Westborough High School has been an absolute blur. It feels like just yesterday I was walking in the front doors at the start of my freshman year trying to figure out where the Wood Tech room was. I remember wearing a collared shirt and khaki shorts trying to look nice for my first day of high school. Now I look at myself and I’m wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants with them tucked into my socks with zero effort put in at all. A lot of things have changed since I first walked in these doors and I didn’t realize it until now, sitting here thinking about it. There were good changes, and there were bad changes, but no matter what type of changes they were, they made me who I am today. WHS has molded me and prepared me for the next chapter of my life and I had a pretty good time doing it, and as they say, time flies when you’re having fun.

Now I would say most people start off their high school career their freshman year, but I like to think mine started in eighth grade. The hockey team only had ten players tryout so the team reached out to us eighth graders and eight of us signed up. I remember being very scared before my first game because I was just a small, skinny middle schooler going up against legal adults with full beards towering over me. Now I’m the legal adult minus the full beard (still working on it) who’s on his last days of high school.

Throughout my time here I have found my way into trouble here and there. I’m not necessarily proud of it, but it happened and I’ve gotten some pretty good stories out of it–so I’ll take that as a win. I don’t know if I should share any of these stories because I may get into trouble, but why stop now.

It was freshman year science class and it was getting close to the end of the year so my classmates had kind of checked out. We were building something that I can’t remember, but I do remember balloons were involved. So my friends and I had decided it would be a good idea to put one of these balloons on the sink faucet and just turn the water on, so we did. The balloon started filling up and we were just waiting for it to pop, but it just didn’t want to. It kept going and going until it took up the whole sink, so we then went to turn the water off which seems like a pretty easy thing to do, right? Well in this case, it was because whichever way I turned the knobs it felt like more and more water was coming out. We started panicking and then the balloon broke off from the faucet and water just started spraying everywhere. This thing was like a little geyser from Yellowstone just drenching our entire work area. The balloon finally ran out of water and we looked at each other and laughed. Then we heard our teacher’s voice, and let’s just say we weren’t laughing anymore.

High School wasn’t just me getting into trouble though. I did my homework sometimes and got some good grades and some bad grades, but what I mostly did was play sports. I talked about playing hockey for five years earlier but my first love has always been baseball.

I have been playing baseball ever since I could walk. I remember playing catch with my dad in my yard and going down to Kirkside to play wiffle ball with all my friends(iykyk). I remember playing at Target Field and hitting my first homerun off a former Lobby Observer staff member… sorry, Quinn. I remember moving up to the big diamond and playing for the middle school team and then finally playing for the high school. I made JV my freshman year, which I didn’t necessarily enjoy but my teammates and I still made the best of it. And then sophomore year came. I had finally made varsity, but just barely and I wasn’t lined up to start at the beginning of the season. Our first game was in Auburn and because one of the starters wasn’t at the game, I got put into the lineup. I knew this was going to be one of my only chances to crack the starting lineup so I had to take advantage, and I did. I ended up going 2 for 3 with both of my hits being doubles, not a big deal. After that I’ve been starting ever since and haven’t looked back.

Even though baseball has done a lot for me in my life, I’d be nowhere without my friends. The number of memories we have together that I can’t share with the public, the late nights in the Sullivan’s basement or at the Burke residence, the Xbox box parties and the things saved in our group chat that once again I can’t share with the public, it all feels like it was yesterday.

My WHS experience has been like no other, and I will cherish these years until the day I die. I’m going to drop a quote from The Office not because I’m cringey, but because it really sums up how I feel about high school: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

I mean people, if that doesn’t make a tear run down your cheek I don’t know what will, but with all seriousness my time at WHS is now, ”the good old days,” and that’s hard to believe but it’s true. It was all so quick, but as they say time flies when you’re having fun.