For as far back as she can remember, sports have been a part of Maya Shipway’s life.

She began playing soccer as soon as she was able to kick a ball and select softball when she was 9 and since those early days, she has always been an athlete. And now that she is graduating from The Bear Creek School in Redmond on Saturday, the Bothell resident will continue her sports career next year at Willamette University in Salem, Ore. on the school’s softball team.

Shipway played recreational soccer growing up and one year of select before she joined and focused on the Bear Creek team in high school. She was a starting keeper on the squad all four years.

“Soccer was always a family thing,” Shipway said.

And while soccer has been the sport she has played the longest, softball has taken a larger role in Shipway’s life in the last few years.

At 18, she has been on a select team for about half her life. And once she got to high school, many of her teammates would take a break from the select circuit in the spring to play for their respective schools. Shipway would then be left with almost no team as Bear Creek didn’t have a team.

All of that changed this last season as Bear Creek and Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bellevue teamed up to form a softball team with five athletes from each school.

“Getting a high school team was great,” Shipway said. “Now I had a team.”

Shipway was also involved in the drama department at Bear Creek.

“It’s like playing make believe in front of people,” she said about theater.

She began with taking the drama elective in middle school and worked her way up to acting in the school’s various productions while she was in high school. As much as Shipway enjoyed drama, she said one of the biggest problems for her was her bad memory, which made it difficult when it came to learning lines.

“It’s not quite the fly trap it should be,” she said with a laugh about her memory.

She didn’t always get the biggest parts but in Bear Creek’s spring play this year, she played the lead in “Silverthorne.” Shipway said it was a good feeling to have others consider her capable of playing such a big role.

When she gets to Willamette, Shipway plans to study exercise science, which is a pre-physical therapy degree, the career she wants to pursue. If she changes her mind about physical therapy, a degree in exercise science would still allow her to have a career as an athletic trainer or other roles in sports medicine.

Once she leaves Bear Creek, Shipway said she will miss her teachers the most.

“They’re so great,” she said. “I love them so much.”

Bear Creek’s commencement ceremony will be at 2 p.m. tomorrow at Bellevue Presbyterian Church, 1717 Bellevue Way N.E.