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 June 2, 2020
Sarah Stofik’s career path promises to be an interesting one. The Quakertown senior will be attending the University of South Carolina’s Honors College where she will major in biochemistry and molecular biology. Her goal after graduate school? “I’m not sure yet, but I definitely could see myself somewhere in the future working with medications, focusing on medications for the heart,” Stofik said. “I’ve always been interested in that aspect. I took chemistry, and I really enjoyed it, seeing how applicable it is to all these different things in life.” Stofik’s underlying motivation to work with the development of heart medications is far more personal than just her enjoyment of chemistry. “When I was younger, my grandfather was in the hospital,” she said. “He had a major heart attack and major complications. Seeing that drew me in to be more interested in heart medications.”
Stofik’s grandfather recovered from his heart complications, but it inspired Quakertown’s Class of 2020 valedictorian. Those who know her best have no doubt she will be doing something special. “As a person, you know you’re talking to a very smart kid who’s going to do very big things in the future,” Quakertown softball coach David Scott said. “Talking to her is just like talking to a 30-year-old sometimes. She’s just a great, great all-around kid.”
Stofik got an early start in sports, going through the gamut at the YMCA, but two sports at opposite ends of the spectrum stuck – softball and figure skating. She was around five when she started both. Softball is a popular choice for youngsters, but figure skating, which morphed into synchronized skating – not so much. “I took lessons, and once I decided I really liked it, I joined one of the synchronized skating teams,” said Stofik, who skated at Hatfield Ice. “I would compete with the team, and we would go to different competitions in the Northeast. It was fun.” Combining skating with softball turned out to be challenge. In sixth grade, Stofik opted to go the travel softball route and gave up skating.
Scott, for one, is certainly glad Stofik chose softball. A fixture in the varsity lineup since she was a freshman, she boasted a .453 batting average last year with a dazzling 1.187 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage). She led the team with 20 RBIs and three home runs. “For kind of a quiet kid, she was very much always in the attack mode and was very aggressive in her approach at the plate,” Scott said. “She was a line drive hitter.” Defensively, Stofik was a rock at second base and finished her junior season with a .943 fielding percentage, committing just five miscues on 88 opportunities “She was really, really solid,” Scott said. “As a player, she’s one of those kids that shows up for every workout, every practice, every game. She doesn’t say a whole lot, she’s not a real vocal kid. She is one of the hardest working and works without complaint. She does whatever you ask her to do. She’s very laidback and just a great kid to coach.”
Stofik, a member of the Doylestown Mustangs travel team, is hoping to have one final go-round with softball this summer. Away from the softball diamond, she was president of Quakertown’s Mini-THON Committee and was in charge of the events committee. Work on the Mini-THON – scheduled for April 24-25 (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) - began at the start of the school year. Stofik’s area of focus was the events schedule for each hour. “This would have been the sixth annual Mini-THON event,” she said. “Our goal was $32,000, but unfortunately, we did not reach that due to the event being cancelled (because of the pandemic).” Stofik is also a member of National Honor Society. Finishing number one in her class of 430 was never on Stofik’s bucket list, but it is the result of a dazzling high school resume that included 14 AP classes. Academics will be in the forefront when Stofik arrives at South Carolina this fall, and although her competitive softball days will be over, she wouldn’t have wanted to miss the experiences she shared with her softball team. “Softball was something fun I could do after school,” she said. “Being a spring sport athlete, spring was one of my favorite times of the year. School was ending, and there was always softball to look forward to. It just made the days go quicker. It was also a good way to make friends and meet new people in other grade levels that you normally wouldn’t be around. That was always fun.”
To read Stofik’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/sarah-stofik-0090321
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of June 2, 2020
Laidback. It's one of the first words Mike Childs uses to describe Brian Reiner. Souderton’s baseball coach laughs as he recounts an anecdote confirming that even laidback might be an understatement. A four-year member of the baseball program, Reiner was told the day before Souderton’s date with Central Bucks South in the PIAA Class 6A state title game last June that he would be starting at third base. Nothing unusual about that except for the fact that Reiner had not played third base the entire season. “He’s very athletic, he works hard, but he’s very laidback,” Childs said. “So when you walk up to him and say, ‘Brian, you’re starting at third in the state championship.’ He’s like, ‘Okay coach, thanks.’” Reiner, who will continue his baseball career at Penn State Harrisburg, proved worthy of the confidence Childs and his coaching staff had in him, playing a flawless third base in the Indians thrilling 6-3 come-from-behind win to capture the program’s first ever state title. “He did the job,” Childs said. “He does what’s asked of him and he never complains. He played multiple positions, and that’s what we relied on him for, especially last year, and he was always ready to jump into games any time we needed him.”
Reiner also was a major contributor on the basketball team and was the starting point guard on an Indian squad that – despite a myriad of injuries – earned a spot in the District One 6A Tournament. “He was a rock for us through all the stuff,” Souderton coach Tim Brown said. “He’s a great ball handler and he’s great defensively too. Probably one of his best traits is getting on the glass and rebounding at both ends of the floor. We would put him on the other team’s best player a lot of times, and he took pride in shutting them down. He was invaluable for us throughout the season.” There’s a lot more to Reiner’s story than the fact that he was a valuable member of two varsity teams. A whole lot more.
On Oct. 12, Reiner – at a Temple football game with friends - received a call from his mother that his father, who was scheduled to leave for China on business that day, had been taken to the hospital. “The hospital said it was vertigo, so I was like, ‘Do you think I should come home? Is it something to worry about?’” Reiner said. “I didn’t really know what vertigo was. She said, ‘It’s fine. They’re just going to give him medication. He’ll be out soon.’” At 10 o’clock that night, Reiner received another phone call. “Mrs. (Beth) Anders called me for my mom because I guess she was too upset to say he had a stroke,” Reiner said of his neighbor and close family friend. “Rodney (Anders) came and picked me up and took me to the hospital. My dad definitely wasn’t in good shape at all.”
After a week’s stay at the hospital, Frank Reiner was released to go to Bryn Mawr Rehab. “The second day in rehab he had a really bad stroke and then also had another one,” Brian said. “That’s when he almost died, and they had to do surgery to remove the blood clots.” The surgery was successful, but it marked the beginning of a long, long road to recovery. Brian’s father left Jefferson University Hospital on Oct. 31, returning to Bryn Mawr Rehab where he remained until Dec. 22. “I hated every second of it,” Brian said. “My dad was in really good shape before this happened – he worked out every day. He did everything at our house. If there was a problem with anything, he would do it himself before we ever paid somebody to come do it.” There’s no mistaking the impact the experience has had on Reiner. “It changed me in so many ways, so many,” he said. “I’m not going to lie – I got in trouble every single year of high school, and I created a lot of stress for my coaches because they always had to deal with my crap. When it happened, I had to think about what’s important. I think it really matured me a lot.”
The changes were not lost on his coaches. “The biggest thing that we saw from him was how he just became all in on basketball and all in on our team and our family,” Brown said. “I feel like with everything going on – we lost Andrew and Dom, but there was no time to feel bad for us or think about it in that perspective because Brian had real problems going on. We had problems with injuries and all that, but that’s basketball and that’s a game. Brian had life problems, and he was a leader for us, keeping his composure and doing everything he could on the court every day, so we just had to follow his lead.”
To read Reiner’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/brian-reiner-0090319
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