Basketball
Favorite athlete: Diana Taurasi
Favorite team: UConn women’s basketball
Favorite memory competing in sports: Beating Upper Dublin sophomore year
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Getting a black eye during the Owen J. Roberts game junior year
Music on playlist: Basically everything (mostly rap and pop)
Future plan: Houghton College to continue my academic and athletic career
Words to live by: “Failure is just a part of success.”
One goal before turning 30: Find a career that I love and be successful at it.
One thing people don’t know about me: I love to watch sad movies.
By Mary Jane Souder
Dan Marsh describes Amanda Jackson as a basketball junkie.
As a matter of fact, it’s pretty much how the Abington basketball coach came to meet the now Abington senior when she was in elementary school.
“I remember a phys ed teacher had emailed me and said, ‘Hey, we have this kid over here that just loves basketball.’ We’re like, ‘Send her to a game,’” the Ghosts’ coach said. “She came to a game, and we gave her a t-shirt, and she wore it all the time even though it was way too big for her.”
Jackson remembers the t-shirt. As a matter of fact, it’s still too big for her.
“My gym teacher at Willow Hill, Mrs. Santee, introduced me to Marsh,” Jackson said. “My mom took me to the games, and he would let me be the ball girl.
“It might have been a Pennsbury game – I think I showed up and had an orange hoodie on, and (Marsh) said, ‘You can’t wear those colors.’ He went out to the car and got a maroon Ghost shirt. My mom still wears it to this day.”
Jackson’s interest in basketball was piqued by the movie High School Musical and its main character Troy Bolton, a star basketball player
“My mom always tells me that story,” Jackson said with a laugh. “After I watched High School Musical, he was my favorite and he played basketball, so that’s why my mom always tells me I started to play basketball after I watched Troy Bolton in the movie.”
So passionate was Jackson about the sport that she began working with a trainer – Brian Neely - in elementary school and continues to work with that same trainer today.
“He’s like my second dad at this point,” Jackson said.
The Abington senior’s love for the sport has never waned, despite some disappointments along the way.
“Amanda grew up in our program and had a lot of expectations coming up to high school,” Marsh said. “The thing with Amanda that I don’t think people realize is the growth that has happened in the non-statistical ways.
“Amanda could be a fragile ego, especially coming in as a freshman. If she wasn’t making shots, she would get really down on herself, and it would be hard to get her back sometimes. But she always worked her butt off, always worked really, really hard.”
It’s during the season just completed that Jackson faced her toughest challenge.
“Amanda started as a junior and had a decent year, knowing there was some youth below her that was real strong, but she continued to push them, continued to be a leader,” Marsh said. “She showed them the ropes. At some point during this year, Amanda ended up moving to our bench and becoming a sixth or seventh man off the bench.
“I don’t know that there are too many kids that would have mentally been able to handle that. She’s been tremendous. Obviously, she wants to start. Obviously, she wants to play more, but she’s been supporting her teammates from the get-go. Her work ethic has not stopped. She says things like, ‘You guys have to appreciate what you have.’ She’s just been all for it, just the ultimate coach’s dream.”
Make no mistake about it, Jackson would have rather seen more playing time.
“Everybody wants to play – you don’t play basketball to not play,” Jackson said. “It was hard at first, especially having (a sophomore) take the starting spot, but at the end of the day, I just want to play, and I trust all of my teammates, and I have to trust the decisions Marsh makes. If I have to come off the bench, I’ll come off the bench. As long as I’m playing, that’s all I want to do.”
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Jackson’s love affair with basketball got its start in second grade, and by the time she was in fifth grade, she had joined the AAU circuit, initially with Triple Threat and two years ago moving to the Comets. From the outset, she was a self-described shooter and three times has torched opponents for seven 3s in a single varsity game.
“She’s accepted her role as somebody who can come in and spread the floor for our kids that like to get to the basket,” Marsh said, acknowledging it is not necessarily an easy role to assume. “It’s been a lot of adversity for her, and she has done an amazing job with it. She’s rare to me.
“There are not many kids I’ve coached in the past that don’t think about themselves first, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but Amanda has always put her teammates first and even with pressure from people outside of our team saying, ‘you should be playing more,’ she has not let it faze her even once.”
That’s not to say there haven’t been moments when she second-guessed her role.
“There have been time when I’ve said, ‘Do I want to do this?’” Jackson said. “But if I didn’t play basketball, I’d have to start over completely. I just feel like this is where I should be.
“I love all of my teammates. They’re literally family at this point. Especially now – they’re the only people I see. I’m not in school (since she is virtual), so I’ve been looking forward to getting out of the house going to games and practices. I love it.”
Jackson also says she has learned some valuable lessons.
“I think the biggest thing is – things aren’t always going to go your way,” she said. “There’s always going to be a bump in the road or something that happens. You just have to find your way around it or get past it.”
Jackson’s basketball playing days are not over. She will continue her career at Houghton College in upstate New York.
“They saw me at AAU and they reached out to me,” she said. “I had never heard of them. The first time I talked to the coach, he said, ‘You probably never heard of us.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’
“I went up and visited with my mom and dad. We had no expectations – we’ll just go and see what it is, but it’s probably not going to happen. We went – the coaches, I love them already, they’re amazing. The campus – we loved it. I loved everything about it, and I might as well give it a shot.”
Jackson is undecided on a major but would like to pursue a career that would allow her to stay involved in sports. Listening to her coach tell it, she possesses traits that would allow her to succeed.
“She’s just an all-around leader,” Marsh said. “The kids love her. She drives kids to practice and will do anything for anybody. She’s super kind, and she’s been a basketball junkie since day one. Her goal was to be a great Lady Ghost basketball player, and she has been.”
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