Endgame

Many give up school sports upon high school graduation

At some point, twins Jessica and Kristen DiFillippo had to go their separate ways.

But did it really have to be June 7?

Jessica was already booked. Delaware Valley College in Pennsylvania wanted her to come down for a visit, and she already had her mind set on going there.

It was one of the few schools with her major - small animal science/preveterinarian - and the kicker was she'd be allowed to perform surgery in her first year.

The hitch was that the school doesn't have a tennis team. It doesn't even have tennis courts, just basketball.

So she chose school over tennis.

Jessica had played at Lynnfield all four years of high school, made a ton of friends, learned a lot of lessons, but she made the same decision as most high school graduates: to leave the sport behind in order to attend the college of her choice.

She had three days to choose for her visit to Delaware and picked last Saturday, thinking she wouldn't have anything to do.

Then Lynnfield beat Swampscott in the state tournament, and suddenly she was double-booked, with the tournament on the same date as her college visit.

"It was like, 'Yay, I won!' " she said. "But now I can't play against Winchester."

Even worse, she and her sister, Kristen, had played together for the last time as a doubles team, and they didn't even know it.

"We were just too happy we won," Kristen said. "Then we got home and it was like, 'Oh, that was our last match.' "

They had played together since they were 5 and all season this spring. They were Cape Ann League all-stars. Lynnfield's rematch with Winchester in the Division 2 North girls' championship was supposed to be epic after the two teams played to the final point last year.

But taking the court knowing that her sister wasn't there, it all felt a little empty.

"I wanted to play with her because we had been playing all year," Kristen said. "We know how to play with each other. I know her strengths, she knows my strengths."

This season was a sort of reunion, too. After playing doubles together their first two seasons, coach Craig Stone had to separate them their junior year because they were fighting on the court.

"It was small," Kristen said. "But we'd lose focus and then end up losing."

They wouldn't let the little things bother them this year.

"We had more fun this year," she said, "It was our senior year. Our last year."

Kristen still has more matches to play, at Endicott College next year. But Jessica chose school over sport.

"Gotta let go," Jessica said.

They'll be farther away from each other then they've ever been.

"It's going to be weird," Jessica said. "We're going to be individuals now. A lot of people know us as the twins. Now we won't have that. It will be good to be our own people."

KAELA BARTA
Georgetown lacrosse

The first thing Kaela Barta wanted to do was get her mental house in order.

She knew it was coming. Georgetown's tournament semifinal lacrosse game against Arlington shocked her into realizing it.

The Royals were down three goals at one point before tying it at the end of regulation. She could hardly keep her heart in her chest as her team survived the first overtime. She finally got what they meant by "sudden death."

"That was the most intense game I've ever played in my life," she said. "I thought my season was over. I was so upset."

She was one bad bounce from having it all end, and now that the Royals had won in double OT they had new life in the North final against Winchester.

"I had to emotionally prepare myself going into that last game," she said, "thinking that it could be my last game. I had to consider all the possibilities. If we would lose, how I would handle it and that everything would be OK in the end."

She thought about how far the team had come. The Royals had won two Cape Ann League titles and three state tournament berths. They had only been at the varsity level three years.

It had only been five years since Heather Hartford came to Georgetown and started the program with a bunch of eighth-graders. Barta was one of them. She had never touched a lacrosse stick in her life.

"I picked up a stick and it was something totally different," Barta said. "It was something so new and I just thought it was awesome and cool, and it was just a totally different sport. So I just grew to love it somehow and kept practicing and kept getting better."

By the time she was a senior, Barta was one of the team's top defenders as well as a tricaptain.

"We got to the tournament and we were thinking of going pretty far," she said. "But our program was really young. I think we were really nervous."

So when she heard her last whistle, when the clock ran out for the last time, when Georgetown succumbed to Winchester, 15-9, she was ready.

"I was so proud of our team," said Barta, who will attend the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "And for me, being my last game, I thought it was a perfect way to end."

LUKE FRICK
St. John's Prep volleyball

That thumb-twiddling, time-killing, what-do-I-do-now feeling, Luke Frick became familiar with it.

Volleyball was out of his life, and it was his choice. He was fed up with playing for St. John's Prep, so he did what he thought he had to.

He quit.

He and his coach, Andrew Viselli, were the Nietzsche and Kant of philosophical differences.

One time, Frick went on a mission trip to Virginia with the school, but because of it, he had to miss a week of practice. Viselli sent him to the junior varsity.

Viselli looked at it as a chance to get Frick more playing time; Frick looked at it as a punishment. A junior at the time, Frick was the oldest player on the JV team, and all his friends and classmates were with the varsity.

Never one to bite his tongue, Frick told Viselli what he thought.

"I got fed up with playing on JV," he said. "Why am I putting so much effort into something that wasn't paying off in the short run."

Fogged by frustration, he couldn't see the long run.

So he decided to leave the team.

He sat out a week, all the while his teammates tried to lure him back.

Phil Ellison told him, "You've got to play because we need you next year."

But he stayed holed up in his room, getting ahead on homework or waiting on work. "I just kind of sat at my house like, what am I going to do," he said

Eventually, he had another talk with Viselli. His father was there, too. The long and short of it amounted to Viselli and his dad telling him the same thing.

"If you quit now," they said, "You'll quit for the rest of your life."

Ultimatums don't get much bigger.

It made him think about why he fell in love with volleyball in the first place. And it made his senior season a championship season.

The last game of his career was against Lincoln-Sudbury for the state championship. Frick, the Prep's starting outside hitter, came up with 17 kills, spiking in the title-clinching point. The celebration couldn't have been sweeter.

Looking back on it now, everything about that week away feels silly.

"It's tough," he said. "It's so fun, I love the game. Even if I play club [at Fairfield University in Connecticut], it's not going to be the same as playing with the kids I played with for four years."

He took a hard route to learn an easy lesson.

"Don't quit," he said. "That's probably the biggest lesson I learned. Practice pays off. Hard work pays off."

BRIAN SKERRY
Beverly baseball
Brian Skerry knew what people thought.

One incident - a teenager's mistake - had cost Beverly High School's baseball team its top pitcher at the most crucial stretch of the season. And now, supposedly, the Panthers could start counting the days until next season.

Skerry couldn't finish it that way. He had clawed his way up to the varsity level his sophomore season, and he was a captain now. The day after two of his teammates were suspended after being caught with alcohol, Skerry called a meeting.

He remembers telling his team, "We only have two regular-season games left and whatever the tournament ends up being. We don't have time to regroup, go on a five-game skid, and then find ourselves. We have to do it right now."

Everybody knows the rule about crying in baseball. Skerry wasn't about to break it. But he wasn't about to be emotionless, either.

He wanted those players to believe in this team as much as he did, and definitely more than everybody else did going into the state tournament game with Brook Farm of West Roxbury.

"People didn't think we had it anymore just because we lost one of our best players," Skerry said. "People were like, 'They have no chance of winning that game' "

Beverly handed Brook Farm its worst beating of the season, 20-1. The Panthers lost their next tourney game to Andover, 11-3, but they already had proven something.

"It was just showing that we still have it and we can still compete with anyone and we weren't just a one-player team," Skerry said.

Skerry's already playing summer ball. He'll head to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the fall, and maybe there'll be an intramural team.

But he knows whatever ball he plays, it won't be the same.

"Just not being on that team atmosphere, where you do things for each other and it's not all about yourself, that's the part that I'm going to miss," he said. "Just having a team with me."

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.