Staying positive in the spring of his sophomore year, junior class Vice President Zak Brite worked his way up from being the men’s volleyball trainer to dressing varsity by the end of the season. Brite’s process included staying positive and getting help from his friends while working hard to improve.

“It’s hard to get me down,” Brite said. “I just worked hard. That was a big factor, because it’s a lot easier to work hard with something you enjoy.”

Brite plans to continue playing volleyball this upcoming season, but for now is helping out with the girl’s volleyball team. Mr. Ethan Coffman, who is both boys and girls volleyball coach, came to Brite and asked if he wanted to help.

By helping out with the volleyball team every day, Brite shares his knowledge with the other players and also has the opportunity to learn from the girls as well, helping him prepare for volleyball next spring.

Volleyball isn’t the only sport that Brite participates in. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and weekends, Brite and his friends stay after school or go to Southport Presbyterian Church on McFarland Blvd to play ultimate frisbee.

“It’s fun, and it’s different,” Brite said. “Pretty much anyone can do it which is always a good thing for various reasons because I was never good at basketball or football so I could always be like ‘Hey, you wanna play frisbee?’”

At home, though, Brite and his family are currently fostering three kittens from the humane society. The kitten’s living conditions at the shelter were so bad that if they hadn’t had started fostering them they probably wouldn’t have survived.

The kittens had to be nurtured back to health, and with the help from the Brite family they are currently going stronger and healthier than before.

For now, they’re raising them until they can find a family to take them.

‘When we give them up I feel like it’s going to leave kind of a hole, not tremendously, but I won’t walk upstairs and see them running around and I’ll miss that,” Brite said. “We do have a cat that’s actually ours so that kind of helps but I think that at the end of the day it’s nice to know we did the right thing. It saves three little kittens lives.”

Once the kittens are gone, fostering more kittens will be a discussion in the future.

“I think that we will eventually just because I haven’t seen anything negative about the process so we probably will,” Brite said.

Brite’s mom currently babysits children, and due to one of the children being allergic to dogs, cats are the only animal that they are able to foster.