Senior Anika Shrivastava recalls memories of her time on the field hockey team maintaining traditions to send off its seniors. This year, now that she is one herself, Shrivastava was excited to get to experience the traditions she once carried on for others.
The year starts with the seniors decorating the team locker room. Each year, they choose a different theme. This year, the seniors decided on “Barbie,” due to its popularity last summer.
“We chose Barbie as a theme and we decorated the locker room with a Barbie section and a Ken section,” Shrivastava said. “It was just really cute — the seniors got to have a little name tag on their locker and they got to choose their own lockers first.”
In addition to locker decoration, the team makes it a point to have regular team dinners at teammates' houses during the season to improve their chemistry on the field. Shrivastava fondly recalls one team bonding they had this year that doubled as a birthday party for one of her teammates, junior Anika Mehta. The team spent time enjoying eating and drinking pizza, juice and cake.
To wrap up their season and bid their final farewell to the seniors, the lowerclassmen arrived at school before the team’s last home game at 5:30 a.m. to perform a practice and then hand out bags filled with goodies for the seniors, including candies, personalized T-shirts and cards. The underclassmen also perform a choreographed dance for the seniors. Shrivastava enjoyed performing dances in the past because she loved seeing the joy and laughter on the seniors’ faces.
“It was hilarious,” Shrivastava said. “It was so fun to see our seniors smile because yeah, they're leaving, but also we love them so much.”
To mark their last day of annual summer conditioning, the Varsity Girls Basketball team takes the 0.6-mile run to a nearby Starbucks to celebrate their hard work. Junior Miya Kosakura has been a part of this tradition for three years now and uses these runs to strengthen her relationships with her teammates.
“We all get something and then walk back. It's just a good bonding moment,” Kosakura said. “We just have some fun getting to know each other playing ‘Would you Rather’ or games like that.”
By the end of the season, the team is close, which according to Kosakura, makes it difficult to say goodbye to the graduating class. This is why the team has a tradition of creating handmade scrapbooks for their seniors to receive on senior night. These books contain letters from each of the players, as well as printed photos of the team throughout the years.
“The main idea of the scrapbooks is that we all put a lot of time and effort into them and I think the underclassmen really bond over that,” Kosakura said.
The Varsity Girls Basketball team holds many team bonding events throughout the season. With the loss of seven seniors during its 2023 season, the team had seven new spots to fill this year, which meant a lot of team bonding was needed in order for the new players to acclimate to the team’s environment.
“[Bonding] definitely helps our chemistry on the court,” Kosakura said. “We had a pretty new team, but I think just getting to know each other off the court really helped our connection and bond on the court.”
Due to the strength-based nature of throwing events, senior and Track and Field captain Anika Manjesh, along with her thrower teammates rarely ever run, which is why they have instituted a new tradition to allow fellow throwers to get out of their comfort zone. They call it the thrower relay, an unofficial event where shot put and discus throwers run.
“It's really exhilarating for everyone because you're used to doing all the throws and strength-based stuff and then all of a sudden you're running and it's really fun,” Manjesh said.
This relay doesn’t happen often, which is something Manjesh and her teammates would like to change. In fact, the relay only happened once this season. It is normally only done when time allows between different events, which is not so common, considering meets can sometimes last as late as 7 p.m.
After participating in these long meets, Manjesh and her fellow throwing teammates enjoy eating dinner together. While the group doesn’t have a set place they like to eat at every time, they generally go to a quick-service food restaurant close to the school where the meet is held. While eating, the team uses this time to talk and laugh with each other.
“Every year, it's a different group of people,” Manjesh said. “Different seniors, different freshmen, different people, it's all sorts of different every year, so the tradition kind of molds itself as the year goes on.”
