Tigers seniors bear
lion’s share of emotions at WWS
By Chris Walker
Wheaton Warrenville South should have defended its PepsiCo Showdown title then focused intensely on Wheaton North on Thursday (April 23) for their annual DuKane Conference clash. This weekend they would have battled in Springfield at the Sacred Heart-Griffin tournament.
Instead, the Tigers are left wondering what they may have accomplished this season on the playing field after Governor J.B. Pritzker announced on April 17 that Illinois educational facilities would remain closed for the rest of the 2020 school year. Schools will focus on remote learning for the remainder of the school year. Then on Tuesday (April 21), the IHSA’s board of director met by way of video conference and announced it would cancel all spring sports state tournaments.
“We support the decision by Governor Pritzker and the Illinois State Board of Education, and given the logistics, we simply felt we could not conduct state tournaments that meet the expectations of our member schools this spring,” said IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson. “As disappointing as it may be for students, it is the right decision for their health and safety, as well as for the health and safety of the general public, as we cope with this unprecedented pandemic.”
There were a lot of unknowns on the pitch heading into the 2020 season for the Tigers, but who would’ve predicted that an unprecedented pandemic would invade America and ultimately prove devastating to high school students all over the country, especially seniors playing a spring sport.
After the Tigers graduated 11 seniors with nearly 40 seasons of varsity experience in 2019, a lot of players were going to have an opportunity to battle for starting spots and minutes off the bench for the Tigers. That included a large group of seniors who were new to the squad, some who were bouncing back from injuries and thrilled to show what they could do when healthy, and those who had patiently put in the time, working hard to improve their skills and were now likely would have a chance to play more while enjoying life as a senior.
You can play high school soccer for all four years, but you only get to enjoy one senior season. For Wheaton Warrenville South’s 11 seniors, their words really tell you their story about what’s been an irregular and disappointing final spring -- the likes of which no Tiger before them had dealt with.
This year’s seniors are: defenders, Sarah Berardi, Sam Buol, Renae Fickle, Meredith Follett. Teagan Meyer, Caitlin Shaughnessy and Olivia Showman; defender/midfielder Abby Dannegger; midfielders Emily Agin and Cami Terkildsen; and forward Abby Becker.
Expectations, hopes and a new reality
“This year there were a lot openings with starting positions because so many seniors left last year, which was going to be interesting to see what happened in the season,” Agin said. “Everyone hopes to be a starter with so many openings, but because the season was ended so early there’s really no sure way of knowing what could have happened.”
Fickle acknowledged that she still doesn’t really have a clue about how the season would’ve played out for her personally.
“Going into this season I wasn’t totally sure what my exact role was going to be since there were a lot of open spots to play on the field as well as heavy competition from my other teammates,” she said. “I knew that as a senior I wanted to work as hard as I could to help my team as much as possible and finish out my high school career on a high note. I wanted to give it my all in hopes of leaving with an accomplished feeling as an individual player but also as a whole team.”
Berardi, Becker and Terkildsen were named captains this season. While they may have received advice from last year’s captains, Allie Anderson, Maria Dohse, Molly Fank and Paige Miller, not even those past conversations and overall experiences could prepare them for the uncharted waters of shelter-at-home circumstances due to the deadly COVID-19.
“I had a few expectations going into the season,” Terkildsen said. “First of all, we graduated a lot of seniors and starters last year so we expected there to be competition for the starting spots.
"I had been working hard during club season and preseason. Plus, I’m one of the captains and one of few returning varsity players so I was also expecting to be in a leadership role.”
Having gotten some starts a season ago, Berardi was hoping to be an impact player on the backline for a Tigers team that has 11 defenders on their roster.
“I was hoping to start as an outside defender on the backline,” Berardi said. “Last year I started a couple games back there and was hoping I could secure that position for this year’s season.”
Follett unfortunately was going to be sidelined with an injury this spring, but anticipated playing a leadership role at the very least. She just thought it would be on the sidelines at practice and games, and not only via the internet.
“I tore my ACL right before the season started so my role on the field would have been limited,” she said. “I was excited to get involved with leadership opportunities off the field and have the strong support system of my teammates during recovery.”
Becker, on the other hand, is coming back from an injury and has been hungry to contribute any which way she can.
“This season I was supposed to be a captain and was hoping to start/play as a striker,” Becker said. “I was more than excited for this season, because I spent all of last season recovering from a torn ACL and LCL, so I haven’t played a varsity game since I got injured in a playoff game sophomore year.”
