Soccer
Favorite athlete: Julie Johnston Ertz
Favorite team: Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating CB South in PK’s to get to the District Championship game.
Funniest/most embarrassing moment while competing in sports: My one teammate slid into a bench right in front of the student section.
Music on mobile device: Everything except for classical and rock
Future plans: Study business at Lehigh University and play soccer for the University
Words to live by: “Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker on the field.”
One goal before turning 30: Establish myself in a company
One thing people don’t know about me: I played piano for 5 years
By Mary Jane Souder
“Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker on the field.”
Those are words to live by for Courtney Supp, and listening to coach Audrey Anderson tell it, the Pennridge senior could well be the poster child for that phrase.
A selfless athlete who puts the team first, the senior captain has excelled at center back the last three years for a Rams’ soccer squad that captured back-to-back SOL Continental Conference titles.
There’s nothing especially noteworthy about that until you consider the Lehigh University commit is a natural forward and is penciled in to play that position at the collegiate level.
“She’s always been a forward, she’s never been a defender,” Anderson said. “My goal was not to have her as a defender this year. My goal was to play her possibly as a target (forward) or attacking center mid, but our numbers didn’t allow it.
“She was willing to step up in whatever role she was needed. She doesn’t complain about it, she doesn’t make it an issue. When you talk about a team player, this kid had every opportunity to say, ‘This is not the best place for me,’ but she didn’t. She played the position she was needed in most to help her team. Truly, if she was not there, we would not have had the success we’ve had over the past couple of years.”
And for Supp, team success trumps personal accomplishments every day of the week.
“As much as I wanted to help more on the offensive attack, I ultimately cared more about the team winning games,” she said. “I took it on as a challenge and tried to help develop the young players around me and work together as a unit to get as many shutouts as we could.”
In addition to talent and a team-first mentality, Supp possesses leadership qualities that coaches covet.
Anderson recalls a team meeting the Rams – coming off a scoreless tie with Central Bucks East – held prior to a key SOL Continental Conference game against Souderton.
“Courtney stood up and pretty much in a nutshell said, ‘I’m listening to what everybody wants, and I can respect that everyone wants a conference championship, a state championship, but at the end of the day I want us to play as a team, and I want us to win and lose as a team. Whatever is going to happen, we’re going to do it together.’ That is who she is. She has such a good perspective – whatever is going to be, it’s going to be because we do it together.”
The Rams responded to that team meeting by winning their next five games to capture the conference crown, allowing just one goal in that span.
“We battled,” Supp said. “We got the spot we wanted in districts (the number one seed). The end game (an opening round loss to Quakertown in penalty kicks) was really, really tough, but I felt like we tried our best.
“When we went back in the locker room, Aud gave her speech, and after that me and (co-captain) Caroline Thomson pulled the team together, and I just told them – I’m proud of everyone, I loved them all and I’m really going to miss them. I’m really proud of how we performed this season. This wasn’t what we wanted, but I think we still needed to keep our heads up and be proud of what we accomplished.”
What the Rams accomplished this season – winning the program’s fifth conference title in six years – might seem almost commonplace. Until you consider the fact that they did it with an almost entirely new lineup after losing 11 seniors – nine starters – to graduation from last year’s district runner-up squad.
“One goal this year was really trying to unify the team,” Supp said. “Me and Caroline – as captains, our goal was really to try to be friendly with the underclassmen and make them feel welcome, creating that unity early because we hadn’t played together.”
For Supp, those words are not just lip service. The senior captain’s selection as homecoming queen this fall underscores the fact that she lives out that philosophy every single day.
“She just a great kid,” Anderson said. “It’s no surprise to me that she won homecoming. That’s just who she is.
“She’s super nice. She doesn’t complain, you never hear anything negative. She’s probably one of the nicest kids I’ve ever come in contact with, no question about it.”
