Thanks to our continued partnership with Univest Financial, SuburbanOneSports.com will once again recognize a male and female featured athlete each week. The recognition is given to seniors of high character who are students in good standing that have made significant contributions to their teams or who have overcome adversity. Selections are based on nominations received from coaches, athletic directors and administrators.
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Female Athlete (Week of April 10, 2024)
It’s a story Liz Potash kept in her back pocket for a long time. The Central Bucks East basketball coach finally pulled it out at her team’s recent end-of-season banquet. The veteran coach recalled a practice for an eighth grade DAA travel team that gave Potash a glimpse of future standout Anna Barry. “It was an eighth grade practice that Anna’s dad was running for her older sister Emily, who also played for me,” Potash said. “That group – Emily Chmiel and that whole crew – was going to be freshmen. I do this a lot, try to get out to the younger programs, run a practice for them, whatever, so I’m running this practice, and we’re doing a two-ball passing drill. I needed an extra player, and Anna, who’s a fifth grader, is there. Mr. Barry said, ‘She’ll hop in.’ I was like, ‘Okay,’ and there’s Anna, and she’s doing this drill better than any of the eighth graders as a fifth grader. Mr. Barry kind of looked at me and said, ‘Just wait for this one, coach.’”
Potash waited, and if ever a player lived up to their advance billing, it was Anna Barry. The diminutive guard – who measures in at 5 -4 – had herself quite a four-year varsity career. “I shared that story at our banquet because you’re talking the end of Anna’s senior year, and it’s like – he was right,” Potash said. “It’s unbelievable. What she was able to do on the court was so impressive. The way she grew her game over the four years – it’s incredible.” Barry was the MVP of a young East squad that earned the program’s first berth in the state tournament in four years. Barry, the senior point guard, was the catalyst and became just the eighth player in program history to surpass the 1,000-point mark. “I can’t even believe she was able to score a thousand points with the way she was defended,” Potash said. “Last year she was faceguard denied, she was box-and-oned, and that’s what I can’t get past. I always thought Emily Chmiel’s (1,000 points) was unbelievable because she did it in two-and-a-half years, but it was such a different position she was in (Chmiel was the team’s center). You look at Anna – she was the primary ballhandler, and we didn’t have a lot of scorers around her prior to this year, so what she was able to do being the sole focus of scout teams and how we’re being scouted, it’s pretty incredible.” Barry, who will not be playing at the next level, acknowledges she couldn’t have written a much better final chapter to her high school career. “Especially being able to get the state game - I feel like I did everything I wanted to do,” Barry said. “It’s a little bit sad, but I’m pretty content with how things ended.”
A four-year varsity player, Barry stepped into the role of point guard as a sophomore with the graduation of four seniors from the previous year’s successful district semifinalist squad. “Anna was more of a shooting guard, but we needed her to be the point guard,” Potash said. “What she was able to do – each year adding more pieces, so now she has to handle the ball, she’s got to be able to defend at that level. Now everyone knows that she’s a shooter, so by her junior year, she’s starting to attack the basket more. It’s unbelievable what she’s been able to do.” A two-time first team All-SOL Colonial selection, Barry reached the 1,000-point milestone in her team’s district playoff game at Perkiomen Valley, joining her father and grandfather to earn that distinction. It was never a priority for Barry. “You don’t always have a kid with that mentality,” Potash said. “(Scoring a thousand points) wasn’t her goal, her goal is team focused, and that’s really who Anna is, it’s who she’s always been. She’s been the best player on the floor, but it’s always about the team, which is a mature point guard mentality. If you needed her to score, she’ll score, if you needed her to pass the ball, she’ll pass the ball. Whatever she needs to do to help the team be successful, she’ll do.”
This fall, Barry will be attending Penn State, and she hasn’t ruled out playing club basketball at the next level, but that will not be her top priority. She will be majoring in biochemistry. “I want to work in pharmaceutical development, making medicines and researching medicine,” she said. “I always have been interested in that type of thing – sciences and things like that. This year in AP psychology, our teacher showed us a lot of things biochemists did and created, and I thought it was one of the coolest things ever, so that’s really what made me want to do it.” Barry is a member of the National Honor Society, which provides opportunities to volunteer in the community. She leaves East with the fondest memories of a high school basketball career that was not about individual accomplishments – although she had many – but rather about the team.