Buol and junior midfielder Becca Hauenstein are the only returning players for the Tigers who started in the season-ending 2-1 loss to St. Charles East in last year’s Class 3A Hoffman Estates regional title game.
“I’ve played with Abby (Becker), Meredith (Follett) and Sara (Berardi) since club with Sockers but didn’t come to high school soccer until sophomore year,” Buol said. “Ever since then I’ve started so I anticipated I’d be starting. I know our starting lineup would be young, but I liked our energy.”
Dannegger is a first-year prep player as a senior. She spent the past three years playing club soccer for Sockers FC Chicago in a league where she wasn’t permitted to play at her high school.
“This year I was really looking forward to playing with my friends and peers from school and getting to know all the people in the program,” she said. “I’ve played other sports for the school like basketball, and it’s so much fun to play for your school.”
Broken hearts in a struggling world
For Becker it’s as if the coronavirus has slowly tugged an adhesive bandage off a boo-boo that was caused by a turf-burned knee injury, rather than tearing it off in a split second.
“It’s been devastating to hear that more and more seems to get pushed back or cancelled altogether because of the virus,” she said. “The team and program this year has had great chemistry, and I think everyone, especially the seniors, are really hurt by the fact that nobody expected an outcome like this.
“The team has been working out and catching up over Zoom calls, which has definitely helped keep spirits up.”
“As a senior, hearing the news that our season has been canceled was truly heartbreaking,” Follett said. “It was tough to know there was no way to test the hard work that has been put in. I have been lucky enough to be part of such a strong community for the past three years, and it is sad that it has to end this way.”
In a sport where ties can often represent a fair result after teams battle for 80 almost nonstop minutes, no one wins this year. Certainly the health and well-being of the student-athletes and the community and country as a whole are paramount, but still, one can’t say that this hasn’t been a tough, tough loss for the Tigers and for all spring high school student-athletes.
“When I found out we wouldn’t be able to go back to school to finish up the rest of the school year, I felt a lot of emotions,” Terkildsen said. “I felt really sad that I wouldn’t get the opportunity to do all the senior celebrations and be with my classmates and teachers, but as a spring sport athlete, I also felt disappointed because I had worked so hard, and I was really looking forward to my last season for a long time.”
A popular prayers begins, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”
“When coach Callipari told us our season will not be continuing, I was absolutely shocked,” Berardi said. “I guess part of me was trying to remain optimistic and pray that we would go back to school in May, and we could continue on with the season. But that’s obviously not the case. After the news sunk in, I couldn’t help but feel upset and somewhat frustrated.”
Previously celebrating senior teammates and then not being able to celebrate yourself as a senior is a deflating feeling.
“The last three years of Tiger soccer, I’ve enjoyed celebrating our senior classes, and I’ve continued to look forward to being celebrated myself one day that I thought would be in the near future,” Berardi said. “I put so much work in my past two years so I could become a captain my senior year and now that I accomplished that, it feels as if I’ve been robbed of that accomplishment. It saddens me to think about how my last ever soccer game that I played was in November with my club team, and I didn’t even know it.”
Perspective and closure
When Buol first joined the Wheaton Warreville South soccer team in 2018 she didn’t know what to expect. Ask her back then what she thought of high school athletics and she likely would’ve responded, “you mean (Friday night) football?”
Today, despite what’s happened in 2020, she remains so thankful that she made the decision to play high school soccer.
“I love the energy that everyone brings,” she said. “Some people never come to games, but we have a fan base here. I’ve loved playing high school. It’s the best move I made. It’s made me mentally strong and a better soccer player and changed my perspective. It has made soccer more enjoyable and I always thought high school was mostly just football.”
Last year, Buol and the Tigers edged Metea Valley 2-1 to win their bracket in the PepsiCo Showdown. That remains a big moment, a lasting memory for her as a Tiger.
“We’re going to miss the Pepsi, and playing in that game (last year) and winning something was big, because we normally don’t win anything. Because we just don’t win conference,” she said. “We’re going to miss Senior Night, and I’ve seen everyone on Senior Night before and being a part of it and the speeches from that are special.
“But now there’s no Senior Night, but I realize that I can’t be focusing so much on the negatives. I think everything happens for a reason. Your perspective changes. We’re focusing on the future instead of the now, and we have to appreciate that this can all be gone at any time.”
