High School Seniors Get Sentimental Send-Offs from Their Parents During Their Final Baseball Game Before Graduation

The group of nine high schoolers played for the last time at the Legion Collegiate Academy in South Carolina on May 5

Going, going, gone!

Seniors graduating from a high school in South Carolina got a sentimental send-off from their parents during their final baseball game, according to Today.

The group of nine high schoolers played for the last time at the Legion Collegiate Academy in Rock Hill on May 5. During the match, each player was thrown a final pitch by his dad, and when they got to home base, their mom was waiting to give them a hug, the outlet reported.

An announcer also read each student a heartfelt letter that was written by his parents as they ran across the field.

One senior, 17-year-old Jackson Gordon, told Today that the moment was emotional and filled with “memories, memories, memories,” including “the happy, the sad and everything in between.”

“As early as I could remember, from playing ball in the backyard with just my parents, to all the games leading up to this moment,” the teenager added. “Listening to the letter for me as I rounded the bases, and then seeing my mom as I headed for home, that was definitely the best way to end it, running toward the person who had been there for all of it.”

In the letter read by the announcer, Gordon’s parents reflected on the end of their son’s high school experience.

“This day got here way quicker than I ever thought possible,” the announcer read from the note. “Although I’m sad to see this chapter come to an end, I’m even more excited to watch you take on the world in a different way. … It was never about where you ended up — it was about who you became getting to this point.”

The idea for the emotional send-off, Today reported, was crafted by the team’s coach, Hamilton Bennett. Bennett told the outlet that he was hired for the role at the beginning of the current school year in September, after the team’s former coach, Jalen Benjamin, who was also a teacher at the school, died a month earlier.

“It was a role that would have been difficult for anyone to fill,” he said. “I was just so grateful for it all in that moment.”

When the coach ran the idea for the sentimental send-off by his players and their parents early in the school year, he told Today, “Even back then, there were already lots of tears.”

Bennett added that the idea to do the send-off was inspired by how he and his father would walk around the bases at the conclusion of every part of his own baseball career.