To read Barry’s complete story, please click on the following link: https://suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/anna-barry-00111943
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete (Week of April 10, 2024)
When Brenden Craven sets foot on the campus of Penn State University later this year, it will be a momentous occasion. The Hatboro-Horsham senior outfielder will be the first in his family to attend college. “It means a tremendous amount to me, honestly,” said Craven. “I saw it as an opportunity to take my family and the people I love to the next level and keep moving up in the world. I’m very excited for the opportunity to do that.” Given his tight bond with his mother, Annalee Craven, the college choice came down to two major factors: geography and money. “Because no one in my family has ever been to college, there was no pressure to go anywhere specific,” said Craven. “It has always been me and my mother. We are very, very close.”
Craven applied to schools like Temple and West Chester, but the final decision came down to George Washington in the nation’s capital and Penn State. Said Craven, who is also close with his grandmother, Kathleen Craven: “With the money I got from Penn State and how expensive George Washington would be, I figured it was a great place to go. I grew up without a father figure. It has always just been me and my mother. We never had a lot of money. Things like that made us really close.” When he gets to State College, Craven – an excellent student with a GPA in 3.7-3.8 range – plans to major in political science. He plans to then put his oratory skills to use by going to a law school, with a possible eye toward politics.
While he didn’t really have a father figure in his life, H-H head coach Bill DeBoer has played a major role, having coached him all the way up from JV and now with varsity. “The connection we have built through that has taught me a bunch of different things in baseball,” Craven said. “We all know that sports aren’t just sports, they are metaphors for life. Some of the lessons that he has taught me have really been influential and important in my life. He always says stuff like, ‘Practice doesn’t make you perfect, but it makes you better. We are allowed to make mistakes, but you are going to bounce back from those mistakes.’ You are never going to bat 1.000 on the season, but you can get a little bit better every time you step on that field.”
While DeBoer says he didn’t purposefully treat Craven any differently than other players, he did sense that there was an extra void that needed to be filled. “I don’t think I did anything special that I wouldn’t do for any other kid,” said DeBoer. “But I did notice that he took to it a little bit more than some kids who didn’t have that challenge in life. He seemed, like, ‘Oh, OK, I’m going to listen to what he says.’ Sometimes you get tuned out, you know? The message gets a little blasé for kids and they can kind of tune you out.” Because COVID negated fielding a freshman team, Craven was part of a bloated JV roster coached by DeBoer. “I think I had three or four Brendens on the team,” said the coach. “Even more so, he kind of got lost in the crowd. He was a skinny kid who was also in the band, but he also had a lot of energy. He ran to everything he did. Everything we asked of him at practice, he hustled all the time. At first, he was just this skinny little kid who said, ‘Let’s give baseball a try.’ Now, as a senior, he has turned into one of our leaders. I didn’t even expect the kid to come back his sophomore year, to be honest with you. Once the numbers thing got sorted out, I figured he was going to just stay with his schoolwork and the band and that baseball would fall by the wayside. The band works just as hard as our baseball team does.”
Through to this season, his first at the varsity level, Craven plays the role of a sparkplug off the bench. “His skill set probably isn’t as the top of our list, but the energy he brings – his character around the team – just sort of grows on you,” DeBoer said. “He is just an infectious kid to be around, and he has accomplished a whole lot more than I ever expected him to in the sport. He comes off the bench, but every time he gets into the game, the other guys are cheering for him. He is cheering for them when they are out on the field, so they make a point of cheering extra loud when he is out on the base paths or in the field.”
Craven is an accomplished musician who plays the clarinet in the concert band and the saxophone in the jazz band while also part of the school’s musical accompaniment and a collection of Montgomery County’s best. He learned the clarinet in fourth grade and the saxophone in sixth grade. “I consider that to be my main thing in school,” said Craven, who also takes part in a mentoring program, Link Crew, for freshmen.
To read Craven’s complete story, please click on the following link: https://suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/brenden-craven-00111942
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