By Karrie Meyers
Last week, Mile High Academy attended the Walla Walla Adventist University Friendship Tournament in Walla Walla, Washington. By every measurable standard, it was a success. The girls played lights-out basketball, winning their Round Robin bracket. The boys fought hard, winning three of their five games and finishing seventh overall. The food was great (according to every teenager within earshot), the skies stayed stubbornly cloudy, and the three Walla Walla gyms buzzed with energy as teams from all over the West and Canada came together for friendly competition. Most importantly, the students clearly had a great time.
But for some of us sitting in the bleachers, this tournament felt different.
We were the parents of senior students, quietly aware that this was our last basketball tournament.
My son, Logen, has played basketball with many of these kids since we moved here when he was in third grade. Back then, it was playing on the small hoops, chasing balls that bounced the wrong way, and launching shots at a rim that felt impossibly high. In middle school, we packed into gyms to cheer them on as they poured their hearts into those basketballs, learning teamwork, grit, and how to shake off a missed shot.
Then came COVID. And just like that, their middle school season disappeared.
Even then, leadership stepped up. We remain incredibly grateful to Kurt Fesler, who organized a mini tournament in Kansas so those middle school boys could still play. It mattered. It mattered more than he probably knew.
My son’s freshman year arrived quickly, bringing with it a much more grueling schedule filled with daily practices, games stacked on weeknights, long drives, and late nights. I often found myself dragging into the gym after a full workday, wondering if we would eat supper before 10 p.m. Sometimes we didn’t. At the time, it felt exhausting.
Now I would give anything to do it all again.
Because I blinked, and suddenly it was senior year.
So, when the Walla Walla tournament rolled around, it hit differently. We cheered louder than ever. We closed our eyes during free throws. We yelled “Nice try!” when shots didn’t fall. We celebrated wins and shook off losses, knowing none of it was really about the score anymore.
Win or lose, we cheered our hearts out one last time, because these boys, these teams, truly have our hearts.
Basketball has been more than a game for these kids. It has been friendships, perseverance, moments of disappointment and joy, and countless memories stitched together across gym floors and seasons. And for us parents, it has been an unexpected gift, a front-row seat to watch our kids grow up.
Walla Walla may have been just another tournament on the calendar, but for the senior-student parents in the bleachers, it was a beautiful, bittersweet goodbye.
And we wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Always a Mustang!
—Karrie Meyers is mother to a senior student at Mile High Academy. Photos supplied.
