So here I am again, writing a sports column for The Daily, roughly three and a half years after my last sports column ran. When I was first asked to write this Fan Forum, I’ll admit I was hesitant. But I figured I couldn’t let my final quarter at Stanford be the only quarter that I didn’t contribute anything to The Daily’s sports section, right?

The sports editor (incidentally, my first “protégé” at The Daily, from our days covering the 2008 women’s soccer team) suggested writing about my experience with the hurling team here, which I helped found during my freshman year four years ago. While this would certainly be a new topic to most readers, I recently wrote a piece on the hurling team for Stanford’s new “Champions” website. I’m sure a lot of Daily readers have not read that piece, but I thought I could do something more worthwhile than simply rewriting something I already wrote. And I didn’t want this final column to be all about me. (Funny, given that we’re already two paragraphs in and it is entirely about me so far. Just bear with me.)

My next thought was to write about the time I dominated Beatles Rock Band with Toby Gerhart, since I seem to tell everyone that story anyway—and who doesn’t love reading about Toby? But as life altering as that story would have been to readers, I decided against it. I also decided against writing about how my Chicago Bulls’ NBA Playoff series against Miami is good vs. evil, because 1) it would be rather tough to relate to Stanford and 2) it’s obvious. I even considered writing a football column simply to try to get Ted Miller to link to my article on the ESPN Pac-12 Blog, but those wouldn’t exactly be the noblest of journalistic intentions.

Finally, a topic came to me on Sunday night, through a combination of factors. I read back through last week’s Fan Forum, in which Miles Bennett-Smith encouraged people to take notice of the underappreciated men’s volleyball team. And earlier in the day, the Stanford women’s water polo team won the national championship, reminding me of my freshman year at The Daily (that was the first team I was a beat writer for).

Given that I was writing a column, I also thought back to my freshman year column-writing, and I realized that my first ever column here was similar to Miles’, just on a broader scale—it was encouraging people to take advantage of their opportunity to watch so many world-class teams on the Farm. As my younger self put it, “You won’t have the chance to see so many great teams for so little cost ever again.”

I look back on this article with mixed emotions. On one hand, I’m grateful that I got to see so many great teams, athletes and games through my time here. But I also know I could have heeded my own advice much more thoroughly. There are still teams here that I haven’t seen compete even once, and while I’ve definitely been busy through my four years here, I certainly could have spent a little more time supporting our teams.

So, after much rambling, I want to use my farewell (slash comeback?) column to give the same advice in my senior spring as I did in my freshman fall: take the opportunity to check out all the incredible teams and student athletes we have here. Go support your athlete friends, but also go watch Cardinal teams you might not know anyone on. Follow the “big” sports like football, but also give the lesser-known sports a chance. Heck, go watch the club sports teams as well—honestly, we can use all the fans we can get.

This all might seem obvious, but I guess I’m living proof that it’s not all that easy to follow up on. In the end, I guess my advice on Stanford sports is the same advice I would give as a senior about Stanford as a whole: take all the opportunities you can to enjoy and appreciate it, because it goes incredibly quickly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to pretending I’m not graduating in 26 days.

Sam Svoboda is not only a lesser Rock Band player than his editor, but his hypothetical friendship with Toby Gerhart isn’t nearly as well developed. Boast about your real athlete buddies at ssvoboda “at” stanford.edu.