With the end of the sports season coming up, many seniors complete their final year of athletics. But a select few have been given the opportunity to play college sports. One of these seniors this year, Mateo Ganje, is going on to be a collegiate track athlete, “I’m going to University of Idaho. I reached out to them between late summer and late fall, and they wanted me to come out on a visit, so I went over in October, and I liked it, the team was nice, and I loved the coaching staff and all the facilities were awesome as well as the academic programs. It seemed like a clear option to me, and I shut down all the talks with other schools. Besides athletics, the academics had a good program for what I was going into, which is exercise science, because I want to be a physical therapist, and that really made me want to go to the school,” Ganje said. 

One of our many baseball players that is heading up to play college baseball is Julian Cruz. Cruz will be heading to Hesston College, and he was scouted by them to play for the school, “They saw some videos online of me and they reached out to me. I met the coach, went to the campus, and even practiced with the team. There was a pretty big difference skill wise, they were a lot stronger, bigger, and faster compared to high school guys. Mindset going in is to compete and perform and do my best,” Cruz said. 

Through the excitement of being able to play at the next level, the athletes have to say goodbye to all the memories here at our programs and their teammates. Volleyball commit, Hanna Ligons, is going on to play at Saint Martin’s university and faces this situation, “I loved by high school seasons, the tournaments we went to, the people on my team, and just everything about it was amazing,” Ligons said.  

And even though they are going to play sports, all these athletes still must balance the responsibilities that college brings, “I’m excited but nervous, it’s going to be a big switch from high school to college, and balancing college work and all that,” Ligons said.