 I'm Gabe Whaley, I'm 18 years old, I'm from Midland, North Carolina and I'm the captain of the soccer team. I decided to come to NCSSM because I needed the challenge. Back in my old school, I was a lot less prone to come out and meet people, talk to people. From the first day that I got here, I was a new junior, I had no idea where to go or what to do and I was in my room and I looked out the window onto the field and there was a bunch of guys just playing soccer and I was like, wow. So I went down and started playing, I learned some guys' names, found out they had tryouts in a week. Winning the state soccer championship was, that was a big deal. A lot of people saw us as a surprise when we walked on to the championship game. The other team, really strong, they had scored something like over 100 goals in the season. We played our hearts out. I mean the other team might have had a little bit more skill, but we fought and we got one and we won it, so that was a big deal. Being a unicorn here at NCSSM is something like being a myth. Not a lot of people know exactly what's going on, but what they do know is that we left our families and our homes to strive for that higher goal. On Hall, we have these things called manned sessions and what they are is a completely unplanned event where the guys on Hall get together in a room and we discuss what's going on in each other's lives. If we've got something to laugh about, we laugh about it together. If we've got something to yell about, well, you'll hear us downstairs. It's just something that adds to the whole family away from home experience that I really, really want to remember 25 years from now. The NCSSM experience is just friends, it's athletics, it's academics, it's the teachers, student activities. All of it tied together, it truly makes an experience that you can't find anywhere else.