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. 12, 2022.
Emma Hurley likes to keep busy. So after losing her sophomore lacrosse season to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Upper Moreland senior – a starter for the basketball team - was eager to return to action again. With no sport to occupy her time in the fall, Hurley decided to try her hand at a new one to provide skill work to make up for the time she’d lost in the spring. “I was also constantly talking to the field hockey coaches because they also coached lacrosse,” Hurley said. “They’d been trying to get me to come out for field hockey all throughout high school. “I was like - last season got cancelled, so I’ll just try field hockey this season. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to do it again. I ended up loving it.” That’s not all that unusual but making Hurley’s story unique is that she volunteered to go in goal for a Golden Bear squad that didn’t have a goalie. Granted, she was a lacrosse goalie, but the position is vastly different in the two sports. “The biggest difference is how the ball is moving,” Hurley said. “The ball isn’t coming at you as fast as it would in lacrosse, but you have to be much more on your feet because the cage is so much bigger. It’s a lot more foot coordination than lacrosse.”
Hurley, according to UM coach Marissa Elizardo, was a natural fit. “Despite not having a preseason last year, Emma learned quickly and immediately made a statement,” the Golden Bears’ coach said. “After playing her first high school field hockey game, the opposing team’s coach came up and said, ‘Who is your goalie? She was amazing.’ As a coaching staff, we had a little laugh and then told her, ‘That’s Emma, and she just started playing last week.’” What made Hurley so good? “It’s just her attitude about it,” Elizardo said. “It’s not just becoming a goalie never playing before – it’s the fact that she was doing it on a team that was not having a winning record. To go in your first year and lose games 6-0, 7-0, 8-0 and still show up each day wanting to get better and being the one encouraging her teammates to keep working and that wins will come eventually we just have to keep at it – that’s something you can’t teach. She just does it on her own.”
Field hockey will not be part of Hurley’s future – although she was named this year’s team MVP and earned honorable mention all-league recognition. This fall, the UM senior signed a letter of intent to continue her lacrosse career at the Division 2 level at Holy Family University. “She’s the heart and soul of a team,” UM lacrosse coach Kim Frantz said. “If you need somebody that can pull a team together and get a team to work together, it’s her. She’s the one that can really make a team cohesive, working in the offseason and doing things in the offseason. That’s the kind of kid she is – she’s that really important player on a team that brings the team together.” The fact that Hurley has type 1 diabetes has not – according to her coaches - slowed her down in the athletic arena. “You wouldn’t even know she has diabetes,” Frantz said. “There are times when I check in with her - if we have a long day or super hot day. I always remind her because she doesn’t really think about it. It’s definitely on the back burner for her in a good way, not in a bad way.”
Elizardo echoed a similar refrain, “In the two years I have known Emma, I have never seen her step out of a drill, take a break or use the phrase ‘I can’t.’ The only time Emma ever mentions her diabetes is when she is making a joke about it. Emma has an incredible sense of humor and never takes herself too seriously.” Every team, according to her hockey coach, needs an Emma Hurley. “She’s super coachable, she was great as a captain,” Elizardo said. “She was just on top of everything. We did summer practices this year, and field hockey is not her number one sport, but she was there every single week. Even if she was the only one, she still showed up. If I could have a whole team of Emmas I would be the happiest coach in the world.”
Away from the athletic arena, Hurley, a member of the National Honor Society, has a course load that includes AP biology and honors classes. She aspires to one day become a health and physical education teacher.
To read Hurley’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/emma-hurley-0098473
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of Jan. 12, 2022.
When the COVID-19 pandemic first struck in early 2020 and wiped out the spring season for countless student-athletes across the Delaware Valley, it put the future careers of many in doubt. How long would this last? And how would the athletes, so used to the machinations of a daily training routine, respond to the layoff? With so much uncertainty swirling, some of these athletes packed it in for an extended period of time. Some would shake the rust off in time, while others may have drifted for any number of acceptable reasons. Joey Gant was not one of those athletes who drifted into inactivity. Sure, in the extreme early stages when everybody was at home, Gant, a senior track and field star at Pennridge High School, was right there with them. He estimated that for about a month, he didn’t do much of anything, admitting to letting the laziness take the wheel. But you don’t earn track scholarships to Princeton University by sitting on the couch, and although Gant didn’t know specifically where his future lay yet, he knew for sure that he wanted to run in college.
However, Gant soon found himself at a career crossroads. He had already made quite the impression as a sprinter in the 100m, 200m and as a member of the 4x400m relay team in his first three high school campaigns (freshman indoor and outdoor; sophomore indoor). Although not the best runner on the team yet, it was clear he was not far off from Pennridge’s extremely talented group of upperclassmen. “As much of a bad thing as COVID was, it was a blessing in disguise for me,” Gant said. “It opened up this new area of weight training for me, which I had skipped before so I wouldn’t be sore for races. I found myself getting lazy, and I realized I can’t be doing this. I figured maybe there would be a season eventually, and I wanted to run in college, so I can’t be sitting around all day doing nothing. So, I got in contact with some coaches at Boyertown High School, and four to five days a week I went there to lift and run. I did that all summer into the fall, and that weight training especially was really beneficial for me.”
Gant didn’t run any official races that spring, but his progress didn’t fall off a cliff, either. By his account, his development was still on track after a spring freshman season that saw him place second at leagues in the 100 and third in the 200 before finishing sixth at districts and 14th at states. And while Gant didn’t know it at the time, Pennridge’s veteran 4x400 relay team, which had runners bound for Princeton, Penn, MIT and UCLA, saw the freshman’s potential and took him under their collective wing. “They helped me understand more about the sport,” Gant said. “But also how to progress as a runner.”
Everything culminated in the postseason last spring, first at the league championship, where Gant had what he called “definitely by far the greatest track performance I’ve ever had.” On that day, all he did was set personal records in the 100 (10.7 seconds), 200 (21.37) and 4x400 (3:23.12). With Pennridge’s school record holder in the 200 on hand to watch, Gant beat it. Then, for his encore as the relay team’s anchor, Gant took the final baton and came from the back of the pack more than 100 yards behind to pass every single runner ahead of him. The performance is still the stuff of legends in the Pennridge community, and cemented Gant’s own legacy as one of the best sprinters in school history. Gant went on to claim the District 1 3A championship in the 200 and finished runner-up in the 100. He was still on track to reach his goal at states, but a hamstring injury put his goal of winning state gold on hold.
“He’s the whole package, just all of that and more,” Stephens said. “First, he’s academically awesome, obviously, because he’s going to Princeton. As a leader, he’s so good that it’s like having another assistant coach. He was leading the team workouts all fall before I even got there. When someone is the total package, with the grades and the character of that kid, it opens doors to every single school that there is. Him being humble about it, that’s just Joey being Joey. And if you look at Princeton’s roster, it’s not just the best of the best in this country. It’s the world. Sometimes I wish he had more of an ego…I just wish he would feel like he deserves it, because he does. He’s not arguably the fastest runner in Pennridge’s history: he is the fastest. He’s as good as it gets.”
Gant, who will major in economics, will continue his track career at Princeton University, choosing the prestigious Ivy League school from a final list that included Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Duke and Stanford. In less than two years, the Pennridge senior went from having his sophomore spring season wiped out to the Ivy League.
To read Gant’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/joey-gant-0098463
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