An old team picture shows a dozen kids who thought the season would last forever. It lasted a few months. That’s the point.

Inside a season there is no sense of an ending. Practices repeat, the group feels permanent, and the whole thing turns out to have lasted about fourteen weeks. That is less sad than it sounds. It is the shape of most good things: short, intense, and only visible as short from outside.

Treat this season as the thing itself rather than a run up to something later. Learn everyone’s name, go to the team dinner, take the group photo badly. You are standing inside a picture somebody will be looking at in thirty years.