Buol acknowledged that the coronavirus situation has her seriously considering playing with the club soccer team at the University of Iowa when she begins classes on campus.
“I guess this has kind of pushed me, I guess, to try to play club in college,” she said. “The University of Iowa has a good club so now that this (senior year of high school) has been stripped away, now I think I want this. That feeling that something is gone makes me want it back.”
Agin has found herself reminiscing about many of her great Wheaton Warrenville South soccer memories and there certainly have been many when you’ve been part of a program since the day you first walked into high school.
“Personally for me, I was really disappointed to hear that the season was over,” she said. “I have played high school soccer for all four years, including club, and the one thing I have always looked forward to is Senior Night, since I have been teammates with these girls for so long. It’s a nice way to end high school soccer with your friends and loved ones, and having that no longer be an option is really heartbreaking. Having this last season be cancelled so abruptly has also made appreciate all of the past games and practices in the last four years.”
Dannegger is left with little to reminisce with Tigers soccer other than “what could have been.”
“The first few weeks we’re going great,” she said. “We were having so much fun together so it almost made it even harder to have the season cancelled since we got a taste of what it would be like. There’s nothing anyone can do about it and obviously school and sports aren’t the most important thing going on – or not going on – in the world right now, but it’s still hard for everyone to not get to experience what could have been, especially for it being the seniors’ last opportunity.”
Dannegger, who plans on studying industrial engineering at the University of Illinois, but not play soccer, got some advice from her sister Annalee, a Wheaton Warrenville South grad, who now golfs for the University of Iowa.
“She told me to enjoy every minute I had competing for my high school and continue to make a great bond with my teammates through this time,” she said.
Fickle said she was completely devastated when she received word that the season was over, but that the reason for its cancellation is more significant than playing soccer.
“When I found out that our school was closed for the rest of the year I was completely devastated,” she said. “It didn’t feel real at first because we had so many fun activities and experiences that we were excited for, but couldn’t get the chance to experience. Whether it was our first soccer game or a fun extracurricular activity, I was heartbroken realizing that we would have to miss out on all of our ‘lasts’ at the end of the year that seniors normally could enjoy, but it’s helpful to find comfort knowing that all of these precautions are here to help the greater good.”
lion’s share of emotions at WWS
By Chris Walker
Wheaton Warrenville South should have defended its PepsiCo Showdown title then focused intensely on Wheaton North on Thursday (April 23) for their annual DuKane Conference clash. This weekend they would have battled in Springfield at the Sacred Heart-Griffin tournament.
Instead, the Tigers are left wondering what they may have accomplished this season on the playing field after Governor J.B. Pritzker announced on April 17 that Illinois educational facilities would remain closed for the rest of the 2020 school year. Schools will focus on remote learning for the remainder of the school year. Then on Tuesday (April 21), the IHSA’s board of director met by way of video conference and announced it would cancel all spring sports state tournaments.
“We support the decision by Governor Pritzker and the Illinois State Board of Education, and given the logistics, we simply felt we could not conduct state tournaments that meet the expectations of our member schools this spring,” said IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson. “As disappointing as it may be for students, it is the right decision for their health and safety, as well as for the health and safety of the general public, as we cope with this unprecedented pandemic.”
There were a lot of unknowns on the pitch heading into the 2020 season for the Tigers, but who would’ve predicted that an unprecedented pandemic would invade America and ultimately prove devastating to high school students all over the country, especially seniors playing a spring sport.
After the Tigers graduated 11 seniors with nearly 40 seasons of varsity experience in 2019, a lot of players were going to have an opportunity to battle for starting spots and minutes off the bench for the Tigers. That included a large group of seniors who were new to the squad, some who were bouncing back from injuries and thrilled to show what they could do when healthy, and those who had patiently put in the time, working hard to improve their skills and were now likely would have a chance to play more while enjoying life as a senior.
You can play high school soccer for all four years, but you only get to enjoy one senior season. For Wheaton Warrenville South’s 11 seniors, their words really tell you their story about what’s been an irregular and disappointing final spring -- the likes of which no Tiger before them had dealt with.
This year’s seniors are: defenders, Sarah Berardi, Sam Buol, Renae Fickle, Meredith Follett. Teagan Meyer, Caitlin Shaughnessy and Olivia Showman; defender/midfielder Abby Dannegger; midfielders Emily Agin and Cami Terkildsen; and forward Abby Becker.
