Coach Pieper called us over and told us not to put on our helmets, something we had been trained to do since fifth grade. We took a knee; something on his face wasn’t right.

Nobody said anything. We all were waiting to find out what was going on. Everyone was nervous, more nervous than before a game.

He told us Billy Garrity had passed away that morning.

He didn’t stop talking. Words were still coming out of his mouth, but I couldn’t hear them. I just shrunk down to nothing. In the back I saw someone had collapsed, weeping. Then I realized that I too was crying, quietly but uncontrollably.

Somehow we all made our way to the area outside the pool doors. Everything was such a haze that I didn’t even realize Coach Pieper was talking to us again, this time in the shade of the trees. I couldn’t cry anymore—my body physically couldn’t—but I heard someone next to me start to cry again. I patted his back, and looked up to see Kyle Caraher’s eyes staring right back into mine. In those two seconds I could see that we would get through this as long as we held strong and stood together.

I sat in the grass for what seemed like hours remembering every moment I had spent with Billy in the past year. On the bus ride to a track meet when he fell asleep, and even he couldn’t help but laugh at the picture we had taken. When he got extremely intense in gym basketball two-on-two. I couldn’t believe that the person who was always smiling, always laughing, was actually gone.

The next few days were filled with people commemorating Billy on Facebook and asking me if he was really gone. I didn’t want to say yes, but it was the truth. Anyone who knew Billy knows how special he was. I feel lucky just to have known him and I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t. He was an amazing person.

We met as a team the Tuesday following Billy’s death. Coach Pieper wanted to make sure we all knew that we could talk with him or any of the other coaches about anything if we wanted. He also stressed the importance of our team. We had to band together to be able to adjust, and he left us with a single phrase: “One team, one heartbeat.”

In the next week I thought everything would finally get back to “normal,” or at least that a new normal would be established.

Then I heard that Billy’s close family friend, Ryan, had passed away as well. Losing one person was enough for a lifetime, so I couldn’t even imagine what it was like for the people that knew Ryan and Billy. I would like to say we thought it was over, but we all had a feeling there was still the possibility of someone else leaving us, someone else’s life being cut short.

When my parents told me that another one of my friends had died, I was as shocked as when I heard about Billy. Then they told me it was Kyle Caraher in a car accident. This time I didn’t have my teammates to fall back on, since we didn’t have practice until Thursday. I just sat in my room, thinking about the two friends I lost in three weeks’ time. I remembered the moments I shared with Kyle the day Billy died, and I realized that the one person who reassured me without the need of words was gone. I felt alone.

In the days following Kyle’s death, the entire football program had a meeting with a counselor where we remembered Kyle. His friends told stories about their memories of his life. When we were finished talking, the counselor said something I will never forget.

He told us that the hardest thing to understand is the fact that we can never share another memory with that person.

The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. That part of Billy and Kyle’s death didn’t seem to register. Even seeing the two of them lying in their caskets hadn’t sparked the fact in my brain that those few moments where I could barely look at them would be the last time I ever saw them.

Those 40 players on the football team are my brothers and sister. They all helped me get through the most terrible time in my life, and they will always be my family no matter what.

Not a day has gone by where I haven’t thought about Billy and Kyle, and I hope that they will always be on my mind. Remembering them helps me know that whatever I want to do I should do because we only have one chance to live our life, so we might as well make the most of it.