Camas High School Senior Emma Sanz has lived in Camas for most of her life. She is very active and loves most of the electives at CHS. One of the electives that she chose this year is journalism. 

“I mostly joined because I love Mrs. Hunting and secondly, I really like writing. Especially seeing other people’s perspectives and hearing other people’s opinions. I think that just kind of helps you be a well-rounded person,” said Sanz.

She enjoys hearing about other people’s perspectives about what is going on in the world today.

Sanz said, “I mean journalism helps to keep people informed. Just helping people know what’s going on, so people know how others are living in the world. I think it’s important to take into account other people’s opinions instead of just yourselves.”

She also enjoys sports and her favorite is basketball. Sanz picked up the sport in fifth grade and has been playing ever since. Throughout her basketball career has experienced both success and setback.

“When I was a freshman, at the end of the year I tore my ACL and busted my knee up bad. I also tore both my meniscus and I fractured my knee. The hardest thing about getting injured was not playing and watching other people get better.”

Despite this major setback, Sanz did not give up on the team. She decided to become the manager, which came with some positives and negatives.

“I became manager for my team because I still wanted to be a part of the team. You just feel so behind. There was one good thing that came out of not playing and that is when I was the manager, there was another girl that was a manager with me. She was an exchange student from Denmark and her name was Kat. We became really good friends and so that was really fun and she would teach me Danish while we recorded the basketball games and stuff.”

Sanz learned several critical lessons through this experience.

“I realized you can’t get mad at things you can’t control even though it was really frustrating in the beginning. The biggest lesson I learned is you can’t be mad about things you can’t control,” she said.

Sanz eventually recovered and was able to return to the game.

Though she has faced trials in her life, she was able to overcome them and approach life with a new, optimistic lens. Sanz learned that you cannot be mad about the challenges you face, but instead learn to overcome them.