SOUTH HADLEY — Baseballs and softballs cracking off bats and into gloves create a loud echo outside of South Hadley High School and just up the bunny hill, toward the rear of the school, sits the Tigers’ turf field where lacrosse games and numerous other sports call home.
But for many of the student-athletes on those fields, every practice and game day comes with the uncertainty of how many they’ll have left after the town of South Hadley’s $9 million and $11 million override votes failed at the ballot box on April 14, leaving all sports at the high school in jeopardy of no longer being funded in the future.
Those same student-athletes have done all they can to get their voices heard throughout the process, asking the community to help them save their sports.
On the day of the vote, students held signs outside of the school, asking people to vote yes. Some reactions from drivers passing by chose to explain their lack of support for the students.
“There would be people who would roll down their windows and be like, ‘If you can’t pay taxes, you shouldn’t be out here,’” junior girls basketball player Kate Phillips said. “Or they would mock us, or put a thumbs down at us.”
“Maybe we can’t pay taxes, but we also don’t deserve to have everything ripped away from us,” Phillips continued. “That was where I felt hurt, not by people voting no… but the fact that people were mocking us for it was really annoying and rude.”
Phillips played a huge role in the Tigers’ recent girls basketball championship, hoping that she and her teammates will get the opportunity to run it back again next year.
“It’s unheard of for a state champion to not be able to defend that title; that’s just crazy,” Phillips said. “But on top of that, anybody who comes to our home games can see the community that is created from sports.”
With many of her teammates hoping to continue playing basketball in college, Phillips is worried that she will be part of a small group that stays at South Hadley if sports are no longer funded.
Student-athletes are faced with the tough reality that if they want to continue playing sports, they’ll have to look into other options for schools to attend for next year.
With everything still up in the air, students have begun to already begin saying their goodbyes to the sports they’ve grown up playing. Friend groups built through being teammates are beginning to potentially come to an end, casting a dark cloud over the student body.
“I couldn’t wait for school to be done for [April] break because it was just absolutely miserable to be there,” Phillips said. “The student morale is so low.”
Phillips is one of many athletes who are nearing major milestones with the Tigers, with the opportunity to eclipse them feeling less likely by the day.
Junior boys basketball and football player Noah Hambley has been a standout for both of his respective teams throughout his years at South Hadley, with all of his hard work to represent his school potentially coming to an end before his senior season.
“I’m 16 points away from 1,000,” Hambley said. “My athletic career is halted. You’re telling me I can’t play sports anymore; that affects me and my future. One thousand is obviously a great accomplishment. I would have a banner hung from the school. Having that taken away from me, it’s just heartbreaking.”
Hambley is also hoping to earn an athletic scholarship for college, with the override vote now forcing him to look into joining a prep school in the area for next season.
He would then have to not only attend a new school, but acclimate with new teams, finding a role and hoping he could continue to show off for potential scouts attending his games.
The junior was also a big advocate for his fellow students, creating content on social media to hopefully convince the community to get behind them. When the results of the vote came back with roughly 2,000 votes against them compared to 1,000 on their side, it was hard to believe.
“We tried, as a student body, to get people to [vote] yes,” Hambley said. “That was the whole point of our videos and our battle, our protest to vote yes. Seeing that two-to-one deficit, it was just brutal. It’s like people don’t care for the students, for our future.”
Both Phillips and Hambley have already experienced multiple years of playing varsity sports, reaping the benefits of playing the sports they love at the highest level. For some of their peers, next year and the seasons following were set to be prime opportunities to take the next step.
If sports vanish, the young ascending talent at South Hadley won’t have the opportunity to accomplish their goals. For freshman track and soccer player Liv Brill-Hepburn, this reality is a tough one to stomach.
“I played [junior varsity] soccer in the fall, and I really want to try to get to varsity in the next couple of years,” Brill-Hepburn said. “I really want to represent my town and be a part of that team in the upcoming years.”
With so many great teams and great athletes to come through South Hadley High School, kids in the area grow up hoping to one day be at the same level as the role models they look up to.
“Just look around in our gym, we have all these banners up of what we’ve won, we’ve taken home so many championships,” Brill-Hepburn said. “I think everybody is just so upset that we cannot carry on the legacy of South Hadley.”
Brill-Hepburn is already looking into other schools to attend for next year, despite not thinking she’d be anywhere but South Hadley ever since she came over in sixth grade.
The freshman knows how difficult it can be to be the new kid in school, especially how challenging it is to change teams in the sports she loves.
“It’s definitely a scary experience for anyone,” Brill-Hepburn said. “It’s really hard to start over, and I already had to do that once. I really don’t want to have to do that again.”
For many others, South Hadley has been their home since they’ve been in school, now potentially having to put everything they’ve known behind them just for the ability to keep playing sports.
Freshman wrestler Zack Willette is one of many kids who have been put in this tough situation, weighing the pros and cons of continuing his sport but having to leave friends and the comfort of South Hadley behind.
“All of us have grown up together and gone to school together, and everyone knows everyone,” Willette said. “It was definitely a good thing we had going in South Hadley, but I think a lot of people are going to leave the schools now, which sucks. It just sucks we’re all not gonna graduate together.”
The bond that these student-athletes create after years of competing with each other is something that is hard to replicate, especially when looking to the future, which holds so much unknown.
For many, a vote that they had no control over putting an end to their time with the Tigers is a tough pill to swallow. Junior wrestler, outdoor track and football player Roberto Melendez knows how much the decision made by his community is truly affecting him and his peers.
“People are just very sad and devastated,” Melendez said. “They don’t want to lose their friends, because that’s pretty much like their family, South Hadley is where they grew up, and they don’t want to lose that over because of the override.”
Sporting events in the town have been a place for families to come together and cheer for a common goal of the Tigers to win. Especially on the football field, having the community show up and support the football team on Friday nights is a tradition that would be dearly missed.
The football team puts in hours year-round to have a competitive and entertaining product on the field, creating bonds with each other that, for many of the athletes involved, will last a lifetime.
“In football, we have a thing called ‘BOOM,’ that’s brothers on one mission. We’re a pack,” Melendez said. “… That family just brings everyone together as a whole.”
With everyone in the town seeing how much good something like a Friday night football game can do for the community, it makes the lack of support behind the students in the override vote difficult to come to terms with.
“We usually are a community where everyone comes together, and everyone tries to solve these problems, but right now that’s just not happening,” junior indoor and outdoor track and girls soccer player Mikayla Weaver said.
The students know how complicated the situation around the vote was, understanding that no one wants to pay higher taxes in the area, but they’re hoping for some other solution to come to fruition.
“I spend every day after school with my team, and I’m not going to have that place to go after school and those people to be around, the coaches to talk to the teammates to talk to,” Weaver said. “It’s going to be depressing.”
That understanding comes with the harsh truth that there’s little that the students can do at this point to create change, stuck waiting to see if the people around them are able to find a solution to an issue that directly affects them.
“I just think there needs to be a sense of urgency in our community, because people are really taking their time to try and maybe find something, but nothing is actually happening,” Weaver said. “This has been going on for months; people knew this was going on for months, but nothing is actually happening. We really need something to happen. We really need the solution.”
“I hope that this message can reach the state government and that they will step in to help resolve this problem,” Phillips said.
