SuburbanOneSports.com recognizes a male and female featured athlete each week. The awards, sponsored by Univest, are given to seniors of good character who are students in good standing that have made significant contributions to their teams. Selections are based on nominations received from coaches, athletic directors and administrators.
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Female Athlete for week of Feb. 21, 2019
Fierce. Tenacious. Competitive. Fearless. All strong words and all words coach Liz Potash uses to describe point guard Caroline Pla. At first glance, it might seem like a stretch to use such powerful words to describe the diminutive Central Bucks East senior. After all, Pla measures in at just 5-2 and is hardly an imposing figure. But don’t be fooled – Pla is one tough customer, something Potash discovered when the now senior captain attended her basketball camp as a seventh grader.“Caroline’s team was in the championship game,” the Patriots’ coach said. “She got elbowed and had a bloody nose. She went into the bathroom by herself, didn’t make a scene, and I went in after her and said, ‘All right, we should call your mom.” She’s like, ‘No, I’m good,’ got it to stop bleeding and went right back on the court. I was like, ‘Man, this is a tough kid.’”
A bloody nose was just a minor inconvenience to an athlete who’d spent most of her growing up years playing football. So committed was she to the sport that when she discovered in sixth grade – her final year with Our Lady of Mount Carmel CYO Romans jayvee squad - that the rules would prevent her from continuing, Pla decided to do something about it. She wrote to the archdiocese but didn’t receive an immediate response.“So we went to the news and they picked it up,” she said. “That’s when we started the petition and everybody started supporting us on change.org. ”That’s also when the national media coverage began. The story was picked up by Good Morning America among other national shows, and one day when Pla was home with the flu, The Ellen DeGeneres Show came calling. She remembers the experience well. And if she didn’t, she could always watch the five-minute YouTube video entitled “Ellen Meets a Young Footballer” (which has close to 1.4 million views) of a precocious and remarkably well-spoken 11-year-old Pla explaining her plight to Ellen DeGeneres, who was one of the more than 11,000 who signed Pla’s petition. The rule prohibiting girls from playing football for the Romans CYO varsity was overturned, and Pla played two more years. Football has remained a part of Pla’s life – for the past four years, she has been the offensive line coach for the Romans. “I can’t do it next year because I’ll be in college – I’m really upset about that,” she said. “I loved staying involved.”
Football – thanks to Pla’s fight to play it – may have been in the spotlight, but basketball is the East senior’s sport of choice. She’s been playing it for as long as she can remember, and Pla is described by her coach as a program kid. This winter, the Patriots rebounded from a 3-7 start to earn a berth in districts, and Pla, a captain and the team’s point guard, played a key role in that turnaround. “She’s small but she plays big,” Potash said. “She’s just so tough. You can’t find a kid tougher than Caroline, and she’ll do whatever she needs to do. She’s someone we never want off the floor. There are times when she’s the leading scorer, there are times when she’s not, but her scoring doesn’t really make a difference in terms of if we want her on the floor because she does so many other things for us.”
Next fall, Pla will study marketing in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. She hopes to play basketball at some level and plans to remain active “and try new things.” Although sports are Pla’s passion, she’s hardly one-dimensional. She chaired East’s highly successful Coaches vs. Cancer event that raised over $30,000. She is a member of the National Honor Society, and she and her mother are involved with the National Charity League.
To read Pla’s complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/caroline-pla-0083135
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of Feb. 21, 2019
Corey Cope’s biggest moment as a high school wrestler may have been slightly anticlimactic, but the journey to get to that point has been anything but. Earlier this winter, Cope became the 19th wrestler in Quakertown history to reach the 100-win milestone. It was perhaps the easiest win of his four-year varsity career, as Cope earned the victory on a forfeit. The moment itself might have lacked fanfare, but it by no means diminished the accomplishment Cope had been working his whole life to attain. “It’s always been a goal of mine, one that I knew would be tough to reach,” the senior said. “I think I only had 15 wins my freshman year, so I really had to step it up. It was the culmination of a lot of hard work that I put in.”
Cope began wrestling at the tender age of four. He fell in love with the sport right away and wrestled regularly until sixth grade, when Cope traded in the wrestling mat for a baseball glove. He deeply loved baseball too, but being away from wrestling for his middle school years gnawed at Cope. He knew he had to jump back in for round two. After a couple of years of inactivity, one might expect Cope to have difficulties re-adjusting. There were growing pains, sure, but the transition back into wrestling felt natural. Quakertown head wrestling coach Kurt Handel described Cope as “your typical freshman, a light kid with no real muscle or body structure to him.” But even so, Handel saw glimpses of greatness in Cope almost immediately. “When he gets out on that mat, he’s a technically sound wrestler,” Handel said. “He didn’t have the strength he has now right away, so he made up for that with technique. He’s very slick. Not really a power guy who will hammer you into submission, but more a kid who will take advantage of any bad move his opponent makes.”
In addition to reaching the 100-win plateau, Cope also ranks fifth in school history with 54 pins. But just because he has pins in more than half of his wins doesn’t necessarily mean he’s evolved into a wrestler who attacks with brute force. “I’m definitely not a big, super aggressor, not someone who will go bang my head against the other wrestler’s face,” he said. “I try to stay calm. I try to use my speed and technique to bait my opponent into a mistake. Staying calm has worked for me my whole life, so I’m going to stick with it.” Sticking with what works is probably the best play for Cope as he nears the finish line in his stellar career. A two-year captain, Cope has been a part of three consecutive SOL Continental championship teams. He has twice earned first-team all-league honors and was a district qualifier his sophomore season before advancing to regionals.
Despite all of his accomplishments on the mat, Cope is much more than just a wrestler for Quakertown. Additionally, he’s been a member of the school golf team for four years, the last two as a full-time varsity player. Cope is also a strong student and is leaning toward studying business or finance in college. Last summer, he enrolled in a weeklong program at Lycoming College called Pennsylvania Free Enterprise Week. Lycoming is one of four schools that Cope is considering. In addition to Lycoming, fellow Division-III institutions Delaware Valley, Western New England and Gettysburg are all courting Cope to attend school and wrestle for the next four years.“He’s put in a ton of work the last four years, and he’s got a tough decision coming up,” Handel said. “But he’s got options, and that’s the payout. As coaches we tell high school kids that if you work hard, it will pay off in the long run, and Corey is the perfect example of that.”
To read Cope’s complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/corey-cope-0083137
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