The G.O.A.T : Athletes take sports to new levels, leaving their footprints in history
Senior Hailey Blaine has been running track since 6th grade, but she only fully committed to it once she hit freshman year. Sports have helped Blaine make friends, with whom she has fun on and off the track.
“You learn a lot of things from sports about work ethic,” Blaine said, “and you get characteristics that you want to carry with you outside of sports, [like] determination.”
She always had her family backing her up. Her parents would drive her to practices and meets. Blaine would also get support from her brother who would also work hard alongside her in the stuff he would do. Along with her family, Blaine had help from others outside of her family.
“[The coaches] give me workouts and training,” Blaine said. “They tell me when not to train too much because overtraining is not good.”
“Just stick with it and have fun with it,” Blaine said. “Having fun is the most important part because [if] you’re not having fun, it’s not worth it, and it makes it a lot harder to do good if you’re constantly fighting against yourself about thinking, man, this sucks. I don’t wanna do this.”
After Blaine graduates, she plans on going to Boise State University and running both track and cross country, but education-wise Blaine has not yet decided on a major.
Senior Henry Catlin, who has been playing club and school soccer since he was a little kid, has finally reached the point where he can fulfill his dream of playing soccer for a college and having fun while doing it. “I’m going to go to Western Washington University of Bellingham, Washington,” Catlin said. “I was scouted by a college coach at one of the games I was playing at, and we stayed in contact.”
Catlin, whose freshman year of high school was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, saw quarantining as an opening to practicing his sport and becoming a better athlete.“It was kind of different because in my freshman year, we played soccer in the summer, but we didn’t play games until spring. And because of that, it was like intermixing with club because club starts in the winter and then goes until spring. I had to choose which practices I wanted to go to,” said Catlin.
Of all the goals that Catlin has scored and all the penalties that he has taken, Catlin feels that the chance to play soccer in college has been his favorite moment of his whole career. “Being committed to a college is probably the main one,” said Catlin. “I mean, I’ve won some clubs and state competitions, but I wouldn’t consider that to be my best, but I would say committing to a college.”
When he isn’t in the water, senior Kyle Milburn can be found pacing the pool deck at swim meets, offering encouragement to the other swimmers on his team, something he says his older brother, a former member of the team, inspired him to do.
“Before their race, I’ll go up, and I’ll talk them through whatever race they’re going to do and what they should focus on and tell them good luck,” Milburn said. “And then afterwards, I’ll give him a high five and tell him good job just because it creates a super positive team atmosphere.”
Milburn swam before he could walk, and he has been on a team since he was six. While also doing water polo for the first time his senior year, he won both relays and races at districts for swimming and continued on to win both his relays at state. Collectively, the boys swim team also placed first at state, which was something he was hoping for.
“I wanted to see the team itself succeed because I knew we had a good chance at state this year,” Milburn said. “And so I was trying the whole time to hype up everybody on the team because while we are racing individually, each meet, we earn points that go to the total scores for the team to win.”
For Milburn, swimming hasn’t only brought him wins but friends that he says he wouldn’t have had otherwise if it wasn’t because of the sport.
“I eat lunch every day with my friends from the swim team,” he said. “We spend our time together outside of school, too. My [Dungeons and Dragon] group are all my swim friends, and it’s just, they’re my inner friend group.”
Senior Kendyl Arnett started volleyball in third grade, and she will continue to play at Southern Oregon University in the fall. While she is committed to a college for volleyball, a challenging time for any athlete during a sport is college recruitment.
“A lot of coaches give you interest, telling you that they want you, but in reality, you are third on their list,” Arnett said. “Then they don’t want you as bad as they act. They keep players around to make sure they have all their options.”
When the Covid pandemic made its way across the world, Arnett’s freshman year of volleyball was halted. Athletes faced struggles, such as whether or not there was practice, wearing masks, and having games canceled. However, the biggest setback Arnett faced was her progress in the sport slowing down.
“I think my progress slowed down in my skills,” Arnett said. “So the next year was a bigger year for me to train.”
Even with the challenges Arnett has had to overcome, like rejections from schools and slowed skills progress, she feels that volleyball gives her a name, including her winning Mountain West Conference Co-player of the Year and First Team All-League for two years now. Arnett’s high school volleyball experience ended this year with her getting the recognition she has always wanted.
“Volleyball gives me an identity, and if I didn’t play volleyball, I wouldn’t feel like I was Kendyl,” Arnett said. “I feel like it is just something that makes me myself.”
After being an athlete for multiple years, Arnett advises future players “have fun with it because it can get carried away from you when you are focused.”
Ever since he was young, senior Jonathan Fiscal has been in sports, experiencing the crowd cheering him on, whether through soccer or on the track, and now he’s on the varsity track and field team, breaking school records in multiple different events.
Fiscal joined the track and field team as a junior and has made it a comfortable place for himself by getting to know the other people, but he has made the hard task of meeting new people seem easy. “Just making the friends that I now have,” Fiscal said, “that’s probably what has benefitted me more than anything.”
This season, Fiscal got first place in the 40-yard dash, and first place in the 4×400 relay with junior Gavin Chamberlin, junior Henry Samoylich, and freshman Fieldin Babbitt. Fiscal also got second place in the 400-meter dash.
“When I was younger, I found myself just maybe not as good as the other guys. So I definitely had to work harder,” Fiscal said, “but that benefits me where I am now.”
Fiscal doesn’t know exactly how his future is going to turn out, but he wants to go into a trade and continue sports through college. “If I do get a scholarship anywhere else, I’d probably go for that, but as of right now, [I would] go to either Lane [Community College] or LBCC, and I would do trades at LBCC,” Fiscal said. “But I would be able to do track and soccer at Lane.”
Senior Bella Kinghorn went to her first high school golf practice with nerves. She didn’t have a friend in sight. Not knowing where to begin, she decided to start by driving the ball. Even though this wasn’t her first time playing golf, she was still afraid of making mistakes, she remembers. If she were to hit the ball and have it go out of control, in her head, everyone would be watching her make the mistake.
“I just didn’t know anybody. I knew what I was doing, I just didn’t know anyone,” Kinghorn said. “I didn’t know how it was going to work.”
This didn’t stop Kinghorn. She moved beyond the initial anxiety and made it to state as a senior. Kinghorn’s golf career didn’t begin here. It has been a journey for Kinghorn to get to where she is today.
Two years ago, she was competing in a tournament to go to state. She was nervous from the peer pressure and afraid to mess up.
Kinghorn’s holes in that tournament were great, but her next hole, she realized that you always need to try harder and work harder.
Kinghorn had hooked the ball, causing her to be one stroke away from making it to state that year. “I was waiting for my name, hopefully, and they did not say my name,” Kinghorn remembers. “They came up to me and said if anyone drops out, it’s you next because you were one stroke over. I looked at my grandparents, [coach Matt] Boase and Baker, and I was sobbing my eyes out.”
Kinghorn wanted to continue what she loved. Kinghorn would tell herself, “Try harder, work harder.” Her favorite moment in golf would be going to state last year because she knew her hard work had paid off.
“I was really proud of myself and Baker was there with me the whole time on both state days,” Kinghorn said.
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