Local Kids Moving Up

 Local Kids Moving from Bigger to Smaller Schools with Bigger Results

By: Samantha Puckhaber

 

Lake Placid Bomber High School Logo

LAKE PLACID--- Local Lake Placid and Saranac Lake High School students move on to smaller schools with hopes of bigger results for the future. The amount of local day students is scarce at National Sports Academy but all have had more success, and prefer the school of 80+ kids to their old high school of 400+ kids. These students include: Veronica Gaspar(LP), Piper Moles(LP), Brandon Patraw(SL), and Tyler Randig(SL), along with me.

All the students named above have decided to venture out of their public high schools of Saranac Lake and Lake Placid to attempt to have success at National Sports Academy. For most students leaving their local schools are difficult, and many don't have a choice in the matter. But these five students and I decided to take a journey just down the road.

Saranac Lake Red Storm High School Logo

Making the choice of leaving your local school, the school that we've been with for all our lives, is difficult for any student. Yet, all of us have decided it was time to move on from the life we knew at our public high schools. NSA is difficult for any student, trying to balance athletics with academics strains anyone's successes. Yet for most of us it has motivated us.

Leaving local high schools for something we see as a better opportunity will always cause somewhat of a chatter among towns so small. Not speaking for all of us locals when saying this- but to me it adds extra pressures. It's like having the whole town watch you either succeed or fail, and if you fail it is pretty embarrassing. For the other students they had to leave their homes to come here, there's always two sides to the advantage and disadvantages.

The students from NSA that come from Sweden, Italy, far away in the US definitely made a hard decision in coming to NSA, but it is equally as hard to leave as a local. Of course, boarding students often get home sick and always say how lucky we are to live here, but sometimes we're not so lucky. Living in such a small community everyone in town finds out about how your life is going at prep school, and whether you made the right choice, well everyone has their own opinion on that.

Having interviewed fellow student Piper Moles about the benefits of leaving Lake Placid High school she seems to agree that there is pressures of living in town. “There are always other people in town that question if I made the right decision in coming to NSA and make me feel pressure,” she continues, “But I just brush it off, it's not like they're making my choices.” 

She goes on telling me she will not be returning for a Post Grad year and she's ready to move onto college life. “NSA has really giving me the opportunity to manage my time better,” Moles went on to say, “this school has really prepared me for college, I don't think the local high school here could have done that.”

NSA Mountaineers High School Logo

Another local Saranac Laker has endured what we are going through now, and proves that NSA is a great choice for those who have high goals to achieve. 

Kelli Vossler, an ex-Red Storm player who decided to move on to NSA in 2001 for her junior year of high school. Vossler went from playing small town hockey to what seemed to be “the big leagues.” 

She is now the Assistant Coach to Coach Bill Ward (her former Coach) for the National Sports Academy Mountaineers. 

“NSA really gave me the tools to become what I am today, and helped me become successful in what I'm doing,” Vossler said.
Being an Assistant Coach to a team that has won a national tournament and has had very successful seasons isn't to shabby. Vossler shows what the students at NSA can become and shows that going just down the road from a local school to a prep school can teach you.