Saying Goodbye to a Game

After the final seconds of the November 5^th game against Curry had ticked away, leaving the score clock to all zeros, the Plymouth State University football team's season had ended. Senior Christian Mulcahy sat in the locker room with fellow senior teammates that had grown to be as close as brothers over the last four years. The coaches spoke briefly, telling the men how proud he was of them. A few tears had fallen, hands were shook, and jerseys were taken off for a final time. Mulcahy felt a way he would never quite feel again, and he knew it.

"I was actually pretty sad because I had finally come to the realization that I will never have that experience on a Saturday afternoon in the fall ever again," said Mulcahy. It is the same bittersweet sensation that senior athletes that have been lucky (and talented) enough to compete in college must go through when the final game or match is played. Fall athletes are dealing with that feeling just over a month after their careers have concluded. "I finally realized how much fun I had, and how much I'm going to miss playing football."

Although the games are played out and finished, the memories linger. To judge the true success of your own athletic career is to understand whether the positives and the accomplishments outweigh any regrets. For a senior member of the soccer team, Julia Redman, the reflections are all good. " There's something about coming together as teammates and finding success together that is just extremely rewarding and makes it so worthwhile considering we all put in a lot of work," Redman said. The PSU soccer team played their last game on November 2^nd, falling short on their LEC Championship bid. Redman remembers the feeling that followed. "It was definitely bittersweet. It took a while for me for it to set in that that would be my last game ever, and when that set in, I definitely felt a wave of sadness."

The Plymouth State Women's Soccer team was eliminated in the first round of the LEC title tournament, following a hard-fought season.  "Although we didn't end up with a LEC Championship, we had left everything on the field knowing that we did everything we could," said Redman. In the nature of sports, the ability to look back on a game and know (for certain) that you gave everything you had is a special thing to be able to do. In the end, after all the sweat has fallen and the pain has been endured in every practice and every game, was it worth it? "Absolutely," Redman said.  "There is no better feeling than putting in hard work and having it pay off in the end."

Was it worth it? "At the end of it all, it was definitely all worth it," Mulcahy said. Over the course of his time wearing the green and white of Panther colors, Mulcahy has received invites to Harvard sports lunches, a golden helmet award and a plethora of NEFC (New England Football Conference) honors including being a 2011 season All-Boyd Divisional All Star. "I was given a number of neat opportunities that if I didn't play football, I wouldn't have gotten."