The first week is always the most depressing

The first week after a season is over is always the most depressing week for people who are involved in athletics, unless of course you are having a horrible season because then you look forward to it. All of a sudden everything you do goes from preparing for a game to preparing for...what exactly? There is always work to do but it's much less exciting when you don't have a game coming up.

The first week is the most depressing because in that week you get to re-live the past several months more than in any other week. Your not constantly working towards a new game so your mind has so much free time to ponder what just happened. It also doesn't help that everything is fresher in your mind in the first week.

Each ending to every year is also very depressing because you realize that seniors are now more than likely done with their athletics career. The final game of a season is in many ways the culmination of hard work and determination of not just one year but many, many years. Since probably the age of four or five when they first started playing their sport. If the season doesn't go as a senior had hoped or if they ended it in a sour way it's a hard thing to deal with, especially at first. Some just re-think the whole year and their regrets for several days.

It must also be a shocking thing for juniors because at the end of the season they become seniors. What goes from having a couple of seasons to look forward too goes to having that one final season. There is pressure, personal pressure more than anything else, to get it done and reach ones ultimate athletic goals as a senior because your senior year is your last chance.

Freshman probably and realistically understand the process worse than anyone else. Freshman want to win, but just like every other typical freshman they also can sit there and think to themselves that they have three more years. This doesn't just apply to sports either. Applies to three more years without worrying about paying for living expenses or worrying about needing a job, or if they have a meal plan..cooking their own food. This isn't to say that freshman don't care about a teams success. That's not the case at all. Freshman care deeply about the outcome of a season and they are crushed when it's over, but I think it's much different for a senior than a freshman.

What I'm trying to say is that freshman probably have the hardest time relating to a senior because to a freshman everything is the beginning. It's so easy for a freshman to look forward to next year. Seniors can't say that.

My least favorite part of a season ending is seeing the reactions of seniors. It's crushing to see them come up short. This is why losses during the year might make a person more mad than anything else. A loss in the season makes you mad because it might take you off track and make reaching goals more difficult. A loss to end the season is just sad because you realize that it's all over.

It's hard not to cry sometimes, whether in person or in private when you see the seniors. Looking at how hard they take it is tough, yet at the same time I wouldn't want to see them in any other way. You don't want to see crying, yet at the same time the crying is what makes people understand just how hard they have worked for years and years and years. Those tears are what shows what sport means to them. Those tears represent not just a season over, but in many cases an athletic career over. No more practices happen. Friendships are over because sport is over. Those tears represent so much. It's important that they flow, or that the emotion of sadness, or frustration or whatever might overcome an athlete who comes up short is visible because it shows others a quarter of how much sport means to that senior.

Some of the seniors are in tears for a while and if you are around them it effects you somehow. At first you don't talk to the seniors. You may give them a pat on the back but you don't say anything to them. What can you say? There is nothing you can say or do that will make them happy. The only thing that could make them happy, besides having another game to play, is to leave them alone for a little bit.

Personally when it comes to the seniors I am referring too I will really miss that class. That class meant a lot to me as a whole. It's so difficult to imagine things without them. Doing that makes me more depressed.

I think when a season is over everyone involved with the team is depressed for a little bit and in the end it's a good thing. The feeling stinks but I think you need the sorrow before you can come to grips with the situation and move on.

I don't think I can ever truly write about what it's like for a season to end because I'm not an athlete and have never played at such an elite level. I can only take the experience that I have seen through my work as a reporter and with teams and try to put myself in the shoes of others. Hopefully I am good at putting myself in other people's shoes.

And before you know it, things will be better.