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 Jan. 26, 2022.
There are moments – if we’re paying attention - that capture emotions words never could. Maddie MacDougall had one of those moments on the basketball court at North Penn High School this winter. Most undoubtedly missed it, and the Bensalem senior might not even remember it. The senior captain had just hit nothing but net on a 3-pointer in front of her team’s bench to give the Owls a lead they would not lose in the come-from-behind win. Coach Steve Johnson leaped in the air in celebration and MacDougall – wearing a radiant smile – exchanged a high five with her coach as she headed back on defense in the tightly contested battle. A forgettable moment to most, and the smile, the sparkle in MacDougall’s eye when she’s on the basketball court is sometimes the result of a clutch play. More often than not, it’s simply because the Bensalem senior has a profound appreciation for just being on the court playing a sport she loves. “As a kid and as a basketball player, she definitely lights up a room,” Johnson said. “She has an awesome personality, and she never really gets too down. When our team is struggling in a stretch, you can’t really see it on her face. She has a real positive outlook. It makes sense coming from a girl who persevered through an accident like she did.”
The accident.
It colors every single area in MacDougall’s life but none more profoundly than when she’s competing in sports. It happened on May 23, 2019, when MacDougall and her soccer team were at Chick-fil-A. “It was raining outside, me and my friend Sam (Daut) had to go out to the car to grab something,” MacDougall said. “We were running through the parking lot, and it was pouring. I actually slipped and a car didn’t see me. When I was laying down, they ran over my torso basically. They went completely over me.” With both the back and front wheels. And not a compact car but a minivan. Conscious but in shock, MacDougall – who also plays soccer - had only one thought. “I was worried about my legs because I’m an athlete,” she said. “When everyone ran out, there were about 30 people standing around me. I was so overwhelmed with everything, but the first thing I wanted to know was would I be able to walk. I didn’t know what had happened, but I just wanted to get up and walk this off. Obviously, you can’t, but it was definitely a thought – I just want to be able to play sports.” MacDougall was transported by ambulance to Jefferson Hospital, but her stay there was brief. “They assessed me and realized I was in too critical a condition, so I was put on a helicopter to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia because they didn’t have the equipment, and I was so severe of a case they couldn’t deal with me,” she said. “I remember them pulling my parents aside and explaining to them, and I could see by the look on my mom’s face that it was bad, so I knew.”
So began a long journey for the then Bensalem freshman. “They had to repair a laceration in an artery in my kidney immediately because I was bleeding,” MacDougall said. “My liver was swelling, and they had to take care of that, and then I had internal bleeding and they had to take care of.” Two days later, MacDougall underwent another surgery. “They put in an internal rod to hold my pelvis together because my pelvis was completely shattered, so they put a rod in that is still in my back today,” she said. “They also put in an internal fixator – I had two poles sticking out of me in my hips. It was basically like a handlebar right in front of me. That stayed in until July 23. I was non-weightbearing, I was in a wheelchair.” MacDougall remained in the hospital until mid-June. When MacDougall returned home, the family’s living room had a hospital bed, and it was her home until July 23 when her internal fixator was removed. “When my internal fixator came off, I had to relearn to walk,” she said. “The only thing going through my head was ‘I’m going to play sports.’ When anybody would tell me, ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, there might be a chance you won’t play sports,’ I would tell them, ‘I’m playing sports. It’s going to happen.’” And it did happen.
MacDougall was in physical therapy from the end of July until the end of November. She missed her sophomore soccer season but was cleared to resume normal activities the end of November so she could return to basketball. The following fall she was back on the soccer field. “She came back, and she slowly started getting her confidence back,” Bensalem soccer coach Bob Crawford said. “Once she got around her friends – she lights up a room is a good way to describe it. You’d never know this kid was hurt. She’s just a tough kid. For the team, she is a pure joy, a coachable kid, a character kid. She didn’t play soccer all year, and her club team folded so she never had a chance to fully rebound from it, but she never blamed her injury. She never blamed anyone or anything. She just always came out and did her best.”
MacDougall has not made a college choice but plans to major in media communications with the goal of finding a career associated with sports. She is actively involved with Owls Television Network and the school’s yearbook. And for now, playing basketball – a sport MacDougall’s been playing since she was five or six – has never felt so good.
