Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened. Never change. Have a good summer.

When I think back to my fondest memories on the site, they are all based around the users that I've met and interacted with. I had never heard of discord or a simulation league when I clicked the reddit link last February. I'm not a huge gamer, but I eat up athletic role-playing games ("be a pro" style campaigns). I used to enjoy wasting Sundays playing those games with my roommates, so I clicked the ad (r/fantasyhockey). I found the site's layout incredibly intimidating, but by leaving a bread crumb trail of bookmarks, I was able to create. I created ~5 minutes after @sköldpaddor so everywhere I was being directed to was reasonably easy to follow because the "Last Post: skoldpaddor" served as the beacon to guide me onward. A few days later I was in the s47 discord. I was a heavy lurker for a while. the conversations were dominated by @wibblymcbutternutz and @Randominoe. Wibbly stands out in my mind; @Nobody made a comment about how players with Wibbly's patterns will either be supermax earners or be burned out within 2 weeks. While nobody's prediction was accurate, the idea of people not committing to winning the game really stood out to me. When I played the create-a-player modes on console I just did it as a way to relax while following a different feedback loop. I had never considered the SHL as a social commitment as well.

I didn't plan on caring about the site. I thought it would be a fun little background game to have in a separate tab at work in order to break the monotony. But after getting drafted to an active Raptor's locker room (being a first-gen with a bunch of vets was pretty intimidating), I found myself leaving a tab open for discord as well.

The chaos of the rookie discord plus a new and confusing site with hundreds of active people who knew each other was intimidating. It reminded me of the first day at a new job/school. I was pretty quiet for the first few weeks. @goodolkimmy drafting me to the raptors (before @hhh81 whipped me into shape) showed me that the site saw value in me. The recruiting turnover revealed that only 39 of the original ~55 prospects were still signing on, and that I had a chance to be the contributor that all of my shitty console create-a-players had been.

My connections with my draft class are one of the things that I cherish most. Things that I did not expect to enjoy when i clicked the reddit link are chatting with @secondsux22 about Canadian punk rock bands, ruining the graphics department with @Carpy48 , following Jess's journey through motherhood, and chatting about a million dumb random things with @SDCore, @hotdog, @BDonini, and @Fordyford.

I have many other fond moments that I could have written about (graphics discord chats, everything edmonton, the raptors), but I'll cut it off after the atta-boys that I gave my s47 dawgs. I'll prewrite them and save them for the 15 year anniversary.

Closing question: @hotdog , why did you change your handle from bwrabbitt?

My browser no longer auto-completes tags, so if I messed something up, I'm going to let it sit there so that I don't have to tag multiple people again as I go to add a space between a handle and a comma.