Every year sports lose one group of seniors and gain another. In the moment of losing seniors it may seem like the next year’s season will be unpredictable.

But every year the new group of seniors likes to prove people wrong.

This situation affected football and girls’ basketball this year. They had big expectations to live up to and new leaders had big shoes to fill.

For girls’ basketball, trying to live up to a state championship is hard work, especially when people expect you to not make it. Liana Wainit, a freshman guard on the varsity team, knows firsthand how hard it is to live up to those expectations.

“It was harsh and kind of degrading listening to all of the comments and doubts. But as a freshman I still walked in with a fresh and open mindset to this season and our destiny for this season was up in the air.” Wainit said.

It’s very clear not many people think they can live up to last year’s team but Wainit believes in her team and in the leaders.

“I think Angel and Ja’Mya really do a great job in leading our team. They’re experienced players who have been going through this system for a while. They make sure that we all are on the same page about what our goals are and they make sure we do our best to strive for them.” Wainit said.

Girls’ basketball isn’t the only team with high expectations to live up to. Football had a great group of leaders last year. After they graduated some people didn’t believe they could do it again, but Brian Pacheco, a senior, thinks they did just fine without them.

“We did good, definitely proved all the doubters wrong that were saying we were nothing without the past seniors even though we ended the season with the same outcome we still did really good this year and gave it our all,” Pacheco said.

After hearing all the doubts and predictions for this season, the team worked twice as hard to be better than they were last year, to prove the doubters wrong. Seth Mattly stepped up this year to be a great leader that lived up to expectations.

“He always put the team first and he loved the sport, always giving 100% effort and everything he had during practices and games. He just had the leader in him,” Pacheco said.