Basketball
Favorite athlete: Spencer Hawes
Favorite team: 76ers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating PW on our Senior Night on a buzzer beater by Kev Woods.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Failed dunk attempt against Great Valley that turned into an awkward lay-up.
Music on iPod: Kanye West
Future plans: Work as Industrial Psychologist and have a family.
Words to live by: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
One goal before turning 30: Play a minor role in a movie.
One thing people don’t know about me: I am a snapchat enthusiast.
By GORDON GLANTZ
When he was in fourth grade, Zach Greenberg moved back to the area after three years in Sacramento and first joined forces with Marc Conran and Kevin Woods on the hardwood.
From that point on, the trio dreamed of the day when they would live out their ultimate hoop dreams at Upper Dublin High.
The senior season came out and went for coach Josh Adelman’s squad without much to show in terms of hardware.
The Cardinals finished 11-11, out of the PIAA District One playoffs after initially thinking they were in, having lost a few close games and two at the buzzer (against Wissahickon and Norristown), but still built memories for a lifetime.
“Obviously, the districts playoffs were what we wanted,” said Zach Greenberg. “Marc and Kevin are my best friends off the court. Heading into our senior season, we just wanted to have fun and play together. We got through some hard times just by sticking together.
“This was the most team-oriented team I ever played on -- coming off of how the team was, being older last year and younger this year. All the sophomores, all the juniors – they were all great. We got along. It was easy to take them under our wing.”
The 6-5 Greenberg, who will take his talents to the next level at Division III Washington College in Maryland, is most proud of the team’s resiliency. This was displayed by the four-game winning streak at the end of the season.
Lesser teams, with less senior leadership from Greenberg and Co., would have folded at 7-11.
“It would have been nice (to have a better season, record-wise),” said Greenberg, who will move from center to forward at the college level. “It’s better than going out with losses.
“And we beat PW on a buzzer-beater by Kev Woods on senior night, so that was big.”
Greenberg is the first to admit that he is more a self-made player than a natural wunderkind. His dedication knew no bounds. His mother, Nancy, would pick him up at overnight camp – Camp Nockamixon – and drive him 45 minutes to summer league games.
“I always felt like if I worked hard and played well, the results would show and it would be fun,” said Greenberg, who averaged nine points, six rebounds and three assists per game.
“He worked very hard on his game,” concurred Adelman. “He improved leaps and bounds every year.”
Adelman said Greenberg’s value, aside from leadership, was doing the little things. He scored, when needed, but is more than willing to do the dirty work.
“It was hard to take him out of games, because he did everything,” said the Flying Cardinals’ coach. “His defense and rebounding were so critical for us to compete on that level.”
Greenberg lists passing as his “greatest asset” but can’t explain why it came to be. And although he admittedly lacks the feet to be a shut-down defender, he made up for it with guile.
“I have never been that fast, but I try to put myself in great position,” he said. “I always try to do everything I can to help us win. When you’re younger, it’s about scoring. When you get older, you learn that there is a lot more to it than that.”
The player-coach relationship with Adelman goes back to middle school, when Adelman coached the baseball team.
“He is just a great kid,” said Adelman. “He would always come up and talk to you. He was always a personable, good-natured kid. He was always mature beyond his years. He is very down to earth, always saying hello.
“He is a great teammate. He led by example. He wasn’t a yeller or a screamer. But if something needed to be said, he said it and they would listen. They all respected him.”
In middle school, Greenberg was still awkward. He had big feet but had yet to grow into his body. His lack of speed earned him the nickname “Flash,” a card Adelman still played from time to time at the high school level just to lighten the mood.
Outside of basketball, Greenberg played an active role in student government at Upper Dublin. He has been class vice president three times and is active in the Spanish Club.
Greenberg – younger than most high school seniors because the cutoff date was different in California – was an attractive recruit for Division III schools.
Washington, he said, got involved with him early – initially through a contact with his coaches from the Maccabiah Games – and was eventually chosen over Hobart and Marywood.
“They had been in touch since the beginning of the school year,” he said. “They came out to several of our games. I developed a good relationship with the coaching staff right away. From the get-go, it just seemed to be the right fit.”
Ironically, Zach’s father, Marc, played college basketball at Muhlenberg, which is one of Washington’s rivals in the Centennial Conference.
There was no pressure, he said, to follow his father’s footsteps. There was no pressure to even play basketball.
“My parents always supported anything I did,” said Greenberg, who plans to create his own major, combining business and psychology into a career in industrial psychology. “Whether it involved sports or not, they were always there to support me. My dad played college basketball, but it didn’t matter. He always gave me the option to play or not throughout my career.
“My mom, at the beginning, did not have a great knowledge of basketball, but she would try and learn all she could to give me advice. And she got me everywhere I needed to be. The times when I had a bad game, she would be there at home waiting to give me a hug.
“I also want to thank my coaches for always believing me.”
The feeling was more than mutual.
“I think he is one of the most dedicated and hard-working players I have ever coached,” said Adelman. “He loves the game of Basketball and is an excellent teammate. Zach is probably one of the best passing big men I have ever coached. He did the little things in games that sometimes go unnoticed -- diving for loose balls, playing excellent team defense, and rebounding consistently.”
