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 Sept. 9, 2019
Joan Thornton vividly remembers the first day she laid eyes on the diminutive, wiry seventh grader. It was four-and-a-half years ago when Thornton, the head girls cross country coach at Council Rock South, spotted Marisa Kilgarriff. Thornton was watching eighth graders run a spring track meet, searching for talented speedsters who would soon ascend to the high school level. Kilgarriff was only in seventh grade, so she wasn’t on the coach’s radar, but she caught Thornton’s eye during a 1600M race. “Right from the start of the mile, she captured my attention with her fierce, competitive spirit,” Thornton said. “Although she did not win the mile that day, I knew she was a winner. I was impressed that Marisa didn’t back off when racing girls that were older, faster and more experienced.” That Thornton discovered Kilgarriff essentially by accident is a fitting twist to the story, as Kilgarriff never viewed herself as a serious runner. In fact, she didn’t even start running competitively until that seventh-grade year, trying just about every other sport under the sun before cross country and track entered into her orbit.
Once Thornton saw the pure, natural speed that Kilgarriff possessed, she went to work on convincing the young runner to consider cross country. At first, Kilgarriff wasn’t having it, because, “As a middle schooler, I thought that running all of the time would be terrible.” However, the more Kilgarriff ran, the more she loved it. And, as she soon found out, she was good at it too, which always helps matters. “I just kept doing it, and I was learning more every day,” she said. “I started to catch a base, and then I was getting faster. That’s when I thought, ‘This could be something good.’” Kilgarriff was right. At the high school level, the top seven cross country runners on a team comprise the varsity squad, and during her freshman year Kilgarriff shot up the depth chart. By the end of her inaugural campaign, she was the team’s No. 1 runner.
As a freshman, Kilgarriff finished fourth at leagues, and though she didn’t think she was the best yet, “I knew that when I did, the next three years would be something special.” One drawback to having so much success at something early on is the inevitable pressure to keep achieving at such a high level that starts to creep in. By the time winter indoor track season came around during Kilgarriff’s sophomore year. Thornton said her star runner experienced “a few bumps in the road, putting too much pressure on herself to hit qualifying times. Thornton said Kilgarriff got back to basics and “recalibrated her expectations for herself.” When she did that, she bounced back with a strong spring track season that saw her qualify for districts in the 3200M. This translated into Kilgarriff’s junior cross country season, where she set a personal record in every invitational that she ran in. After a strong showing in districts, she qualified for the PIAA state championship race in Hershey.
Now a senior, she wants to make it back to states in cross country as well as serve as an example to her younger teammates now that she is a captain of the team. Either way, the pressure is off, and she’s just going with it. Kilgarriff said she hopes to run in college and has received interest from schools at both the Division-I and Division-II level. As of now, she’s keeping her options open and doesn’t want to rush into a decision she might end up regretting.
To read Kilgariff’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/female/marissa-kilgariff-0086654
Univest’s SuburbanOneSports.com Featured Male Athlete for week of Sept. 9, 2019
Evan Profy isn’t big on fanfare. The Harry S Truman senior was named MVP of the prestigious Big 26 Baseball Classic this summer, but ask him about the experience – which includes a three-game series pitting Pennsylvania against Maryland, and Profy makes no mention of the honor he received. Rather, he recalls sharing the experience with his buddy Zach, who was part of a program that pairs each player with a buddy that has special needs or a learning disability. That’s not to say he doesn’t mention baseball – he does, but no mention is made of earning MVP. “The Big 26 was the best baseball experience I’ve ever been a part of,” Profy said. “The best part about it is just to challenge your game and be with all your buddies – you’re really like their whole world.” Earning MVP honors for playing a sport he loves was a bonus of sorts for Profy. Listening to Big 26 coach Kevin Manero tell it, Profy did a lot of things right. “He really played the game well in all facets,” the North Penn head coach said. “He’s a kid that went up there and bunted but then he also had an opposite field home run. He also ran the bases aggressively, played the outfield well. He had multiple hits over the three-game series – he had the big home run, multiple RBIs. He’s the kind of kid – he’s not too flashy, he just has an eye for the game. He’s super coachable and doesn’t think too highly of himself.”
Earning MVP honors in the Big 26 Classic is just one piece of the story. It turns out there was a price tag attached for Profy that he couldn’t have imagined when he tried out for the all-star team in early May. After all, what were the odds that his Bristol American Legion squad – which finished fourth in the regular season – would capture the Region 3 title and earn a berth in the American Legion PA State Tournament in Dubois. Beyond that, who would have guessed that the start of the state tournament would coincide with the weekend of the Big 26? But that’s exactly what happened, and unbeknownst to Profy was the fact that he would not be permitted to compete with his Bristol American Legion squad since he was not there to sign in with his team when the tournament began. “To speak to his character – he drove home from Harrisburg and then got in a car the next morning and drove with one of our assistant coaches four-and-a-half hours back to Dubois to stand in the stands with his jersey on and cheer on his teammates,” Monaghan said.
Profy began playing legion baseball the summer after his freshman year, and he will be back on the legion circuit next summer. He is a member of the Varsity Club at Truman. “Evan is a great student – he’s got great grades,” Monaghan said. “He’s quiet by nature, and he’s a leader more by example than words because – more often than not – he is always doing the right thing.” Profy plans to play collegiate baseball and recently visited Coastal Carolina. “His game has a chance to translate at every level,” Manero said. “He’s not going to necessarily be a big-time power hitter or anything like that, and maybe some of his measurables in this world of numbers and showcases don’t impress a lot of people. But if a college coach really wants to win, he’s got to have guys on his team that know how to play the game and know how to win, and that’s the kind of kid he is. Once he gets between the lines he’s going to help them win, and that’s what everybody wants to do at the next level.”
To read Profy’s complete profile, please click on the following link: https://www.suburbanonesports.com/featured-athletes/male/evan-profy-0086658
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