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 April 21, 2019
The path of Allison Riches has been paved with opportune accidents. Hatboro-Horsham’s senior pole vaulter, who finished 10th at the prestigiously historic Penn Relays, might not have ever made it here at all, and for a variety of reasons at that. For starters, Riches was born 1,500 miles away, in Garden City, Kansas, only moving east following her parents’ divorce when she was seven. After she got to Pennsylvania, Riches planned on following her mother’s path as a softball player, only deciding to quit three weeks into her freshman season after feeling she didn’t quite fit in with the team. Riches only participated in track events as a freshman, mostly the 100- and 200-meter races, along with the 4x100 and 4x400 relays. Then, in what would prove to be a stroke of kismet, head track coach Anna Baker, sick of losing points in meets since the Hatters didn’t have a pole vaulter, approached Riches about giving the highly-specialized event a shot.“I just said, ‘Yeah, sure, why not? Sounds like fun,’” Riches said.
This led Riches and her mother to the Philadelphia Jumps Club (PJC), a facility that opened in 2014 in Conshohocken. During Riches’ very first session, her current pole vaulting coach with Hatboro-Horsham, Ginger Lemon, was there and helped guide Riches through it.“I fell in love with it,” Riches said. “I was just so fascinated by it. I’m a thrill seeker, so I love that aspect of it. I’ve been a daredevil since a young age. I was always the one who got in trouble for jumping off things and trying crazy new stunts. I decided to stick with it, and the higher I got, it felt like I was flying.”Riches threw herself completely into her training, although according to Lemon, Riches didn’t master her craft immediately. Just as in sports like baseball or golf, there is a lot of failure involved, even when things are going well, proving that pole vaulters have to be as mentally strong as they do physically, “Being a pole vaulter at any level, but especially in high school, requires a tremendous amount of dedication and perseverance,” Lemon said. “Allison has always had a great attitude about her training. When she started, she jumped eight feet at her best, and she’s only been training and competing for less than three years, and now she is currently ranked third in the state for Class AAA. I am extremely proud of her.”
Riches was one of just 20 pole vaulters accepted to compete at the Penn Relays. She also is tied for the school record of 12-feet, which also qualified Riches for Nationals, so it’s safe to say she has come a long, long way since Baker happened to ask her if she was interested in trying pole vaulting. She has accepted a scholarship to Rider University where she will major in sports media. “Allison truly is one of a kind,” Baker said. “She’s been a leader on this team since her freshman year, honestly. She’s always willing to do what’s best for the team, which is hard to find in a sport where you have to focus on individual events. She’s dedicated to her event and is a very hard worker. She’s learned the skills needed to be successful. Rider University is very lucky to have an athlete like Allison, who will immediately become a valuable member of their program.”
To read Riches’ complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/allison-riches-0084355
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of Apirl 21, 2019
Who will be the next John Dominic? That’s a question Pennridge basketball coach Dean Behrens posed to his junior varsity after this year’s magical run to the PIAA 6A state title game.“I think John epitomizes what high school basketball is,” Behrens said. “I’m already using him as an example for a lot of our jayvee guys for next year. I had a lot of 11th graders playing jayvee, and we were 16-4. I’m like, ‘Who’s the next John Dominic? Who’s going to work hard between now and November?’ We have six seniors gone and two starters back. You’re looking at maybe three starting positions and three bench positions for minutes. Who’s going to step up because it can be done? John Dominic played jayvee last year. He wasn’t a varsity player last year. So now the kid turns into a guy that we can’t get off the floor. How does it happen?”
Behrens and Dominic acknowledge it took the kind of gigantic leap that would have seemed unlikely to both. After all, Dominic averaged less than five points a game playing jayvee as a junior. Not exactly the kind of numbers that would suggest he would put up 37 points in a game against North Penn a year later and play a major role for a state finalist Pennridge squad. “As a junior, I knew I was not going to play varsity,” he said. “It was only end of game situations if we were destroying a team or getting blown out – that’s when I was tossed in. Going into my senior season and thinking about it, I’m like, ‘I want to be part of this team. I want to do something for this team.’ That’s probably what got me to work as hard as I did during the offseason. It was definitely tough being a player that got no varsity time. It was kind of tough to dig out of that.”But dig his way out of it he did.“ I knew I wanted to work hard in the offseason,” he said. “My dad mentioned going to AAU, and I’m like – ‘Awesome, I would love to do that.’ That would keep me going with the game and keep a ball in my hands and just get me flowing through the spring and summer into the actual season. ”After several years away from the AAU circuit, Dominic joined the Perkasie Knights.“One of my goals was to be the sixth man, to be that first one coming off the bench bringing the energy into the game,” Dominic said.
Behrens initially didn’t have Dominic penciled in quite that high.“The fact is to start the season – I was like, ‘John will probably be our seventh or eighth man,’” the Rams’ coach said. “Then with the scrimmages, he was now our sixth man because he earned it. John earned everything. We didn’t give it to him. He went out and he earned the position by his play. Then it just continued. His confidence was good, he’s coachable.” An ankle injury to Nick Dunn in the Central Bucks West game on Dec. 21 changed everything. Dominic went from sixth man to starter. He became the team’s third scorer behind only U.S. Naval Academy-bound Sean Yoder and center Jon Post. For Dominic, the state title game represented his final organized basketball game. An excellent student, he will be attending Penn State University main campus where he will major in mechanical engineering. It’s a safe bet he’ll find himself a sought after player in pick-up games and summer leagues, but as endings go, they don’t get any better than this one.
To read Dominic’s complete profile, please click on the following link: http://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/john-dominic-0084385
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