Expectations, hopes and a new reality
“This year there were a lot openings with starting positions because so many seniors left last year, which was going to be interesting to see what happened in the season,” Agin said. “Everyone hopes to be a starter with so many openings, but because the season was ended so early there’s really no sure way of knowing what could have happened.”
Fickle acknowledged that she still doesn’t really have a clue about how the season would’ve played out for her personally.
“Going into this season I wasn’t totally sure what my exact role was going to be since there were a lot of open spots to play on the field as well as heavy competition from my other teammates,” she said. “I knew that as a senior I wanted to work as hard as I could to help my team as much as possible and finish out my high school career on a high note. I wanted to give it my all in hopes of leaving with an accomplished feeling as an individual player but also as a whole team.”
Berardi, Becker and Terkildsen were named captains this season. While they may have received advice from last year’s captains, Allie Anderson, Maria Dohse, Molly Fank and Paige Miller, not even those past conversations and overall experiences could prepare them for the uncharted waters of shelter-at-home circumstances due to the deadly COVID-19.
“I had a few expectations going into the season,” Terkildsen said. “First of all, we graduated a lot of seniors and starters last year so we expected there to be competition for the starting spots.
"I had been working hard during club season and preseason. Plus, I’m one of the captains and one of few returning varsity players so I was also expecting to be in a leadership role.”
Having gotten some starts a season ago, Berardi was hoping to be an impact player on the backline for a Tigers team that has 11 defenders on their roster.
“I was hoping to start as an outside defender on the backline,” Berardi said. “Last year I started a couple games back there and was hoping I could secure that position for this year’s season.”
Follett unfortunately was going to be sidelined with an injury this spring, but anticipated playing a leadership role at the very least. She just thought it would be on the sidelines at practice and games, and not only via the internet.
“I tore my ACL right before the season started so my role on the field would have been limited,” she said. “I was excited to get involved with leadership opportunities off the field and have the strong support system of my teammates during recovery.”
Becker, on the other hand, is coming back from an injury and has been hungry to contribute any which way she can.
“This season I was supposed to be a captain and was hoping to start/play as a striker,” Becker said. “I was more than excited for this season, because I spent all of last season recovering from a torn ACL and LCL, so I haven’t played a varsity game since I got injured in a playoff game sophomore year.”
Buol and junior midfielder Becca Hauenstein are the only returning players for the Tigers who started in the season-ending 2-1 loss to St. Charles East in last year’s Class 3A Hoffman Estates regional title game.
“I’ve played with Abby (Becker), Meredith (Follett) and Sara (Berardi) since club with Sockers but didn’t come to high school soccer until sophomore year,” Buol said. “Ever since then I’ve started so I anticipated I’d be starting. I know our starting lineup would be young, but I liked our energy.”
Dannegger is a first-year prep player as a senior. She spent the past three years playing club soccer for Sockers FC Chicago in a league where she wasn’t permitted to play at her high school.
“This year I was really looking forward to playing with my friends and peers from school and getting to know all the people in the program,” she said. “I’ve played other sports for the school like basketball, and it’s so much fun to play for your school.”
Broken hearts in a struggling world
For Becker it’s as if the coronavirus has slowly tugged an adhesive bandage off a boo-boo that was caused by a turf-burned knee injury, rather than tearing it off in a split second.
“It’s been devastating to hear that more and more seems to get pushed back or cancelled altogether because of the virus,” she said. “The team and program this year has had great chemistry, and I think everyone, especially the seniors, are really hurt by the fact that nobody expected an outcome like this.
“The team has been working out and catching up over Zoom calls, which has definitely helped keep spirits up.”
“As a senior, hearing the news that our season has been canceled was truly heartbreaking,” Follett said. “It was tough to know there was no way to test the hard work that has been put in. I have been lucky enough to be part of such a strong community for the past three years, and it is sad that it has to end this way.”
In a sport where ties can often represent a fair result after teams battle for 80 almost nonstop minutes, no one wins this year. Certainly the health and well-being of the student-athletes and the community and country as a whole are paramount, but still, one can’t say that this hasn’t been a tough, tough loss for the Tigers and for all spring high school student-athletes.
“When I found out we wouldn’t be able to go back to school to finish up the rest of the school year, I felt a lot of emotions,” Terkildsen said. “I felt really sad that I wouldn’t get the opportunity to do all the senior celebrations and be with my classmates and teachers, but as a spring sport athlete, I also felt disappointed because I had worked so hard, and I was really looking forward to my last season for a long time.”
