or place to place, we kept pursuing our dreams that once filled our younger selves’ minds. But somehow along the way, we ended up at a small school in Lake Placid, New York, with hundreds of years-old wooden walls filled with people from all over the world. It soon became not just why we do something, but now more about the people to our left and right with whom we do it.
So as graduation approaches, and this place we’ve called home for however long we’ve been here, turns into the past, the most important thing is the strangers that we once met have now turned into family. Goodbyes will turn into the hardest things we’ve had to do. So thank you to the people and places that have built us. Yes, we do it for our younger selves. But we’ve now learned to do it not just for our love of the games, but for the love of our teammates and the new family that we do it with. Thank you, Northwood, for the friendships and the memories tahat were unimaginable the first time we stepped on campus. Thank you for allowing us to fall back in love with the sports that brought us here, and for why we do it.
