Golf, Softball
Favorite athlete: I don’t have a specific favorite athlete, but I will always admire an athlete who is humble and puts in work when no one is watching.
Favorite team: Any Pittsburgh sports team
Favorite memory competing in sports: Shooting a 42 at Turtle Creek my first golf season
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: Hitting a triple and tripping over second base on my way to third
Music on playlist: Rihanna and country, of course
Future plans: College for nursing to become pediatric oncology nurse practitioner
Words to live by: “Everything happens for a reason”
One goal before turning 30: Travel and see new places I haven’t seen before
One thing people don’t know about you: I enjoy cooking and baking
By Mary Jane Souder
Meet Ava Zebert.
Softball is and has always been the Quakertown senior’s passion. A natural middle infielder, Zebert is preparing to fill a new and important role this spring for the defending SOL Liberty Division co-champs.
“Our team lost Abbey Wagner (to graduation),” Zebert said of the all-state pitcher. “We’re kind of at a shortage of pitchers right now.
“I’ve started pitching and plan to hopefully pitch for our team this season. I pitched a little bit during my early travel days, but I hadn’t really done pitching seriously in a while.”
Coach Rich Scott calls Zebert his ‘secret weapon.’
“I told her that when we first started,” the Panthers’ coach said. “Last week when I saw her pitch, I said, ‘Ava, I have a lot of confidence in you. I know you can do it’.
“I can see it in her. It’s the competitor in her – they don’t want to be mediocre, they want to be the best. She has a great attitude, and she’s doing pretty darn good, and she hasn’t been able to do anything for a couple of years.”
In fact, Zebert has not played an inning of softball in more than two years. During that time, she’s been fighting the battle of her young life.
The unexpected journey
Roll back the calendar to the summer of 2022.
It was like every other summer for Ava Zebert. Packed with softball from beginning to end. Or at least that was the plan.
It was business as usual at an early season tournament at Veterans Park on Father’s Day weekend. Until Zebert cut her knee on Saturday of the two-day tournament.
“I dove for a ball and scraped my knee,” she said. “My mom kept telling me, ‘Wash it out, wash it out,’ but it was just another scrape. I didn’t think much of it.”
While scratches and scrapes happen regularly in the world of fast pitch softball, Zebert also experienced pain in her knee. She took Tylenol and didn’t miss any of the weekend’s action, playing four more games on Sunday and ultimately winning the championship with her Lehigh Valley Phantoms travel squad.
“That night I got a fever (that spiked at 103) and had to go to the hospital. The next day the doctors determined that it was an infection and started me on antibiotics for left knee cellulitis,” Zebert said. “They kept me overnight because my bloodwork was abnormal.
“They thought the abnormal bloodwork was just from the infection. They sent me home and had me get follow-up bloodwork. My primary care doctor told me it was still abnormal a few days later, which is something to be concerned about, I guess. They weren’t really sure exactly what it was – there was a bunch of things it could have been.”
Zebert had bloodwork Friday of that week and then had hopes of travelling with her team to another softball tournament, this time in New Jersey.
“We were making a week out of it at a New Jersey beach (Wildwood Crest),” Zebert said. “They also had me see a hematologist at St. Christopher’s. We drove up from the shore on Wednesday to the hospital in Philly, got bloodwork there.”
And then, after returning and while the family was enjoying a day on the beach, a phone call came that changed everything.
“My mom answered the call,” Zebert recalled. “It wasn’t on speaker, but I just looked at her face and saw her reaction and kind of knew it wasn’t anything good.”
The diagnosis – Zebert had leukemia.
“Honestly, they had mentioned stuff like the possibility of leukemia,” Zebert said. “It was my primary care doctor that mentioned it to my mom, and my mom’s always an extremely cautious person, so she was worrying, but I didn’t really think anything of it.
“I was just – it will probably go back to normal. My uncle’s a doctor, and my mom was in contact with him, and he said that stuff like this happens. The only symptom I really experienced that would have pointed us towards it if the injury didn’t happen was that I was a little more tired than usual, but other than that, I hadn’t felt any different than I normally felt.”
The following morning, Zebert returned to St. Christopher’s for a bone marrow biopsy.
