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 Feb. 21, 2024)
Springfield girls’ basketball coach David Giordano, currently the acting athletic director at Springfield, doesn’t need any sheet music to sing the praises of senior forward Hannah Brandon. A team captain, Brandon is a first-year starter who earned her way up the ladder from junior varsity as a sophomore to rotational player as a junior to full-time starter and team leader. But there is more to her than that. “She is not a superstar, but she is a super person,” said Giordano. “Hannah is four-year girls’ basketball and four-year soccer player. She is a straight-A, 4-point who-knows-what student.”
What strikes Giordano, among other traits, is Brandon’s team-first attitude. “Her character is impeccable,” he said. “The key thing with her from since she was a freshman to now as a senior captain is, ‘What can I do for our team? What can I do for my teammates?’ It’s always about someone else. It’s never about her. She doesn’t want the limelight. She just wants to be successful as a team. She is inclusive with the other kids in both basketball and soccer.” Brandon missed her senior soccer season with anemia but takes iron daily to keep herself on the hardwood. “She didn’t play her senior year with soccer, but she never missed a practice or a game,” said Gioradano. “For basketball, she has been a stellar scholar-athlete.”
Although the 5-9 Brandon is more of a role player who is relied upon for her inbounds passing prowess and playing well in transition, she has great admiration for Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, who just broke the NCAA scoring record. Said Brandon: “I think she is a great example of a confident player, and I think her recent accomplishment is inspiring the female athletes everywhere.” As for being a captain, Brandon took her role seriously – and not just during games and practices. “I just have a natural outgoing and social personality,” she said. “It came naturally to be vocal on and off the court. I think that leading by example is something that I do that’s important because I focus a lot on schoolwork, too. I think that is a nice example for my teammates, to show a balance between being a student and an athlete. Being a leader, I also try to keep my composure on the court.”
Brandon doesn’t plan to be a student-athlete at the collegiate level. She is currently looking at colleges, primarily south of the Mason-Dixon Line (South Carolina, Clemson) with a plan to major in biomedical engineering. “I’ve always really liked science and math,” she said. “My grandfather was in science. I always knew that if I went that way, I would have a lot of support from my family because he’s very passionate about that.” Brandon also developed the passion for science and research because two of her grandparents have struggled with the unforgiving ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. “All the colleges I’ve applied to - in terms of research - have labs going for the disease, but it’s so complex,” she said. “It’s so incurable right now. It’s very scary to think about. It’s really been something that has affected my life. I think if I was able to stick with that major and get into that field, it would be really rewarding for me to be in a career where I can say, ‘I’m doing research on this. I know what it has done to my life.’ If I can be part of anything that would make that disease a little bit less horrible for other people, it would make me feel satisfied with what I’m doing.” At a small school like Springfield, Brandon has learned to redefine what it means to win, seeing it as a microcosm for life. That will serve her well when digging in against Alzheimer’s for which there is no current cure nor real treatment for what is the seventh leading cause of death and the most common cause of dementia. “You’re not going to win every game, but you can have the smaller victories,” she said. “There are still good things to take away.”
In the classroom, Brandon’s success is unmatched. She currently ranks second in the class with a 4.7 GPA on an almost unattainable 5.0 scale. She will likely be the class salutatorian. “It means a lot,” said Brandon. “I do try. Being second person to the first, I don’t know - you get so close and you’re still second. At the same time, I like to factor in a lot of the time that I’ve spent doing extracurricular activities. Being second is still impressive, considering all of the other things I do.” Brandon is the vice president of the Community Service Club, she is in the Decca Club and the National Honor Society.
To read Brandon’s complete story, please click on the following link: https://suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/hannah-brandon-00111192
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete (Week of Feb. 21, 2024)
For Connor Taddei, being a part of Pennsbury basketball goes far beyond individual accomplishments and means more than wins and losses could measure. It’s all about playing his part in the storied tradition of Falcons’ basketball – respecting the past, giving your best effort in the present, and helping prepare for the future. “We’ve always had this saying, ‘Play for those who played before you,’” Taddei said. “It’s all about showing gratitude to the ones who played before you and who helped make this place better. I always remember talking to (former head coach Bill) Coleman after games, talking to the alumni about their experiences. They were great mentors for all us, and the fact that they were always around shows how deep the culture is at Pennsbury and shows how different our alumni base and culture has been.” With the Falcons’ season recently ending in the first round of the District One playoffs, Taddei will now take his place alongside those who came before him. Coach Wes Emme believes Taddei will be remembered as the ideal Pennsbury student-athlete. “Connor is a program kid, he’s a kid that came up through the middle schools, played in the local youth organizations and did it all the right way,” Emme said. “Everything about Connor represents Pennsbury in a positive way.”
Though Taddei led the Falcons in scoring this season, he willingly sacrificed his points down the stretch to help the team in ways that don’t always show up in the scorebook. And it elevated his game. “He was playing the best basketball of his career the last couple weeks of the season, doing the little things,” Emme said. “Even though he was not scoring as much at the end of the year, he was doing the stuff that leads to winning and doing the things that get us into playoffs.” With his season and high school career having so recently come to a close, Taddei said he hasn’t really had a chance to reflect on it yet. “I’m still trying to take it all in, but it hasn’t really settled that my high school basketball career is over,” he said. “It’s going to hit me in the next couple months, and I’m going to miss it a lot, but I would consider it a success. I got called up as a sophomore, I’ve been through two head coaches, won the league title my junior year, and I’ve done everything in my power to help the team succeed. Coach Emme always says, ‘You leave the program in a better place than you found it.’ I feel like this senior class did that.”
Though basketball may be over, Taddei still has plenty of other things happening around school. He’s a member of the Pennsbury Ultimate Frisbee team, which is nationally ranked. Taddei and his friend Jake Miller are serving as Overall Captains of the Black Team for Pennsbury’s annual Sports Nite, a massive schoolwide field day competition held in April at the CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton, NJ. After participating last year, Taddei decided he wanted to do more as a senior and ran for—and was elected—an Overall Captain. In the classroom, Taddei got through a tough fall semester, and while he’s not exactly taking it easy in the spring, he said his course load is now a bit more manageable. “Connor demonstrates what it can be for you to be part of something bigger than yourself,” Emme said. “He has this sea of people supporting him because he’s immersed himself in the high school community. Seeing the people who came out to support him and cheer him on Senior Night, it’s because he puts himself out there and he widens his circle of people who he comes into contact with. He got to live out the Pennsbury dream.”
Taddei committed this week to attend St. John Fisher University in Rochester, NY, and will suit up for the Division III Cardinals on the hardwood as he pursues a degree in Kinesiology and Sports Performance. A history buff, Taddei said he’s also likely to minor in history. And as he takes his place in the history of Pennsbury boys’ basketball, Taddei said he plans on remaining involved with the program, attending games when he can, keeping in touch with former teammates, and checking in whenever he is able. In the meantime, Emme will make sure that Taddei’s contributions—and those of his teammates—will be passed on. “Connor is a guy who was completely immersed in everything we do,” Emme said. “He’s selfless, and those are the guys that are hardest to replace. There’s always another good player, there’s not always another good player with buy-in the way Connor had. He’s a kid that consistently shows up and goes to work every day we’re going to miss that the most. I will always reference him and his teams, being that they were my first teams at Pennsbury, to tell the story of what a true Pennsbury team could be and what it means to wear that uniform.”
To read Taddei’s complete story, please click on the following link: https://suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/connor-taddei-00111194
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