It’s Finally Over

Hello Class of 2025, as many of you know, I play hockey and with me playing hockey, I’ve missed many days of school throughout our high school years. Hockey has always been my getaway. If I need alone time I would go outside and shoot pucks, or I would go rollerblading in my driveway. With all of the road trips that I have taken for hockey, with going to different states, to going to different countries, the different people and places that I have met, it helped me get past high school. Still, hockey has taught me many different things like communication, leadership, and life skills.

Hockey not only has taught me all of these things, but it has created friends just like how other people have different hobbies , they meet new people, friends, and learn things that you will not learn at school. Everybody can relate to me in this way as they may have a hobby like hockey , it could be other sports clubs, and anything else you do in your free time, or just something that helps them calm down after a long day at school or work. People will learn lots of things from the different things that you do, with some lessons that you learn or support from the new people you meet. 

And those lessons? We bring them back into school. We apply them to our education. Our hobbies shape how we work, how we learn, and how we grow. Wayne Gretzky once said “ You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” in hockey terms this means if you don’t take a shot you’re not going to score. Just like in the real world if you don’t ever take chances how are you ever going to see a reward. We all have taken many shots in order to pass highschool with the long hours of membean, to the balancing of hobbies with our school work, but in order to succeed we should take more shots to see a good outcome.

It doesn’t stop there John Tavares once said that  “ Some may have more talent, but there is no excuse for anyone working harder than you” In hockey this means that if you have more skill than someone that may not matter the thing that matters is how hard you play. Outside of hockey this means that, some people may have more free time, maybe smarter than you or have a personal tutor but none of that will help if you have no work ethic, with this being said if you work as hard as you can with the shots that you have taken, no matter what other people have more than you, your hard work will outwork that. 

With this being said, high school has been a long journey that we all will finally have surpassed but that is just the start of our lives. We all will go our own ways wherever that may be, but we can say that we graduated. In the end I hope you all will take some shots, and yes they may not be easy but if you put your mind into something and have the passion for it you can do anything that you want.

Thank you and congratulations to the class of 2025.

Image: “Military hockey teams skate at European tournament” by DVIDSHUB is licensed under CC BY 2.0.