A Changing Landscape
As another year comes to a close, it’s tough for me not to feel a little sadness about the fact that a lot of my friends are graduating, especially because many of them are the people that I watch, play and talk sports with.
But at the same time, I’m somewhat optimistic about the state of sports at Union next year. In fact, I think next year might be the best one yet for sports.
First of all, the 2018 graduating class has been good at sports since they got to Union. I remember during my freshman year they gave the seniors a hard time in seemingly every class game.
Although they’ve been a tremendous class with a high level of ability, it is likely that their departure will lead to a more competitive (and perhaps less intimidating) set of intramurals, class games and ASB sporting events.
Additionally, I am excited to see how the focus of sports shifts next year. It seems like the trend these past couple of years has been toward soccer, but a new Union Soccer team has been formed and it’ll be interesting to see which intramural sport ends up surging next year as a result.
I am certainly very interested to see how the soccer team fares next year. It is pretty apparent that we have a lot of talented players here, and if they all come together and can find their chemistry, it could certainly be a very fun team to watch.
In addition, I would be willing to bet that the Men’s Basketball team makes quite a jump in the sophomore season of the Purkeypile era. They’ll (hopefully) have a large percentage of returning players in addition to some new talent, and given how well they played at the end of the season, I’d be willing to bet that any new-coach new-system growing pains are mostly behind them.
And while I can’t say I know as much about the talent coming in for Ladies’ Basketball or Volleyball (aside from my sister, who I am excited to embarrass), I would bet that they’ve put a lot of growing pains behind them as well.
Lastly, I’m (naturally) the most excited about the golf team, and if I haven’t talked to you yet in an effort to convince you to play, I probably will before September. (I mean it’s almost-free, any time you want golf, what’s the harm in trying out?)
All in all, I’m definitely excited for sports at Union next year. It’ll certainly be a very different year, but sometimes different is good.
I’ll finish with this: if you’ve ever wanted to play a sport, whether that be during intramurals or on a competitive team, I definitely think that you should. It doesn’t matter if you’re athletic. It doesn’t matter if you have any real experience. There is never any harm in trying, and in my opinion, it’s a lot more likely you’ll regret not playing, and it’s nearly impossible that you’ll regret trying.
Who knows, you might end up having the time of your life.
Tyler Dean is a junior studying mathematics.