To read MacDougall’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/maddie-macdougall-0098745
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of Jan. 26, 2022.
Wrestlers are a rare breed. To achieve excellence in their chosen sport, they have to push themselves harder than perhaps any other kind of athlete, and one would think such physical and mental sacrifice would lead to an unconditional love of the vocation. Otherwise, why do it at all? But in the case of Council Rock South senior Matt Colajezzi, things aren’t quite that simple. Colajezzi is District 1’s top-ranked wrestler at 160 pounds, and according to South wrestling head coach Brad Silimperi, is tops in his weight class in wrestling-obsessed Pennsylvania as well as one of the very best in the entire country. So how does Colajezzi feel about the sport that has propelled him to such heights, not to mention three straight district titles, a fourth-place finish at last year’s state tournament and a life-changing wrestling scholarship to the United States Naval Academy?
“It’s a love-hate relationship,” Colajezzi said after pinning Pennsbury’s Benjamin Primich to improve to 23-1 on the season. “I didn’t like it at first, but I learned to like it. Nobody likes getting their face pushed into the mat, but that’s how you get better. It’s become my life. It’s all I do, it’s who I am. When you build your lifestyle around a sport, it becomes your identity. Sometimes I don’t like it, but at the same time I go to it when I’m stressed out or have a bad day. It becomes therapy when I can get it all out, and that’s the fun part. If you’re being honest with yourself, not everyone likes working and pushing themselves. There are going to be days you don’t feel like doing it, but you do it anyway because that's how you get better. It sounds corny, but when you fall in love with the grind, that’s where the growth comes from.”
As a freshman at South, he posted a 40-12 record, and while it’s not out of the ordinary for a varsity wrestler to achieve such success so early, Colajezzi impressed everybody around him with how consistent he was in all aspects of the sport. “Matt will be going for his fourth straight district title,” Rock South coach Brad Silimperi said. “I don’t care what sport you play or what league you’re in…only a few people in their careers can say they did that. He was good right out of the gate, and he’s gotten better every year. There’s nothing flashy about him, he’s just good in every single position. For Matt, it’s a mindset more than it is technique, and that comes from his discipline and training.”
Colajezzi followed up his freshman campaign with a 35-11 sophomore season, another excellent showing that was decidedly not good enough for Colajezzi himself. It was the second straight season that ended with him not placing at states. Colajezzi returned for his junior year with a vengeance, winning 27 of his 31 matches, including the 100th of his career during the state tournament. Not only that, but he finally found himself on the elusive medal podium, placing fourth. Of course, it stands to reason that there is an extremely strong possibility that Colajezzi does get one more opportunity at a medal. Maybe even better than fourth place, too. Colajezzi admits that there is an unfinished business element to this final run, because to him, if he isn’t shooting to become a state champion then he isn’t aiming for the highest rung of the ladder.
As far as what comes next, it’s another big step, but one Colajezzi feels he’s ready for. A high school wrestler’s transition to a military service academy isn’t guaranteed to be seamless, but the intense structure of a wrestling routine will have obvious parallels to the disciplined regiment of what Navy expects from its student-athletes. The Colajezzi-Navy pairing “came out of left field,” so the military calling wasn’t something that he and his family had spent his whole life chasing. He didn’t expect it to be a real possibility, because truthfully — and perhaps a little naively — Colajezzi didn’t see himself as someone the military would even be interested in. He always knew he wanted to wrestle at the Division I level but assumed he would end up at one of the Big Ten or ACC wrestling factories. “The United States Naval Academy, that’s just crazy,” Colajezzi said. “But I have always been a team player, someone who wants to serve something bigger than myself. Life has a way of keeping you on the path you’ve been on the entire time even if you haven’t seen it yet. Now, I see it. I have a plan, something to work toward that will give me a future after high school. I want to do something at the academy to leave behind my mark on the world.”
Colajezzi hasn’t picked a career specialty yet, though he did mention aviation, submarine warfare, surface warfare or becoming a Navy SEAL as possible interests. Math, science and history are his favorite classes at South, and he figures whatever he ends up doing will be some blend of those subjects.
To read Colajezzi’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/matt-colajezzi-0098746
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