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Supp was familiar with Pennridge soccer long before she set foot on the field for the Rams. Older sister Jess was a fixture in the lineup during her playing days at Pennridge, so Supp understood the high expectations that went hand-in-hand with being part of one of the SOL’s elite programs. She also understood the hard work and sacrifices required to maintain that level of excellence.
“I think the legacy (last year’s) seniors left behind was one of hard work and just fight for what you want,” Anderson said. “Courtney knew that.
“It wasn’t a secret what she needed to do as a leader. She bought into what the coaches wanted. Courtney was 100 percent a team player, a very, very strong leader, and we definitely needed that this year.”
Winning a title was a high priority for Supp and her teammates.
“People were saying – oh, Pennridge won’t be in the top three or four of the conference, and that kind of fueled us to prove them wrong,” she said. “Because the conference championship has been in Pennridge for a little while – there was one break in there – we really didn’t want to end the streak. That was one thing that was important to us.”
Supp walks away from high school soccer with nothing but the fondest memories.
“I really loved the team this season because I felt like we were the underdogs and we rose up and reached our goals, and I really loved that,” she said. “I also felt there wasn’t any individual players looking out for themselves. I really felt that we were a unit together.
“Another thing was how far we went last year with the seniors. The memories made in that season I’ll never forget. Beating CB South in PKs to go to the district final was probably the biggest memory I’ll keep. There was just so much fight in that game that I’m never going to forget.”
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Supp began playing competitive soccer since she was eight years old, getting her start at the community level with Deep Run Valley.
“I used to go to my sister’s soccer games,” she said. “I’d always watch her and say, ‘I want to play so bad.’”
Supp’s love affair with the sport was immediate and she quickly went through the ranks and now competes on the club circuit with Patriot FC. She played lacrosse for three years in middle school, but soccer was always her sport of choice.
“Soccer is a team sport,” she said. “I liked being able to depend on the people around me and work with the people around me. I also liked the physicality of it.”
Supp – the youngest of three children - learned early in life to fend for herself.
“When I was little, my family was always playing sports outside with the neighbors, and I was the youngest in the neighborhood, so I always had to compete to keep up with the big kids,” she said. “That taught me to never give up, work as hard as I can to be tough.
“As I grew up, I watched my siblings play in high school, and I trained with them and tried my best to keep up with them.”
Supp inherited the fiercely competitive drive that runs deep in the Supp family.
“My dad and my brother played football, and it was an intense environment when we played games,” she said. “If you watched us playing a board game or any sort of game, there’s a lot of trash talking, and it’s very intense.”
Older brother, Michael, is playing football at Maine while Jess is a soccer standout at Bloomsburg, and coming as no surprise, family is a high priority for Courtney.
“My family has always challenged me to work hard, keep the values of sportsmanship and remain humble,” she said. “To this day my siblings – although usually unable to watch me play because of being away at college – call me after games to show their support. We are a very closely-knit family.”
The next chapter in Supp’s life will be down the road at Lehigh University where she will live out her goal of playing Division One soccer. She plans to major in business with the strong academics a major drawing card for Lehigh.
“I also really liked the team atmosphere and the coach, and my parents will be able to go to games,” said Supp, who committed to Lehigh in February of her junior year.
Off the soccer field, Supp is active in her church where she is a small group leader of middle school girls. She is also a leader of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Pennridge as well as a member of the Executive Council and the National Honor Society.
Supp’s days of playing soccer at Pennridge may be over, but she will not be forgotten.
“When Courtney is 30 years old, I’m not going to remember how many goals she scored or could have scored,” the Rams’ coach said. “We let in very few goals because of having her back there, but nobody is going to remember all that.
“What people are going to remember is the person Courtney Supp is and who she was as a high school student. To me, that’s more important than if she was able to score 30 goals or all that other stuff.
“Anybody she comes in contact with – they’ll tell you exactly the same thing. She’s just a really, really good person, and in the world we live in right now, for a teenage kid to think of others more than herself is something you don’t normally come by.”
