By Grayson Zoller
All good things must come to an end. High school, though its status as a “good thing” is highly contested, also comes to an end. And with the end of high school comes the end of many of the activities it offers.
Senior Brad Shue has been swimming for nine years, and this was his last year doing so competitively.
Shue started swimming when he was nine because his mother did not want him to drown at his grandparents’ cottage, which was by a lake. So Shue was put into swim lessons to alleviate this fear.
He has been swimming at Delta since his freshman year. He does not plan on going to college for swimming, because of the immense difficulty it would mean facing. “Indiana is one of the hardest states for swimming. To put it in perspective, if I was in Rhode Island, I’d be state champion. Instead, I got 25th.”
Shue went out on a high note, finishing his last meet by setting a personal best, a 47.94 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle. He also swam in the 200 and 400 yard relays.
“It felt good [to finish swimming]. I also swam a personal best, so it was good to go out with a bang.”
Amber Langdon and Reed Talbot are both seniors in theater this year. Langdon has been in the class since sophomore year, and Talbot since his junior year.
Langdon joined because her sister had been in theater and thought it would be fun to try. Talbot joined because Amber was in theater. Both don’t plan on pursuing theater in a serious manner after high school.
“I don’t plan on doing anything with theater after high school unless I get bored and I want to do something with the (Muncie) Civic Theater,” Talbot says.
Langdon liked pretending to die on stage and dragging Talbot across the stage.
Talbot says his favorite memory was the last performance of And Then There Were None, where the audience was receptive to the play. “The Friday night performance, walking backstage after it was finished, the audience was laughing and everyone was clapping. That was cool for me.”
Langon adds, “We were all really tired, we had done four shows and I think I really needed to catch up on sleep, so I don’t think it was that emotional in the moment, but it is kind of sad now, looking back.”
Talbot plans to go to Ball State for finance, and Langdon wants to study animation at college.
Senior Adam Altobella has finished his tennis season, although he did not know he was playing his last match going into it.
“Going into our last match (it was for the regional championship,) I was really excited. I didn’t think it was going to be our last match, but afterwards it was really upsetting… We were all confident we would win, after the match I was really emotional with all my seniors because that was the last match we’d play together.”
Unfortunately, the tennis team lost the regional championship match. They had been confident they would win the match and were disappointed to have lost.
Nonetheless, Altobella remains a highlight of the tennis team, being considered to be among the best players.
He is going to Wabash College in Crawfordsville to play tennis. He also plans to go to law school.
People change over time. That’s just an inherent fact of life. And people might eventually decide that they’re done with the path they’ve taken in life, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the memories you made while doing it.