A popular prayers begins, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”
“When coach Callipari told us our season will not be continuing, I was absolutely shocked,” Berardi said. “I guess part of me was trying to remain optimistic and pray that we would go back to school in May, and we could continue on with the season. But that’s obviously not the case. After the news sunk in, I couldn’t help but feel upset and somewhat frustrated.”
Previously celebrating senior teammates and then not being able to celebrate yourself as a senior is a deflating feeling.
“The last three years of Tiger soccer, I’ve enjoyed celebrating our senior classes, and I’ve continued to look forward to being celebrated myself one day that I thought would be in the near future,” Berardi said. “I put so much work in my past two years so I could become a captain my senior year and now that I accomplished that, it feels as if I’ve been robbed of that accomplishment. It saddens me to think about how my last ever soccer game that I played was in November with my club team, and I didn’t even know it.”
Perspective and closure
When Buol first joined the Wheaton Warreville South soccer team in 2018 she didn’t know what to expect. Ask her back then what she thought of high school athletics and she likely would’ve responded, “you mean (Friday night) football?”
Today, despite what’s happened in 2020, she remains so thankful that she made the decision to play high school soccer.
“I love the energy that everyone brings,” she said. “Some people never come to games, but we have a fan base here. I’ve loved playing high school. It’s the best move I made. It’s made me mentally strong and a better soccer player and changed my perspective. It has made soccer more enjoyable and I always thought high school was mostly just football.”
Last year, Buol and the Tigers edged Metea Valley 2-1 to win their bracket in the PepsiCo Showdown. That remains a big moment, a lasting memory for her as a Tiger.
“We’re going to miss the Pepsi, and playing in that game (last year) and winning something was big, because we normally don’t win anything. Because we just don’t win conference,” she said. “We’re going to miss Senior Night, and I’ve seen everyone on Senior Night before and being a part of it and the speeches from that are special.
“But now there’s no Senior Night, but I realize that I can’t be focusing so much on the negatives. I think everything happens for a reason. Your perspective changes. We’re focusing on the future instead of the now, and we have to appreciate that this can all be gone at any time.”
Buol acknowledged that the coronavirus situation has her seriously considering playing with the club soccer team at the University of Iowa when she begins classes on campus.
“I guess this has kind of pushed me, I guess, to try to play club in college,” she said. “The University of Iowa has a good club so now that this (senior year of high school) has been stripped away, now I think I want this. That feeling that something is gone makes me want it back.”
Agin has found herself reminiscing about many of her great Wheaton Warrenville South soccer memories and there certainly have been many when you’ve been part of a program since the day you first walked into high school.
“Personally for me, I was really disappointed to hear that the season was over,” she said. “I have played high school soccer for all four years, including club, and the one thing I have always looked forward to is Senior Night, since I have been teammates with these girls for so long. It’s a nice way to end high school soccer with your friends and loved ones, and having that no longer be an option is really heartbreaking. Having this last season be cancelled so abruptly has also made appreciate all of the past games and practices in the last four years.”
Dannegger is left with little to reminisce with Tigers soccer other than “what could have been.”
“The first few weeks we’re going great,” she said. “We were having so much fun together so it almost made it even harder to have the season cancelled since we got a taste of what it would be like. There’s nothing anyone can do about it and obviously school and sports aren’t the most important thing going on – or not going on – in the world right now, but it’s still hard for everyone to not get to experience what could have been, especially for it being the seniors’ last opportunity.”
Dannegger, who plans on studying industrial engineering at the University of Illinois, but not play soccer, got some advice from her sister Annalee, a Wheaton Warrenville South grad, who now golfs for the University of Iowa.
“She told me to enjoy every minute I had competing for my high school and continue to make a great bond with my teammates through this time,” she said.
Fickle said she was completely devastated when she received word that the season was over, but that the reason for its cancellation is more significant than playing soccer.
“When I found out that our school was closed for the rest of the year I was completely devastated,” she said. “It didn’t feel real at first because we had so many fun activities and experiences that we were excited for, but couldn’t get the chance to experience. Whether it was our first soccer game or a fun extracurricular activity, I was heartbroken realizing that we would have to miss out on all of our ‘lasts’ at the end of the year that seniors normally could enjoy, but it’s helpful to find comfort knowing that all of these precautions are here to help the greater good.”