Softball
Favorite athlete: Though he isn’t a collegiate athlete or professional, Tommy Stokes is by far my favorite athlete. He signed with Wilkes College to wrestle and is a senior at Bensalem. Tommy is a tremendous athlete and competitor. He is so fun to watch wrestle and inspires me to be a better athlete.
Favorite team: Phillies
Favorite memory competing in sports: In 10th grade at one of my high school games, the third baseman on the opposing team was being rude to our third base coach, and while I was up to bat, he said to her, ‘She’s going to hit a home run,’ and I did, which is crazy. While I was rounding third, the girl playing third called me a bad name. It was really entertaining!
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: In a close game earlier this year in travel ball, I was running from second to home, and around third base, the dirt was really soft and I totally wiped out. My coach, who was coaching third, was screaming at me to get up and score. Good thing I did or it would’ve made it so much more embarrassing! When I got in the dugout, everyone made fun of me. It was great.”
Music on iPod: Everything
Future plans: Play for Hofstra and be a sports broadcaster/reporter
Words to live by: “Keep on keepin’ on.”
One goal before turning 30: I want to be married and settled down with a good job.”
One thing people don’t know about me: I have an insane fear of stinkbugs, and also, I really enjoy making pottery.
By Mary Jane Souder
Dreams do come true.
Isabel Hansbury is living of proof of that. The Bensalem senior will be playing collegiate softball at the school of her dreams - Hofstra University, and the journey she took to get there reads like a fairly tale.
“I’m truly blessed,” Hansbury said. “It was like a movie, it was like a dream. It was crazy.”
All those descriptions fit a story that began when Hansbury – in early November – signed to play softball at Temple University. Her signing, according to coach Dan Schram, was historic as she became the first Bensalem athlete since Edmund Robinson went on to play football at Syracuse in the early 90’s to play a team sport at the Division I level.
A month later, however, that dream turned into a nightmare when Temple made the decision to drop its softball program. Hansbury remembers all too well when she heard the news.
“I got home from school, and I was on Twitter, and one of the girls – a senior who also committed to Temple – sent me a message, and said, ‘Read this link – could this be true?’” Hansbury recalled. “The night before we were talking about the dorms, so I thought it was pictures of the dorms.
“I opened the link, and I read it. I couldn’t remember if I was awake or asleep. I thought I was dreaming. It was just a complete shock. I didn’t know what to think. I thought it might be a rumor or something crazy someone had made up.”
It wasn’t a rumor. Temple was dropping seven varsity sports, and softball was one of them.
“I was totally devastated,” Hansbury said. “I felt every emotion you could feel. It was insane.
“In one second, everything was perfect to the complete opposite. It was earthshattering. It was crazy.”
Bensalem softball coach Dan Schram – whose pride was unmistakable when Hansbury signed with Temple – shared those emotions.
“I remember – it was a stormy day outside,” he said. “It was a cold early December day, and I remember talking with Isabel, and we were almost mourning over it.
“It didn’t seem like there was any hope. The kid was resilient through it. She stayed up. When I talked to her that day, I said, ‘I think it’s very important that you’re supportive of your parents and believe in yourself and believe in your softball because that’s going to get them through this.’ It was probably harder on them than it was on her, and she was receptive to that.”
Hansbury acknowledges that initially she wasn’t sure which direction to turn.
“We were like, ‘Okay, we have to start this whole recruiting process over – this is a bummer,’” she said. “Getting recruited is awful. It’s all the clinics, it’s so much time, and now that I was so late – it was nerveracking.
“My dad (Bensalem wrestling coach Doug Hansbury) was like, ‘Let’s roll the dice. We’ll go to some tournaments and try to get you recruited at a tournament. Just try as hard as you can.’”
Schram had another idea. Several weeks earlier, the Bensalem coach had travelled to Hofstra, observed several practices and spent the night at the home of coach Bill Edwards.
“He gave me great mentorship,” Schram said. “It was fantastic.”
Schram became familiar with Edwards through Hansbury, who met the Hofstra coach at the Rise Ball Softball Camps.
“She would bring things back from the Rise Ball Camp, and it kind of put me on the path,” the Owls’ coach said. “I already used some of his stuff, and I realized how special the guy was.”
Still, Schram admits his wife and everyone around him didn’t really understand why he made the trip to Hofstra. When Temple dropped its softball program, Schram’s trip to Hofstra suddenly seemed like an act of fate.
“Right away – I didn’t want to put thoughts in her head, but I could tell she wanted me to call coach Edwards,” Schram said. “I talked to her parents, and they said, ‘Go for it. Call coach Edwards.’”
Schram made the call.
