Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic and the early closures of schools, the 2019-20 school year will be a memorable one for every high school student, especially the seniors. But while those memories are unfortunately negative, the year was already memorable for a number of positive reasons for Sedona Red Rock High School senior Carolina Lopez.
At the beginning of the school year, Lopez decided to run with the cross country team. Initially, Lopez said she didn’t have much interest in the sport. She was talked into running when the team needed another member. In time, though, the sport grew on her. Lopez was a part of the Scorpion girls team that qualified for state. The sport made an impact on Lopez well beyond the success that she and her teammates enjoyed on the trails.
“That has been one of the most life changing sports that I’ve been a part of — I really value my time there,” Lopez said. “The coach was great. And the mentality that we had to have to participate in that sport is something that we could transfer over to life and everything else.”
“It was helpful because I wasn’t the most positive person in the world before that,” she added. “But I know how to see things from a different perspective
now and just face everything head on.”
When cross country wrapped up in the fall, Lopez shifted her attention to a more familiar sport — soccer — where she was the starting goalkeeper for the Scorpions girls team.
Sedona fell short of the preseason goal of qualifying for the state playoffs. Still, Lopez’s senior year stood out as special because of a mentoring program the Scorpions started, where each senior worked with younger teammates they called “littles,” both on and off the field. The senior goalkeeper worked with a pair of juniors, Bella Horton and Hannah Simpson, creating some lasting memories.
“For the seniors to form a bond with someone else it made it feel more like a family so we would help out our littles with school, soccer, anything,” Lopez said. “We wanted to let them know that we were there for them and to help them with whatever we could.”
When soccer season ended, Lopez shifted her athletic focus to the SRRHS track and field team. There, she was set to participate in discus, the shot put and triple jump. Lopez was also one of many Scorpions to try her hand at the javelin. Unfortunately for Lopez and her teammates, Sedona only participated in one meet, finishing in second, before the COVID-19 scare caused the season to be suspended and eventually canceled.
As a senior, that brought an end to Lopez’s high school athletic career. In the fall, she will attend the University of Arizona and major in biology with the ultimate goal of becoming a forensic scientist.
In addition to her time in the Scorpions athletic program, Lopez was also the Senior Class President for the Class of 2020. Lopez hopes that this year’s seniors will be remembered not so much for what they went through, but for the bond they formed over the last four years.
“I’d like us to be remembered as a kind and caring group,” she said. “We’re not the biggest class in the world and because of that, it was easiest to get to know everyone. We weren’t all the best of friends. But we all got to know each other and cared about each other. There was a connection with every single person in the class.”
