Thank you to the Class of 2020 for being so kind and checking in with us this spring
The first thing of particular note was their varying interests. To begin with, there was Norwich Free Academy softball pitcher Sophia DiCocco, who gave me a whole inventory of things I never knew about her despite covering her games the last four years. DiCocco grew up admiring Ichiro Suzuki (a fellow left-handed hitter), likes to bake, cook, draw, paint, raises chickens, speaks Italian and was planning to sew her own prom dress.
The second thing was their gratitude.
Montville High School softball pitcher Alexis Michon wrote a heartfelt thank you to coaches Derek Wainwright and Becky Alfonso detailing the "dramatic impact" they've had on her life. Lyman Memorial's Jonah Person, who plays soccer and baseball, thanked the coaches of those sports, Ryan
Fabry and Marty Gomez — "playing for them helped me be the best player and person I can be," he said. "Thank you" became a theme. From April 4, the day the spring season in Connecticut high school sports was slated to begin, The Day's sports section has featured a short profile and a photograph of a senior spring athlete. We included all 17 high schools in our coverage area — which we were planning to expand this spring to include Griswold, Bacon Academy and Lyman Memorial — and encompassed every spring sport, 13 of them.
We sent emails, asking a few basic questions of each participant — college choice, major, favorite subject in school, athlete you admired growing up, what were you most looking forward to this spring, favorite restaurant — and a few queries that were specially tailored for each one. We called it "Checking in with ..." The seniors delivered. Some entries were funny. Some were sweet.
I discovered some of the athletes had favorite subjects I've never heard of. Maggie O'Leary, a girls' lacrosse player at Fitch, listed her favorite class as AP human geography. I had to Google it. (Human geography is the branch of geography dealing with humans and their communities, cultures, economies and interactions with the environment).
Some of the players I met before. Jared Burrows and Payton Sutman, who would have been seniors on the defending Class L champion Waterford baseball team this season, first came crashing into the sports pages during the summer of 2012 as members of Waterford South's 9-10-yearold Little League all-star team.
Some I never had the opportunity to speak to. All were profoundly interesting. Some, such as Sutman and James Knowlton of the Williams School boys' lacrosse team, were returning from injuries.
Connor Maguire, a golfer at Old Lyme, took the winter off from basketball to hone his golf game for spring. Maguire will attend the University of Alabama, partly because he wanted to go to school someplace with a big-time football program.
Dylan McGuire of NFA's track team is an Eagle Scout.
Samantha Lyster of East Lyme track and cross country distinction is a National Merit Scholar.
Alison Marseglia, a girls' tennis player at Stonington, has played the trumpet at Carnegie Hall.
Then there was the correspondence.
Fadi Hage, Waterford boys' tennis, wrote back and said sorry he took too long ... the same day he received the email. Jaelyn Potter, New London softball, signed hers "JP out!!" Riley Burke, catcher for the NFA baseball team and younger brother of former NFA girls' basketball standout Mackenzie Burke, wrote, "P.S. Mackenzie says hi." Olivia Lopez, Norwich Tech girls' tennis, called me "ma'am."
And on it went, seemingly the perfect antidote — for me, anyway — to a COVID-19-induced quarantine that left all of us, sadly, a spring season without partaking in our favorite activities and seeing our favorite people.
Having a melancholy day? Sit down and type up a bio of Montville sprinter Kole Thurston, who formerly lived in Hawaii and most happily described the temperature of the water there and the culture of the people.
The photo of today's athlete, Olivia Quagan, exudes an enourmous amount of pride. Quagan's mother, Alison, it seems, retrieved her daughter's No. 17 jersey from East Lyme softball coach Judy Deeb in order to decorate the family's front door.
Overall, we gave you a glimpse into the lives of 75 athletes in 75 days — the series will end Wednesday, what would have been the final high school event scheduled in Connecticut this season.
Finally, the list of athletes these seniors admire was a fascinating study. Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia got top billing with seven votes, followed by quarterback Tom Brady, Baseball Hall of Famer Derek Jeter and U.S. Olympic hurdler Sydney McLaughlin with four each. Tennis great Serena Williams got three.
Three seniors picked their older brothers as athletes they looked up to, two picked their dads and two picked their mothers.
NFA girls' golfer Lilyana Sherbanee idolizes professional surfer Bethany Hamilton and Montville girls' lacrosse player Alexis DeLucia picked a former teammate, Alyssa Turchetta, who was the senior captain during DeLucia's freshman season. There were three athletes who selected those they admired from bygone eras: Knowlton of Williams picked Lou Gehrig, Sean Power of St. Bernard chose the late former Boston Marathon winner Johnny Kelley of Mystic and Stonington sprinter Gwen Andersen went with the late former U.S. Olympic champion Florence Griffith Joyner.
We, as a sports department, are honored to pay tribute to the Class of 2020. We missed spending time with you this season. We thank you for sharing your stories. We hope you have many, many more successes to come.
Today, you are the athletes we most admire. This is the opinion of Day scholastic sports editor Vickie Fulkerson