“The environment wasn’t really welcoming,” she said. “They were trying to put me into trials before I was even diagnosed.
“We were still holding out hope that it wasn’t anything, just an infection, and they’d made a mistake.”
Like Ava, her mother, Lorena, was reluctant to accept the initial diagnosis.
“It was so surreal just hearing the word cancer,” her mother said. “She looked at my face. I kept saying, ‘They’re wrong, they’re wrong. There’s absolutely no way. She’s an athlete, she eats healthy. There’s just no way.’
“Even after the bone marrow biopsy, I kept saying, ‘They’re going to come back, they misdiagnosed you.’ But July 1 – we transferred to Lehigh Valley Hospital Pediatric Oncology and sat in a room with the oncology team, the best oncology team you could want your child to be part of.
“Ava kept saying, ‘Don’t worry mom, we’ve got this.’ Ava was just so positive. She’s an inspiration. You just keep going, you just get it done. I think that’s the mentality of an athlete. God bless her.”
When her brothers – Andrew (16 at the time) and Michael (11 at the time) – learned of her diagnosis, Ava had a similar message for them.
“She emphatically told them not to worry – we’ve got this,” her father Brian said.
Fighting the fight
Zebert underwent treatment at Lehigh Valley Hospital Pediatric Oncology (Cedar Crest) – 20 minutes from her home – for what was confirmed as T-Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia.
“I was in the hospital for 30 days straight on intense chemotherapy and steroids, which I do have to say are the worst,” Zebert said. “The steroids affected me hormonally, and I wanted to eat everything – and the weight gain.
“The chemo itself- I didn’t have a terrible amount of side effects, but I lost my hair. At first, I was kind of numb to everything. It definitely affected me, I didn’t really go out much because I was immunocompromised. It was like another quarantine for a year-and-a-half. Not 100 percent, but for a good year I was immunocompromised from the treatment. The extent of getting out of my house was taking a ride to the grocery store with my mom but staying in the car.”
And on the heels of the COVID isolation. Zebert, who had a normal school year in ninth grade, found herself isolated yet again.
Upon leaving the hospital, Zebert received chemo intravenously through a port once a month.
“Within those months, I was in and out of the hospital for one reason or another – infections, kidney stones, a bunch of side effects from the treatment,” Zebert said.
Zebert’s social life was limited to basically texting her friends.
“That was one of the hardest parts - the socialization,” she said. “My one cousin that I’m closest to, Sofia – she was able to visit me.
“Besides that, everyone was doing their own thing, so them coming into contact with me was a risk because of all the people they’d been around, so we had to be cautious with everything. It was nice having my family around.”
In each of the last three years, an annual fundraising softball tournament – Ava’s Army Strike Out Cancer Tournament – has been held in her honor.
In the spring of her sophomore year, Zebert attended her softball team’s cancer awareness game also held in her honor.
“I was in a mask and made sure I was cautious,” she said. “It’s definitely different being on that side of (the game). 
“I know my freshman year – we had a cancer night for (then North Penn senior) Belle Sparango. It didn’t hit home as hard until I knew exactly what she felt like because I was in her shoes. Just texting her – there were a lot of similarities between our situations. She was definitely someone who helped me to know there’s an end to it, and things would get better eventually.”
Things began to improve Zebert’s junior year.
“I managed the softball team last spring because I was able to be back at school,” Zebert said. “As long as my numbers were high enough, I would go back to school. I was basically there the whole year.”
During a season for the record books, the softball team not only captured a share of the division title but made history by advancing to the District 1 6A title game and the state semifinals.
“They were the girls I had played with since I was 10 and 11,” Zebert said. “They were like sisters to me, and I kind of was living through them. It made me happy too.”
As a senior, Zebert is back to something close to a normal routine.
“Going back this year, it’s definitely been a lot more how I felt freshman year and just restarting all over again after being locked up for so long, but it’s definitely back to somewhat normalcy,” she said.
Hitting the links
Never one to back down from a challenge, this fall Zebert went out for – and made – the varsity golf team. This despite never playing before, and boy, did she impress her coach.
Forget the fact that Zebert was an eager student who learned the sport quickly and advanced to the Suburban One League Tournament.
It was much more than that. 
