Patrick Robertson

Throughout high school, my years were spent fighting through adversity.

Now when I say this it sounds like I had a horrible high school experience which is definitely not the case. In fact, to this day, high school was the best time of my life. I had a great group of friends, a very supportive and loving family, great coaches and instructors, and most of all I matured tremendously. In just the winter of my junior year I lost a very close friend to suicide. This tore my heart out of my chest as well as the entire Mendham Community (my home town in New Jersey). We spent days, weeks, months grieving as a community for such a large loss.

Just nine days after his passing, I had a knee surgery in which I would later find out would end my junior year basketball season. I was heartbroken as basketball was a sport I played competitively since I was just five years old.

The only thing aside from my supportive family, friends, and community that kept me going was the fact that I would be 100% healthy entering lacrosse season in which I decided to pick up again after two years for my friend who was supposed to captain the team before he passed away. This season proceeded to be shut down after just two weeks due to covid. You can only imagine the effect this had on all of us.

This only meant that senior year was our time to make up for lost time on the lacrosse field. We dedicated this season to Matt, and ended up going 10-5, winning our division and beating our rivals for the first time since Matt was just a freshman. This past season, I could feel Matty looking over us.