Water Polo, Swimming
Favorite athlete: Zach Ertz
Favorite team: Philadelphia Eagles
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning the water polo state championship this year.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Spilling the whole cooler of ice in the sports lobby my sophomore year.
Music on mobile device: A little bit of everything!
Future plans: Attend La Salle University to play Division I water polo and study elementary education.
Words to live by: “Don’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”
One goal before turning 30: Become a teacher
One thing people don’t know about me: I love to shop with my grandmother!
By Craig Ostroff
As head coach of the North Penn swim programs and assistant coach for the water polo teams, Jeff Faikish has seen the best of Maddy Koerper over the last four years.
Ask Faikish what impresses him the most about Koerper, and he won’t point to her blistering shot, her First-Team All-State water polo status, or her intelligence in the pool.
Before all of that, he’ll talk about Koerper’s character.
“I’m a father of three kids, and all of my kids absolutely love her,” Faikish said. “There couldn’t be a better role model than Maddy, and that’s because of who she is outside of the pool, not because of her ability in the pool. My kids don’t love her because of her intensity or her shot, they love her because of the kind of person she is.
“Maddy has such a huge heart. She cares about every kid on this team, she cares about giving back to the community. She has wonderful qualities that are going to help her be successful no matter what she does. She has intensity and determination in the pool, focus and drive in the classroom, and heart and emotion to be someone important in her community.”
But while Faikish is quick to heap praise on Koerper, you won’t hear the senior hole set (in layman’s terms, a center forward) brag about her accomplishments—of which there are many. A team player to the core, Koerper is quick to share the accolades in any discussion of her successes in the pool.
Take, for example, her First Team All-State selection this season.
“It was very exciting to be named All State,” Koerper said. “Claudia Thamm was also named to the team, so was Maeve Wyden, who was co-MVP this year. I couldn’t have done it without those two. We all worked so well together. Playing with them helped make me better.”
Part of what made the offensive trio so devastating to opposing defenses this season—in addition to their skills in the pool—was their ability to step up when needed, to step aside when necessary, and to play for the team rather than any individual statistics or awards.
“At any time, Maddy can take over a game,” said water polo head coach Jason Grubb. “She plays on the inside as a center, and she also plays on the outside. She has a great shot on the outside, and she’s a bruiser in the middle of the pool as well. She’s a great kid. We have a lot of good kids. It was something I was really lucky to have."
“You could look at the stats for the season, and there are some games where Maddy had no goals, and some where she’s the leading scorer,” Faikish said. “They don’t care about that at all. They care about the team winning. It makes it a very wonderful and easy coaching experience. There are points in time where the best way to describe it is—it’s like playing a video game you know all the codes to.”
The three stepped up time and again throughout a remarkable season for the North Penn girls’ water polo team. The Knights accomplished an extraordinarily rare feat by claiming their fourth consecutive State Championship. The team rolled through a one-loss season, then avenged the lone blemish at the hands of Cumberland Valley by dominating the Eagles in the State Finals, claiming an 11-5 victory for the four-peat.
“It’s obviously a big accomplishment for all of us, we’ve worked so hard over the years,” Koerper said. “We all really came together with Coach Grubb the last two years, we really came together as a team.”
The added pressure of state title aspirations—let alone a fourth straight state title—and the knowledge that every other team in the state would be gunning for the Knights and looking to shut down the vaunted offensive trio made for added pressure on Koerper and her fellow seniors. But it was a challenge the seasoned veterans were ready to face.
“It was definitely something we were thinking about in the beginning,” she said. “But the team worked so well right from the start, we just knew that as long as we worked and played to the best of our ability, things were going to go our way.
“We definitely came into the season aiming for the state championship. We knew everyone would be ready to play their best against us, and Maeve, Claudia, and I had a lot of pressure knowing other teams would probably be running plays to double one of us. We just worked hard in practice, worked through the situations in practice and made sure we had our skills and our offensive plays down so that no matter the obstacle, we could get out of it.”
For Koerper, a two-year starter who has been playing varsity since her sophomore year, stepping up both in the pool and as a leader was imperative after the team put its trust in her to be a captain this season. That meant providing her teammates with an example to follow in the pool – and a big part of that was in honing her intensity and using it the right way.
“It was really exciting,” she said of the honor. “After all these years coming up with these girls, that they found a leader in me, and in Maeve, it made my heart warm. It really meant a lot to me.”
“As a junior, the biggest issue we had with Maddy was trying to direct her intensity,” Faikish said. “She’s a physically strong girl, she treads really well, she has a super hard shot, but when there’s a scrap for the ball, we had to work on having her dial back her intensity and putting more technique into it. And she really stepped it up this year. The biggest change this year is that change from over-aggression to skill. I think people saw that, saw how she worked to change her style and improve her game to help the team, and that really came through with her leading by example for this team.”
While the water polo season may have ended, Koerper is by no means done in the pools for North Penn. She’s now focused on the upcoming swim season. Koerper swims the 100 back and 50 free in what will be her last competitive swim season. But just because she won’t be on the swimming team in college, that doesn’t mean she’s looking at this season as a way to stay in shape for water polo. Koerper is just as focused on swim season as she was for water polo. And she won’t be satisfied simply with staying in shape for water polo season. She has her sights set on a few lofty goals.
“This year is going to be my last year in swimming, so I want to go out strong,” she said. “I want to lower my times, and I really want to make it to States this year, finish my last year and really make it my best.”
“Swimming is one of the most relentless sports in time and commitment,” Faikish said. “It takes a lot for a kid to say, ‘I’m not swimming in college, but I want to work hard and finish out this year strong.’ It’s understandable if you want to take off your senior year to be a kid or have fun. It takes someone special to stick with it and want to do their best and still set their sights high like Maddy, Maeve, Rosalinda (Rivera) are doing.”
In the rare times that Koerper is on dry land, she keeps herself busy. She’s carrying several AP and Honors classes this year, and is participating in career study at a local elementary school. She spends many hours volunteering both through North Penn’s Key Club and via her church.
Next year, Koerper will head to La Salle University. She is planning on pursuing a degree in education and will lend her considerable talents to the Explorers’ water polo team. It will be a very new experience for Koerper, who will be going from a perennial state contender with a long tradition of winning, to a brand new La Salle program that will be looking to build off a 3-16 inaugural season.
“I really liked the team atmosphere there, the girls are very nice,” Koerper said. “I sat in on a class and I liked it, I could see myself there the next four years.”
“As a newer program, they’re going to be fortunate to have someone like Maddy who has the ability to work with the kids, to help the kids, and to make the team better,” Faikish said. “North Penn is going to be losing someone who brings calculated, intelligent intensity and leadership skills both in the locker room and in the pool. And La Salle is gaining someone with drive and determination and a set of goals that I think is going to help that program get to a higher level.”
And when Koerper hangs up the navy and Colombia blue of North Penn for the final time, she will leave behind the school’s unmatched legacy of water polo supremacy that she has had no small part in shaping. But she will be leaving her own legacy for those who will return. That includes her sister Elizabeth, a freshman on this year’s team.
“For the kids who are coming back, I hope they saw the kind of team we were year and they want the same for next year,” she said. “I want them to still be the team that works together and rises to any challenge. And I’m not going to be too far away. I plan on coming back to watch games and coming back to watch our girls in the state championship next year.”
