Almost every high school student dreams of finding the perfect college to spend the next four years of their life at.
With all the stresses that come from the process of finding a college, it can become a mad scramble to try and find that perfect school.
Add in the athletes’ mentality of finding the college that is perfect for them and gives them the opportunity to be students and athletes for the next four years, and it’s easy to understand why National Letter of Intent (NLI) signing day is special for hundreds of thousands of high school student-athletes across the country.
In Middletown, three Middletown High School Knights senior athletes signed their NLI’s in front of a packed house of family and friends in the MHS media center on Nov. 15.
Ryan Crompton signed his NLI to play boys lacrosse at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C., while Jennifer DeSimone signed her NLI to play girls lacrosse at American University in Washington, D.C., while Chase Hoffman rounded out the group signing his NLI to play baseball at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
While the process of finding a school to go to was different for each of the athletes, one of the things that was consistent was that each athlete had a moment in the process where the school picked became an obvious choice.
For Hoffman, the moment came during a baseball camp at the northeastern West Virginia school.
“I went to Shepherd for a camp, performed pretty well, everything felt good,” said Hoffman, a senior pitcher and infielder for the Knights. “From there it was a no-brainer.”
Crompton’s moment came while on a campus visit to the Hickory-based school that sold him on the prospect of becoming a Bear.
“Once I stepped foot on campus in Lenoir-Rhyne, it was just the whole atmosphere that I enjoyed,” said Crompton. “I had other schools but this just became my number one all the way.”
The moment for DeSimone came while in the office of American head coach Emma Wallace while listening to Wallace talk about the plans for the program’s future.
“When I was in my coaches office talking to (her), she had all the goals and everything planned out, she was just so awesome and so energetic,” said DeSimone, the daughter of MHS athletic director Mike DeSimone. “Right when I met her, that was when I knew.”
Though all three of these Knight’s have locked the location of where they will continue their careers, unlike the last major NLI singing, which saw former MHS athletes Zach Welch and Mackenzie Noel sign, they still have a season to play in their respective sports.
With the season still in the sightlines of these athletes, their focus appears to be on the upcoming season, even with the idea of playing college sports still looming large over the day’s events.
“I still have a whole season left,” said Hoffman, who will look to guide a Middletown team that went 16-3 during the regular season in 2012. “I have a lot of stuff left to prove.”
The other two athletes would echo the same sentiment as both will look to lead their teams to one final shot at state championship hardware in their respective sports.
All of the aspirations were put off, though, as today, was all about them, the future, and one very important piece of paper.
