By LUCIA QUESADA NYLEN
Since sophomore year, senior Rene Rivera has been a key player to the Malden High School boys lacrosse team. Rivera decided to play when “[his] friend Devin Fitzpatrick suggested the idea to him”. And currently playing his last year of high school lacrosse, Rivera is “one of the three starting defenders [for the team].” Fellow lacrosse teammate Mateus Ramos states that “[Rivera] is fearless on the field; he blocks everything for his team.”
In addition to lacrosse, Rivera has been apart of the MHS football team. He played sophomore and junior year.
Rivera has lived in Malden for five years, since eighth grade, when he moved from Everett and before from New York. Rivera moved to New York from El Salvador as a child, where he was born.
Throughout his high school career here at MHS, Rivera confessed that his favorite classes have included Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry and AP physics taught by Martin Berryman and Brian Morrison. Rivera explained how “[the classes] taught [me] to look at things in different ways and from different points of views”. After taking the courses, Rivera explains how “you start seeing things in a more complex way; a falling apple is not just a falling apple anymore, but a series of forces acting against each other.”
Next fall, Rivera is planning to attend the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, MA. Unsure of what he wants to major in, Rivera does hope to become either a mechanical or electrical engineer. He doesn’t plan on pursuing lacrosse in college, though “maybe for a club team, but [he] wants to make sure [his] studies are first,” which is an attitude that many students have going into college.
With his final high school lacrosse season now ending, Rivera reminisces about his career here at MHS. Stating that “[his] favorite thing about high school was definitely just the people [he] surrounded [himself] with and all the people [he] got to meet and interact with, teachers and students both”. In addition, his most memorable moments being all the pep rallys during Thanksgiving time, which Rivera commented “[that] you don’t forget things like that”, the atmosphere, and the people.
