Pat Keating knows how to keep it light.

During a Tuesday scrimmage at Westford Academy, his teammates answered in kind, kidding the first baseman as he stepped to the plate about a hole in the sleeve of his undershirt.

Groton-Dunstable Regional baseball coach Matt LeBlanc appreciates what Keating, who also played soccer and hockey, brings to the diamond.

“He’s ultra-competitive,’’ said LeBlanc, “but he’s also smart, funny, and lighthearted. He is a great teammate and he loves being around his peers. He is great from a coach’s perspective, he just gets it.’’

“He’s a jokester for sure, he’ll make you laugh at almost anything,’’ said Chris Werner, Keating’s teammate in soccer and baseball. “But then he’ll get you fired up and in the right mindset to win the game.’’

For Keating, after 10 varsity seasons played on school teams, it feels almost surreal that his time at Groton-Dunstable will soon come to a close. In the fall, he heads to the University of Connecticut, and not as a student-athlete.

“It’s kind of bittersweet,’’ he said. “There is no better bond than the teammates you get.’’

Midway through high school, Keating chose to bypass a serious run at a college hockey career, opting to stick with all three sports rather than specialize on the ice and delay his college education.

“Most of the guys are 21-year-old freshmen, they played prep school and juniors,’’ said Keating, a 6-foot-2, 185-pound defenseman. “I looked at some prep schools, but the gamble of playing [Division 3] hockey versus playing three varsity sports, I just didn’t see it.’’

Keating’s decision led to immediate rewards. A captain and left back on the soccer team, he was part of a Division 1 Central championship in the fall. Last winter, he was captain for the Division 3 Central hockey runners-up.

This spring, Keating handles first base for the Crusaders, who went 18-0 in the regular season and start Division 3 Central tournament play Monday.

Keating’s older brother, Mike, who graduated in 2013, followed — or more accurately, blazed — precisely the same course Pat would, playing the same three sports in high school. After winning two state titles in soccer and another in hockey, he also left behind his varsity athletic career. Now he plays club hockey at UConn, a team he hopes his younger brother joins when he gets to Storrs.

At Lexington High School, Kazu Ebihara found time whenever he could to balance out three sports — shooting hoops in the gym between football practices, taking swings in the batting cage on weekends during basketball season. All in all, there weren’t many days off.

Ebihara was rewarded with a captainship in football, basketball, and baseball his senior year. But as with the Keating brothers, his athletic career will end when he goes to college, in his case Connecticut College, in the fall.

“It has been tough to come to terms with the fact that this is my last season playing varsity sports,’’ said Ebihara. “It was a definitely a challenge to captain all three sports, but knowing coaches had that trust in me and having that leadership with the guys made it a great experience.’’

Ebihara had his moment in the sun during his last regular-season game May 26 against Medford.

The second baseman smacked his first career homer, a two-run blast in a 9-1 victory that clinched a spot in the Division 1 North tournament.

“I don’t know if I have had a better moment for an individual as a coach,’’ said Lexington baseball coach Zack Friedman. “The kids were thrilled to see that. They really follow his lead. He has been a pleasure to coach.’’

At Wayland High, Ethan Stavisky was shocked at the conclusion of the soccer season when doctors told him he had been playing with a stress fracture in his lower back. The injury didn’t diminish the senior striker’s numbers on the field. Scoring 16 goals, he was the Division 3 Player of the Year as his team went to the Division 3 North semifinals.

“This past soccer season was just kind of a magical run for me,’’ said Stavisky, who also played basketball and lacrosse, which he considers his best sport.

Rather than taking the winter off to prep for lacrosse, Stavisky played point guard on the basketball team and suffered a stress fracture in his ankle.

That didn’t stop him from contributing 50 goals this spring in lacrosse, helping Wayland earn the ixth seed in the Division Division 2 Central/East tournament.

“I love playing soccer, I love playing basketball, I wanted to keep playing,’’ said Stavisky, who will head to Vanderbilt in the fall and play club sports. “In retrospect it might not have been the smartest thing to [play with injuries], but it was the Ethan Stavisky decision to keep playing and having fun, and I stick by it.’’

Megan Barrett knows her mind, too. When she was a seventh-grader at Acton-Boxborough Regional, she wrote a letter to herself she wouldn’t open until she was a senior. Its message: she would play ice hockey at one of the major colleges in Boston.

She came close.

One of the most decorated athletes in Massachusetts, Barrett ultimately chose field hockey over the ice and will head to Northeastern in the fall.

A member of the varsity ice hockey team since seventh grade, Barrett was a three-time Globe All-Scholastic. In field hockey, she was on two state championship teams and was Division 1 Player of the Year in 2015. She is also a member of the girls’ lacrosse team.

At 5-foot-2, she chose the turf because of her size and speed, but it was a tough call. Sticking with three sports at Acton-Boxborough, on the other hand, was a decision she summed up in a word — family.

“Every team I have ever been on here,’’ she said, “has always been so close.’’

Michael McMahon can be reached at mcman92@gmail.com.