Steele adjusts to life away from Southern California

Brooke Womack
Sports Editor   

Waking up and checking the weather is a new thing for senior Jason Steele.  Instead of sunny skies at 85 degrees, Steele has to prepare himself for Oregon’s bipolar weather.

“Living in SoCal, I was five minutes away from a beach.  Normally I’d go to the beach every day after school with my friends.  I definitely miss all the summer sports I could play on the beach,” Steele said. 

Steele’s family bought a house in Rhododendron six years ago when his mom became the CEO of Cedar Hills Hospital in Beaverton.  Before that they lived about five minutes away from Long Beach in sunny SoCal.  Ultimately, they moved up here to stay because they loved it so much.

Photo Courtesy of Jason Steele

With that said, he’s taken up some new hobbies that he didn’t have the chance to try living in Los Angeles.

“I’ve been snowboarding a couple times, and fishing at Trillium lake.  I want to be able to experience everything I can when it comes to outdoor activities, especially since Sandy has the space for them,” Steele said.

Steele’s new change of scenery has shown to be exciting for him as well. 

“My favorite part of Oregon would have to be the forestry and the people.  It’s so awesome having so many trees and land that hasn’t been industrialized,” Steele said.

His school life was also much different.  In a school full of 4,000 students, the rules can become a bit stricter.

“At my old school, Millikan, we had uniform restrictions that were really enforced.  School safety officers were also required to uniform check every student when we entered the school.  You were not allowed on school grounds unless you had your student ID,” Steele said.

After high school, Steele plans to attend the University of Oregon to get a master’s in business with a concentration in sports.  

“Hopefully from my degree I can work in sports broadcasting and become a commentator,” Steele said. 

Although Steele has begun to adjust to his new life in Oregon, he hasn’t forgotten about his time in California.

“I plan to visit [California] for an extended spring break.  I also try to go down there once a month.  I try to visit as much as I can, but not to the point where I can’t enjoy what I have in Oregon,” Steele said.

Waking up earlier in the morning to check the weather and actually have to plan outfits might be new to Steele but the change hasn’t been bad.

“Checking the weather was something I never used to have to do.  Nevertheless, it’s great to actually experience seasons and have a change in weather,” Steele said.

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