2026 – Britlee Bastian – Beaver High School HS

There Still is Light

Throughout high school there was always something going on. I feel like every year there was always these little problems and always something big. Freshman year was having all of my friends leave me. Sophomore year I was being harassed, stalked. Junior year my parents left our religion. Senior year it has been the stress of deciding what to do with my life after high school. Every year there has always been something that has tested me and tried me to see if I would break. Honestly, I still don’t know how I would have made it through all of those years all alone.

Freshman year I did a new sport and became friends with so many girls. This was a very scary time since the high school wasn’t in the same town that I went to elementary school at. New school, new people, new schedule, everything was just shocking and confusing. Throughout soccer season, my new sport, I was so happy. I was tan, had a ton of friends, and was getting varsity time as a freshman. Everything just seemed perfect. In the winter basketball season started. With the coach that we had and just being inside all day, it was harder. I still found joy in it, competing is something that I have always loved. I got a whole new friend group since I was with a new group of girls for the most part. Life was good. Basketball season ended at the end of February. After that, I lost all my friends. Everyone else went onto their spring sports and life went on. For me though mine felt like it stopped. After school I just came home every day. That was my life, school then home. In the spring, I started dating this boy and we were together for a few months. Things started to get better, he got me out of my house a lot and helped me to heal.

Sophomore year the boy dumped me. It was during a summer basketball tournament before the championship game. We did win though. Sophomore year for the first bit was the same as freshman year. Soccer was great, I loved every minute of it. Basketball season was tougher this next year, I was first off the bench for varsity so that added more pressure. I played in the post so that meant guarding girls that were over or close to six foot when I’m only 5’6″. By January is when the stalking started. Rumors were being spread around the school about me and my best friend being together. My friend was a role model to me, she was who I subbed in for in varsity. She helped me understand plays and how to do things. She talked me out of breakdowns and panic attacks. Once the rumors started she became my only friend. Most people wouldn’t ever say anything to me about it all, but I knew why everyone became so distant, it was obvious. Anytime I would be with my friend, whether it was getting ice cream, driving around or just talking after practice. There were always some random people who would follow us, jump on our car, video us, you get the point. This led to 6 months in therapy. After working through some of my deeper issues everything ended up fizzling out for the most part.

Junior year was scary, my friend had graduated so I felt like I was going into this year alone. We got a new coach for soccer and it changed our whole season. The last two years, soccer has been more of a fun sport than a winning one. With our new coach we ended up winning Region and we had never done that in Girl’s Soccer in Beaver. Basketball season was rough. I started varsity this year. My parents stopped coming to church with me. Most Sundays I would go by myself, I started showing up a few minutes late so that the majority of the people wouldn’t see me sitting by myself in the foyer. This really tested my faith and made me question close to everything that I believed in. I was so lost and confused at the time. I didn’t have my friend to turn to since after high school she went and served an LDS mission. I felt completely alone. One night after working a weekend shift, my coach called me. Not the varsity coach but the jv coach. She called me and said that she has been thinking and worrying about me. She came and met me before I drove home and just asked me about what had been happening. I told her about my family and being so lost and confused. She had noticed that I had lost weight and seemed tired a lot. She made me promise her that I would not quit and I did promise her. Basketball season ended and I worked to get healthy again. There were a lot of struggles with my mental health. My coach helped me to get back into therapy with a new therapist. This really helped. I never felt like I could talk to my parents about everything because I didn’t want them to know how much they were hurting me. Therapy healed me.

Senior year soccer was not what I expected. I was varsity goalie and for a few weeks was #1 in the nation, state, 2A classification and region 18. In the middle of September I went out and slid for the ball, the striker kicked the ball while it was in my hands, which normally is a red card. A red card kicked a player out of the current game and the next one. Somehow, that kick tore the UCL in my right thumb and broke the corner off of my bone. This happened in the first two minutes of the game, but I finished the game. When I took my hands out of my gloves after the game, the right one swelled up pretty quick. I walked over to my mom after the game and just cried, I told her it was broken and we figured when I was going to go to the doctor and everything. I ended up getting surgery to fix my ligament at the end of September. I decided that I still wanted to play, I knew I couldn’t be goalie anymore but I could play on defense since soccer does not need my hand in the field. We ended up winning Region again this year.  Basketball came with some challenges, my thumb was almost healed by the time the season started. I figured out how to tape it in a way that protected it for the most part. The season had a lot of struggles, but our team chemistry made it all a lot easier to handle. I don’t even know how many times I had been asked at this point what I was going to do after high school. I wanted to give everyone an answer that they were going to be proud of me for. Figuring out what to do, how I was going to pay for it, where I was going to live or work was all and has been so much.

Throughout all of these years of experiences, I have learned that there are always people in my corner, even if I don’t feel like there is. I have also learned that I am someone who is prone to getting seasonal depression. I learned this through the two times that I went to therapy. I learned that I need to try to be more positive in the winter and realize how I’m feeling and thinking. I also learned that no matter what it is, I’m going to get through it. No matter how dim the light is at the end of the tunnel, there still is light.