“Right from the get-go, he was committed to helping her,” the Owls’ coach said. “He said, ‘Make a list of where she wants to go,’ and I said, ‘I think her list would be pretty easy – she wants to go to Hofstra.’
“He said, ‘Okay, let’s see what we can do.’ He took the time to see if her grades would line up. We talked a lot about the character of the player and the potential of the player.”
A date was set for Hansbury to attend a Hofstra clinic, and Edwards offered to help the Bensalem senior find a school even if he couldn’t offer her a spot on his team.
“That was pretty generous,” Hansbury said. “I went up, and it was an all-day clinic of about eight hours.
“It was really stressful. After the clinic was over, we met in his office, and he offered me a roster spot. It was really a surreal experience. From everything I’ve been through – signing with Temple and then having it taken away and committing to Hofstra, the place I always wanted to go to – it’s a dream come true. Definitely 100 percent a dream come true.”
Edwards, who never keeps more than 19 players, offered Hansbury a roster spot as his 19th player.
“It’s a tremendous honor,” Schram said. “I think when she first heard it she couldn’t even put it in perspective.
“They called me on the phone on the way home from Hempstead, N.Y., and I said, ‘Why aren’t we celebrating? This is awesome.’ It took a while to sink in.”
But it has sunk in, and Hansbury will be playing for the school that has been her number choice since eighth grade.
“I always wanted to go to Hofstra,” she said. “I love Bill Edwards, I love (associate head coach) Larissa Anderson, I love all the girls on the team. They really inspired me when I was young. They made me want to play Division One softball.
“I don’t really know why, but when I was in 10th grade, I kind of stopped pursuing Hofstra. Honestly, I never thought that I would be good enough to go to Hofstra.”
A longtime veteran of the travel ball circuit, Hansbury last year switched from the Pennsbury Gems to TNT, and that’s when Temple entered the picture.
“I joined TNT in January, and I committed by March,” she said. “My coach has a good connection with Temple.
“I visited so many schools, and Temple was the only campus I really liked. I didn’t want to go too far from home, and it was everything I wanted. They wanted me, so I was like, ‘Let’s go,’ and I signed with Temple.”
It seemed like the culmination of a dream for Hansbury, who has had a love affair with softball since she was a youngster.
“I always loved baseball, and I would watch college softball,” she said. “When I was real little, I was like, ‘I want to play college softball and be on TV.’”
As she grew older, her passion for softball only grew.
“I loved competing, I love to win,” Hansbury said. “I know it’s corny, but I love everything about softball. I really can’t explain it. There’s just a feeling I get when I play. It’s hard for me to describe. It’s just something that’s always been there, and it’s something I could not imagine my life without.
“I don’t even know what I want to study in college, but I know I want to play softball. It’s something I love and don’t ever want to give up.”
Hansbury, according to her coach, is one of those special five-tool players. She can do it all.
“She’s a very special kid, and she has a tremendous up side,” Schram said. “She’s 5-9, she’s fast, she’s strong, she’s got range, and she can pitch if she has to.
“She’s a tremendous power hitter. She’s got a very fast bat. When she’s confident, she’s dominating. She can take over a game by herself. She will have games where her offensive numbers carry a team. Unfortunately, last year we had a pattern where if she was hitting well, we did well, but if she was off, the rest of the girls had a hard time getting started. She’s been great for us.”
A varsity starter since she was a freshman, Hansbury has played a key role in the turnaround of a program that had fallen on hard times.
“My ninth grade year we won three out of 20 games, and that was a 300 percent improvement from the year before because they didn’t win any.”
A natural third baseman, Hansbury anchored the Owls’ infield at shortstop the past three years.
“When she came up in ninth grade, she was supposed to be the next Nolan Ryan of softball, but it’s not what she wanted to do,” he said. “Three years later, she picked up a softball and threw it into the catcher 60 MPH down the pike – fast and hard.”
Last spring, the Owls finished with a 7-7 record in the tough SOL National – quite an accomplishment for a team that was winless three years earlier. The turnaround coincided with Schram’s arrival when Hansbury was a freshman.
“He’s an extremely selfless individual, and he dedicates so much of his time to better our softball experience,” she said of Schram. “(The turnaround) really does have a lot to do with him.
“He took the time to learn how to be a good coach and learned from experienced coaches and really just changed the whole atmosphere. As a team, we loved it. We were like, ‘Let’s do this, let’s win, let’s get better.’ We thrived off of his wanting us to get better.”
Just as she excels on the softball field, Hansbury also excels in the classroom where she is enrolled in AP and honors classes. She is uncertain of her major in college.
“I’m going to major in softball at this point,” she said.
It’s hard to blame Hansbury, who is living out her dream.
