As the 2023 school year concludes, we get to look back at the athletes that shaped a new generation of Royal athletes that have shaped something special here at HSE! With the start of the year focusing on fall sports raised a new standard for all incoming athletes as we produced 2 state championships with Volleyball and Cheerleading as football fell short with a semi-state run. Now we have universities from all over the country that will come in to see our athletes perform and possibly get them to the next level. One bright spot was Cole Earlewine from the football team as he is now committed to playing at Ball State for the next 4 years. I sat down with Cole to see how this year’s chances differed from years prior and he told me “I feel like the winning was a big reason for my recruitment. When you are the best around coaches want to see the players on the best team. So I feel our team’s success helped me a lot with my recruitment. Also, coach Kelly’s marketing of our players really helped get my game and many others out there.”. We also can shy away from our winter sports that showed off two prime players in HSE girls’ basketball history since Sydney Parrish with Riley Makalusky & Olivia Brown. Even though they fell short of a sectional title, they excelled this season which landed Makalusky a scholarship at Butler and Olivia Brown at Akron. You can’t miss the opportunity to miss baseball where we might not have the flashiest commitments but that is what makes this team unique. Looking at Pitcher Ty Bradle he will be attending Lincoln Trail next season which is a Junior College. Bradle has excelled the past 2 seasons and had to say this about the coach’s help “all of the coaches who pushed me to be where I am today and all of the extra time and workouts that I put in helped and played a big role in where I’m at now”. But We have athletes going to a wide array of different collegiate levels like D1, D2, D3, and JUCO (Junior College). This has led Athletic Directors Jim Self, Greg Habegger, and Kami Laux to make signing day something special for all our athletes going to the next level to play a sport. When talking to Coach Self he had to say this about the commits and how signing day is made to be special for the athletes “We want every athlete at HSE to get an equal opportunity with signing day, this gives the athletes more recognition on where they are headed to and grow the royals athletics to become a bigger name around the country”. Now having signing day and being able to have all these coaches visit from around the country from this class and it’s safe to say each athlete has made a staple here one way or another. Eventually, we could see the future of Royals athletics take a new shift from this class by bringing in multiple state titles and D1 commits.