During his time at BHS, Toby Thomas was a well rounded student, playing sports and getting good grades. His favorite 2 sports were football and wrestling. He ended up going to Baker
University for football.
Q: What year did you graduate? How was school here at BHS?
“I graduated from BHS in 2021. My experience at BHS was a pretty great one. I had a fun time there making friends and experiencing life as a teenager. I had a lot of fun making friends and doing all the activities.”
Q: What were some of your favorite things here at BHS?
“BHS was a fun experience for me. I would say the Friday night lights and getting the town’s support for our sports was some of my favorite things. I also enjoy the friendships that I made during my time there.”
Q: How were sports for you here?
“I played Football, Baseball and I wrestled at BHS. Sports there for me for the most part were rough in the winning category. In Football we went negative every year and then in baseball we were average to below average. Wrestling was the one sport at BHS where I felt like we won more than we didn’t. But other than the winning side I had a blast playing all of my sports. It was fun to play with the guys I grew up with and go through the grind of football, baseball, and wrestling season with them.”
Q: You played football here and now in college. How did your seasons here at BHS impact your football career in the future?
“My football career at BHS had prepared me for my career here at Baker. I learned how to take on challenges and overcome adversity early on at BHS. I also learned knowledge and skills that I would later take with me to college ball. I had a couple of different head coaches and that brought in a bunch of different assistant coaches that I was able to learn from and get coached in different ways. I feel like I’m a pretty good run blocker and I would credit that to my seasons at BHS. We weren’t very effective throwing the ball, but we could run it pretty well.”
Q: You also did wrestling and went to state in your senior year and placed 5th. How did wrestling impact you as a person?
“Wrestling is the sport that probably impacted me the most in my life. I first started to wrestle for the reason of making me better at football. After my first year in 8th grade, I noticed I wasn’t too bad at the sport and kind of started to enjoy it. I’ve never been a person to enjoy losing and wrestling definitely helped me learn how to accept those losses and use that loss to learn and make it better for the future. My junior and senior year I had cut over 30 pounds to make weight at 220 and I would say that wasn’t easy. So, because of wrestling I learned I could do things I never thought I could have.”
Q: How was the academic part of school at BHS?
“The academic part of BHS was pretty fun. I enjoyed the teachers and the relationships they would make with the students. My favorite classes were history and business. They were taught in a fun way and that made it easier to engage and learn.”
Q: Now that you are at Baker, what major are you and are you enjoying it?
“I am majoring in Business Marketing with a minor in Sports Administration. I would say I’m enjoying it, I’m not entirely sure what I want to do when I’m out of here, but I think with this degree, I gave myself a little cushion for options in the future. I’m excited to see where my degree can take me.”
Q: How has football been going for you at Baker?
“Football has been a blast for me here at Baker. Winning is a lot more fun than losing and winning is an expectation here at Baker. I had been fortunate enough to play as a freshman and experience 3 full seasons now. It’s awesome to see a bunch of guys from different places coming together toward a common goal and making a great football team out of it. The relationships and friends I’ve made in my time playing here will last a lifetime.”
Q: How has Going to Baldwin High School impacted you as a person?
“BHS is my root and the point in life where things kind of started to click for me. It was where I met a lot of my close friends and where I learned a lot of knowledge. It was also my steppingstone to get to Baker and where I am in life now. BHS taught me lessons and gave me experiences I will remember forever.