By Izzy ’22
At Harvard-Westlake, over sixty percent of the student body participates in interscholastic sports. From water polo to equestrian to tennis to field hockey to soccer to lacrosse, there is a vast array of athletic opportunities for students to try out on campus. As an institution, HW not only prides itself on having incredibly successful teams that compete and win championships in CIF, but more importantly, having supportive coaches and trainers in place to help students through any challenges they may encounter in pursuit of athletic excellence. It is this supportive environment from coaches and teachers alike that I am most grateful for as I endured one of the most tumultuous experiences of my life thus far.
I have played volleyball since fourth grade. I competed on club teams, school teams, even on beach teams in the summer. I truly love my sport and always push myself to be the best I can. Even in pain, we are taught to fight through; that is what makes champions, right? This mindset can be detrimental, though, as it was for me in the fall of my sophomore year. At HW, students leave our Middle School campus after 9th grade and head to the Upper School for grades 10-12. Adjusting to the Upper School is a big jump for all HW students. The workload is tougher, social dynamics are different being the youngest on campus, and simply getting used to brand new buildings all combine into one massive learning experience. However, three months into this transition, I seriously injured myself playing my sport. I was in a private lesson and my knee buckled. After seeing a surgeon, it turned out that I had been playing for years on a knee suffering from a bone disease often seen in athletes who “overdo it” so to speak. For years, I had ignored the pain in my knee as I told myself that it was simply me getting stronger when in reality, I needed medical help. A surgery and three screws later, I had a new knee. Yet, that was just the beginning.
I missed two weeks of the second quarter due to bed rest, right when one should be laying the foundations for a year of grades to come. Rightly so, I fell behind on hours’ worth of homework and various assignments and papers. When I was able to return to school, I was on crutches for four months. The Upper School campus is very stair heavy, so even getting to classes was a challenge. Despite all of these obstacles, you may be wondering what I have to be grateful for from this experience. To sum it up in two words: Harvard-Westlake. For one, my teachers were a massive source of support. Whether it was meeting with me during lunch to help me catch up on missed assignments to emailing me to check-in, I am so incredibly appreciative for all of their support through the process. They would even wait to start class until I arrived since the crutches made me a few minutes later than everyone else; although small gestures like this may seem insignificant, they truly meant a lot to me and made some of my toughest days better. More so than simply teachers, the broader HW community constantly demonstrated their support in day to day interactions on campus. Students I had never met before would offer to carry my backpack for me as I struggled with my knee brace. Every day at lunch, people would help me walk to a table as I tried to balance my plate with crutches (which is no easy feat). Lastly, my coaches and teammates were always checking in. At workouts, the weight coaches would selflessly spend extra time helping make sure I was modifying each exercise correctly, further displaying the empathetic community that I adore so much about HW.
In summary, I am so thankful to attend a school with such kindhearted students and faculty who truly care about one another’s wellbeing. The environment is one that promotes supporting each other; the success of one of us is a win for the whole community, and that mindset is really rare, especially in an educational institution of Harvard-Westlake’s caliber. As for my knee, I am weeks away from being cleared from physical therapy. Although I am a little anxious to begin training again in the sport that I love after a year of being away from it, I am reassured by the fact that I know a supportive community of coaches and teammates is waiting for me on the court.
