My Senior Year

Through all of my concious school life, I have always looked forward to my future. I have always looked ahead to when I would be a senior in high school as though it is the pinacle of academic life. I always thought, "it's such a long ways away. I have plenty of time before it comes". Now it's here and I am a senior in high school. The weirdest thing to me is that it has actually come and that it is not a distant thing. I will be graduating in six days. Graduating! I remember sitting in my room when I was a 7th grader and thinking, "what will I do when I'm a senior? What will I like and be into?" Now it's come and I've become who I am.
My senior year started with football as usual. I had worked incredibly hard throughout the previous year and summer lifting weights and getting ready because I thought, "it is here! The time I will start and play varsity football." Summer practices started and I found out soon enough that all my waiting and hard work would not pay off. Not that I am bitter but I was robbed. Spencer Hannah decided to go out for the same position as me at Wingback. We took equal reps for the first two weeks of practice and then he started to take more and more and more than me. It is not only an opinion of mine but of others that he did not surpass me in any aspect of the position. They just gave him the position. I had many conversations with the coach but he was not about to tell me that he just chose him because he would be able to start for two years but he said "he is doing better than you are," which wasn't true. Ended up that I was the backup... again. Not to mention that Ferndale is about politics and it's not like the fact that his dad played for Ferndale and mine didn't, had nothing to do with it... What could I do? I worked my butt of for four years and never had the opportunity to start. If I could change anything about my high school years it would be that I would've not done football my junior or senior years and would've rather done cross country or tennis. Something that I could have an equal opportunity to play other than being cheated out by a good last name.
On a more positive note, my grades in my first semester were great. If it was not for my bad grade in math I would've had a 3.7 with 5 As and two B+'s. I worked incredibly hard because I knew that colleges would be looking at how my current grades look and I was on the edge in my cumulative GPA from previous years.
Winter was filled with applications and scholarship applications as well as spending time with my girlfriend Inga Holmdahl. I applied to Western, University of Puget Sound, Pacific Lutheran University, WSU and Lower Columbia College as well as Linfield. I was accepted to all except for Western and still they did not deny me but said they are making room but would contact me later. I decided to visit UPS, PLU and linfield as my top three choices. I then decided between UPS and Linfield. Linfield offered me a financial package of grants, academic scholarships and financial aid of $37,000 a year. I really liked UPS but choose to go to Linfield because of it's academic standards, beautiful campus and prestigious reputation.
After college was decided it was time for baseball. Baseball was great. We won tons of our games and were close to a conference championship. We went into the district tournament and beat shorcrest, lost to Everett, beat shorecrest and then beat Everett again to go to state. Then we played Kennewick the eventual state champion. Our final record was 21-4.
After that I was given Honorable Mention for all league. After the season was over, I played in a senior all star game with Skagit, Island, Snohomish and Whatcom counties best senior players present. I was selected out of the around 45 players as a nomination for the all state game. This was an enormous honor. Though I was not selected, I really appreciated the recognition.
My senior year has been amazing and really I am amazed at where I am right now. Time is beginning to pass with incredible speed. I'm ready to graduate and am 4 school days away!

My Junior year

My junior year began with football in august and the fall as usual. We had a winning streak of over 23 games going into the playoffs. That ended when we lost to Kennedy in the first round. The future second place team for 3A. Football was great, I was officially an upperclassmen and took a sort of leadership roll in the practice squad. Although I played very little and only on special teams and second string quarterback when I did, I had a lot of fun hanging out with the guys and being part of the team. I rolled along with the groups and things that I had before with a new leadership roll as the clubs and organizations editor for the yearbook. I continued to work at McDonald's and manage around 18 hours a week with my busy schedule.
A lot of my time was spent with my girlfriend Olivia Johnson. Winter I did not attend NWBI but instead worked. Spring came and I started every game on the Varsity Squad in right field. For the first 1/2 of the season I was in the top 10 in the league in batting average hitting 343. Our team had a great record. Sadly though in districts we lost after two games and did not make it to state. I jumped right back into legion baseball in June with many tournaments and such. I had the number two spot in the rotation behind Casey Locker and pitched every other game. We had some disappointing times in tournaments especially the Wally Evans and getting close to last place but things looked up in the district tournament. We entered the tournament as the last seed and fought our way. We won our first game and lost our second then won again and faced Stanwood in a winner to state game. Earlier in our legion season we had lost to them three times and they were favored to win the tournament. My coach choose me to pitch and I faced the challenge. I threw a 3 hitter and we beat them with a score of 2-1. Definitely the largest game of the year and my career. We went to the state tournament and placed 5th, which is an enormous accomplishment for our baseball program.