Spotlight: Shamus Sawyer

At the beginning of this year, you may have seen a new freshman walking around with a cast on his arm, but in recent weeks, he is always in the gym before Morning Meeting playing basketball or whipping around a football with his friends. This new freshman is Shamus Sawyer.
Sawyer recently recovered from a growth plate injury he suffered this summer throwing a baseball. Explaining his struggle to avoid athletics, Sawyer says, “It was definitely hard for me to stay away because you don’t realize how much it sucks until you have an injury. I had no movement there so it was hard to not use my right arm.” Now that he has recovered, he can finally participate in his favorite activities: sports. Explaining his recovery, Sawyer says, “It feels normal now but it’s kinda overwhelming just how far I’ve come to play sports again.”
Now that his arm is back to one hundred percent, he has been playing as much as he can. “I’ve done a lot of sports,” says Sawyer. “I used to go to Perry where I used to play football, but now I mainly play baseball and basketball.” He plans to play basketball for Seabury this year and he is also going to play baseball for Baldwin High School. Sawyer is excited to play in school sports: “I’m excited to play basketball because they almost won state this year. I am a lot better at baseball than basketball, though.” Baseball is Sawyer’s main sport, because, as he says, “I’ve been playing since I was four in Perry. They had a city league so I could just go out and play.”
While Sawyer is an avid athlete, he also dabbles in another kind of contest: video games. Even though it seems like a break from sports, Sawyer says that he mostly plays “video games more oriented towards sports.” Along with sports games, he also mentions a few more: “there’s Minecraft on there, because who doesn’t like that? And then first-person shooters–those are really fun.” Sawyer focuses mainly on his athletics, but every once in a while, he likes to give himself a break with video games.
Before Sawyer came to Seabury, he was not even going to school in Lawrence. He used to attend school in Perry, where, as he says, “they have a lot more sports . . . than Seabury does.” Despite this, he is really enjoying his time at Seabury, which, Sawyer says, is very different: “The workload and the teachers here are a lot more focused on the students than other schools.” Being at a larger school in Perry, Sawyer had never experienced a small class size like Seabury’s and the full attention of the teachers. Sawyer also enjoys his classes and says that biology is his favorite subject. “I love Mr. Bryan,” says Sawyer. “He’s pretty funny in class.” Freshman year is also known as the year at Seabury with lots of work, as it is the first year in high school. Sawyer agrees, saying that he was “surprised by the workload of all the classes combined.”
So the next time you see Sawyer, who knows what he may be doing. He could be shooting a three for the Seabury basketball team or stepping up to the plate in Baldwin. With his love of sports and games, Sawyer is certainly a great addition to the Seabury community.