For this issue, we intended to do stories, recapping the records of our Questa sports teams, doing highlights on specific students.

We nixed those articles.

For this issue, we are going to talk about something much more important, and that is the importance of supporting our students, athletes or not.

Every two hours and 11 minutes, a young person in the United States commits suicide. Every single year, over 5,000 young people in the United State will die to suicide. Over 2.7 million youth in the United States report to be experiencing major depression.

I once heard it said that this generation is the saddest generation, with the prettiest social media pictures.
The pressures they feel to be present on instagram, facebook, twitter, snapchat, tiktok to be, and do, and act certain ways to gain status, popularity, clout, which could all be stripped away in an instant with the wrong click, a post, a like, a share, posting too much, or not posting enough…

It’s exhausting.

Just imagine, the crushing pressure young people feel to be students right now. You have to be so many things to so many people, in-person and online, focus on your studies, play sports, participate in extracurricular activities, try your best, be role models, work hard, to be met with ridicule because it’s not enough.

Kids play sports and participate in extracurricular activities to escape the real world, increase their endorphins, improve their mental health, practice sportsmanship, to learn lessons about winning and about losing, while having fun.

At the end of the day, scores and team records mean nothing.

The lessons young people learn through participating in sports and extracurricular activities will serve as lessons they will carry for the rest of their lives. How we react when things don’t go our way, or when we lose, or when decisions are made which we don’t agree with, sets an example for our kids on how they should react to adversity.

It’s our job as adults to support them when they win and when they lose. To show up and cheer for them, love them, encourage them, and be there for them… all of them, regardless of the score, regardless of the record and regardless of the team, because the students matter, their futures matter, their mental health matters, and their lives matter.

Congratulations to our fall season 2023 Wildcats and Ladycats!