D2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, JUNE 29, 2020UNION, N.J. — At high schools across
America, senior night is bittersweet even
in the best of times. This year, it became
just another milestone, alongside senior
proms and graduation ceremonies,
erased from the calendar by the coro-
navirus pandemic.
The exceptional few graduating sen-
iors will get to continue their athletic ca-
reers in college. The majority will not.
For them, senior night is often a powerful
mix of memories, achievements and
friendships, a final hour or two to cap
years invested in competitive athletics.
But how do you celebrate a final sea-
son that never happened?
“Every high school kid looks forward
to their senior year being the best one
out of all four,” said Andrew Sanborn, the
starting quarterback at Union High
School in New Jersey, who was looking
forward to one more baseball season be-
fore heading off to play college football.
His baseball season, like so many oth-
ers, was canceled before opening day.
“It was going great in the beginning of
the year,” he said, “but then everything
took a turn for the worse.”
At Union High, a school serving a di-
verse student body within a tangle of
highways just west of New York City, the
athletic department was determined to
salute its seniors as it always had done.
To do it, they invited the players to the
school on an evening in late May to cele-
brate the athletes whose last chance to
compete was sooner than they expected;
to give teammates the opportunity to
gather one last time; to talk about what
had been achieved even as so much had
been lost.
The teenagers shouted out the win-
dows of cars as they pulled into the park-
ing lot — greetings, whoops and pure
squeals of joy shared among teammates
who had not seen one another in person
for weeks.
Organizers were resourceful in an era
of social distancing. Set up as a drive-in
affair, Union’s senior night was held
alongside the school’s stadium. Whenstudent-athletes were out of their cars, a
fence divided them from the adults.
Moms and dads, who tagged along, re-
minded them and their friends to stay six
feet apart. Coaches did the same.
“You’re too close,” rang out in the dusk
during a fireworks display.
It was hard to look ahead. For some, it
was worse to look back.Marshaan Ebuenga-Smith, an honors
student and the captain of the volleyball
and track and field teams, wants to be-
come a heart surgeon. She is off to the
University of Delaware, where she hopes
to join the Blue Hens track team.
But first, she had to endure a harrow-
ing couple of weeks after both her par-
ents tested positive for the coronavirus.Her mother’s case of Covid-19, the dis-
ease caused by the virus, was severe
enough that she needed to be hospital-
ized. She has since recovered.
Those nerve-racking months behind
her, Ebuenga-Smith said she was grate-
ful for a last chance to see her team-
mates.
“Not being able to spend the last mo-
ments with my class and friends is very
heartbreaking due to knowing we will
most likely never see each other again,”
she said. “We all dreamed of the day we
would throw our graduation caps in the
air and say we made it with each other,
but it has been taken away.”
This was the year Union’s track and
field team expected to ascend to the top
spot in the national rankings. Union was
No. 2 when the national meet was can-
celed by the pandemic. Instead, many
Union athletes have been left to stay in
shape by squeezing through a hole in the
stadium’s fence and working out on the
track, even though it is officially closed,
as a precaution.
“We were set to win it all,” said Brian J.
Kwarteng, the senior class president,
who plans to enroll at Tufts University,
where he is set to compete in the 400-me-
ter hurdles for the Jumbos.
For Elizabeth Arias, the pandemic and
its effects have been important prepara-
tion for college and beyond. She was a
four-year starter in softball and an avid
reader. She thinks Benjamin Franklin
was a wise man when he said, “Change is
the only constant in life.”
“How has Covid transformed my sen-
ior year is quite simple,” she said. “It’s
showed me that whether we like it or not,
we are all going to go through change,
and it’s up to us to accept it and decide
how we will move forward with it.”PHOTOGRAPHS BY MONIQUE JAQUES FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESSenior Night for a Missing Season
By JOE DRAPE
and MONIQUE JAQUES‘We all dreamed of the
day we would throw our
graduation caps in the air
and say we made it with
each other, but it has been
taken away.’
MARSHAAN EBUENGA-SMITH,
volleyball and track and field captain
at Union High School in New Jersey.
‘We were set to win it all.’
BRIAN J. KWARTENG, senior class president and member of the track and field team.‘Whether we like it or not, we are all going to go through change.’
ELIZABETH ARIAS, a senior softball player, far right, holding a poster made by the family
of Andres Amador, a senior volleyball player, far left, with friends during senior night.