“Ava would give you the shirt off her back to any student in the school,” Quakertown golf coach Kurt Amen said. “They all recognize it. Ava has more empathy at her young age than most people do in the entirety of their lives.
“Ava has integrity, she has grit, she has passion, she has a sense of humor. Ava knows how to communicate. She’s a realist with high expectations, she’s not afraid to fail because she knows that a mere attempt means everything. Ava Zebert reflects on every action and isn’t afraid to admit there is always room for improvement.”
Zebert’s rapid improvement didn’t just happen.
“Ava showed up to every practice from day one, and also showed up when not requested,” the Panthers’ coach said. “I had the team practice three hours one day, and at the end, Ava came up to me saying, ‘Coach I don't know how to putt.’ I showed her a few drills. Then I went to go play on my own for a couple hours. When I drove back to the clubhouse, it was nearly nighttime. Ava was the only one there, putting on the green by herself, two hours later.
“The next day, Ava said, "I need help with chipping." I showed her a few things and told her that Wedgewood had a good practice area to work on it. While some of our squad was out playing at Wedgewood on their own the following day, they saw her by herself, chipping at the practice facility.
“Ava shot a 57 the following match and was upset with herself. She said it was her driver. At 8 PM after the match, she went over to the range to work on it, and her teammates, along with our old #1 player, hit balls until their hands hurt. During her senior night on Sept. 11, she put it all together and shot a career low, 46. I asked her what her goal was for the next match, and she responded, ‘45.’”
Zebert topped that with a 42 at Turtle Creek later in the season.
“It was definitely nice having Coach Amen to teach me,” she said. “I’m always willing to learn to do new stuff, and I did want to be good because I can’t just do things and be mediocre. It was definitely something I wanted to put work in to be good at because I had the time. It was something I enjoyed.”
Amen named Zebert a team captain.
“We’ve never had team captains on our golf team before,” Amen said. “Our kids see her as a role model. They don’t have an excuse to not work. This girl is a straight A student, she shows up at every non-mandatory meeting of any kind. She’s genuine to the core.”
A bright future
Softball - a sport she has been playing for as long as she can remember - is back in the picture for Zebert after over two years away from the sport she loves.
“When I was diagnosed, I had the port placed in my chest” she said. “I can’t play any contact sports with that in. Softball was basically my life for my entire life, but I couldn’t play. That’s why I decided to try out for the golf team this year.”
No one is happier to see her back on the diamond than Scott.
“I’m excited for her,” he said. “I want her to be able to do it for herself because I know she will be happy, and it’s a lot of encouragement for the other players to witness this kid and what she’s gone through – definitely an inspiration, big time.
“She’s very upbeat with the whole situation – ‘Okay, I’m going to beat this thing.’”
Zebert’s approach to softball has impressed her coach.
“I tell you what – she just keeps getting stronger and stronger, and when she does get that port out, she’s going to be even stronger,” Scott said. “She hasn’t pitched in a game, so I don’t know what she can do, but she’s very determined and very eager.
“And she’s got a great sense of humor. Her dad’s catching for her, and she hasn’t thrown a drop ball before, so we’re teaching her to throw the drop. So, it’s hitting her dad in the shins, it’s hitting him in the head, and she’s just laughing. She’s like, ‘Are you okay, dad?’ ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’ I can tell you now – she’s not going to fail.”
An excellent student, Zebert plans to major in nursing in college with the hopes of becoming a pediatric nurse practitioner in oncology.
“I was always interested in going into the health field,” she said. “I knew I wanted to do something of that sort, but I hadn’t known specifically what until my diagnosis.”
Zebert’s last IV chemo treatment is behind her, as is her final dose of steroids.
“I have oral chemo pills but those are done the end of November,” she said.
On Election Day, Nov. 5, the port will be removed, and Zebert - for the first time in over two years - can resume normal activities.
“Regardless of what the election shows – it’s going to be the happiest day of our lives because she’s finally getting her port out, and she’ll be able to enjoy the rest of her senior year with her friends and go on to do great things,” her mother, Lorena Zebert, said. “God has a plan.”
For her part, Zebert sees life through a different lens than most.
“You just have to go day by day,” the Quakertown senior said. “You don’t realize until you go through it that even waking up in the morning is a blessing.”
