Soccer, Basketball, Lacrosse
Favorite athletes: Elena Delle Donne & Alex Morgan
Favorite team: Villanova Wildcats
Favorite memory competing in sports: Making soccer playoffs my senior year because it was our team’s first time in four years.
Most embarrassing/funniest thing that has happened while competing in sports: During a basketball game while trying to save a ball from going out of bounds, I flew into my friend’s grandmother’s lap. I felt so bad that I hugged her to make sure she was okay before stepping back onto the court. It was really embarrassing!
Music on iPod: Beyoncé and Florida Georgia Line
Future plans: I would like to stay involved with sports in college and become a nurse or a speech pathologist
Words to live by: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
One goal before turning 30: I want to travel the world.
One thing people don’t know about me: My left pinky finger is a lot shorter than the other and is missing a knuckle.
By Mary Jane Souder
Bailey Krewson was born to play sports.
There probably isn’t a sport the Springfield-Montco senior hasn’t tried, and she will graduate in June with 11 varsity letters. She’d undoubtedly have quite a few more if there was a way she could have played more than three sports during a school year.
As it is, Krewson is one of those rare and special athletes who has found a way to make significant contributions in soccer, basketball and lacrosse. While she comes from a family that loves sports and is a natural athlete, it’s much more than that.
Krewson possesses a competitive drive that sets her apart.
“She hustles,” Springfield lacrosse coach Maggie Canavan said. “She’s a low attacker for us, so she just plays offense, but if there’s a point where we miss a shot or make a turnover, she’s 100 percent hustling to the restraining line.
“I don’t even have to tell her. She knows, and she gets back to that restraining line and gives everything she can to get that ball back.”
It’s the same thing on the basketball court where defense is her forte.
“Part of it is (she’s) stubborn - she doesn’t want anyone to score on her, and she doesn’t want anyone to beat her,” said coach Bill Krewson, who also happens to be her father. “She plays harder on the defensive end than the offensive end. She kind of lets the offense come and tries to help out where she can.”
It’s a philosophy Krewson takes into all three sports.
“It’s a feeling,” she said. “I just feel like I have to get the ball back to help everyone else out. I just know that defense is something I can really do. I just feel like I know how to find people’s weakness and take that. That’s just what I do.”
Krewson has had a love affair with sports for as long as she can remember.
“I started playing sports ever since I was born pretty much,” she said. “I played everything.
“I played soccer, basketball, lacrosse, softball, swimming, skiing, field hockey and volleyball. Sports were a part of my family, but I would have loved it anyway.”
In middle school, Krewson was faced with the difficult decision of choosing just three. She chose field hockey, basketball and lacrosse. She continued field hockey through eighth grade but then opted to switch to soccer.
“I just felt a lot more confident in soccer, and I knew the sport way better, so I thought I would be more successful in soccer,” Krewson said.
She was a three-year starter at left defensive back and was part of a strong senior class that led last fall’s squad to a berth in the district tournament.
“Bailey is an outstanding athlete,” coach Suzette Wolf said. “She is tenacious and never gives up without a fight.
“Bailey played every minute of every varsity game since joining the soccer team as a sophomore. She played field hockey as a freshman and has been greatly missed by the hockey team.
“She defends and recovers better than most players her age. Our team will definitely miss her. I consider her an unsung hero.”
Krewson is defined by a determination and drive that is impossible to teach. They are traits that have allowed her to overcome a hearing problem that – in medical terms – is described as bilateral moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss. In layman’s terms, there are certain frequencies she cannot hear even with the assistance of a hearing aid in both ears.
The problem was diagnosed when Krewson was an infant and may have been the result of drugs used for a medically induced coma after she underwent throat surgery several months after she was born.
“She’s number three of our five children,” Bill Krewson said. “She would be in the crib or playpen, and someone would fall or smash something, and normally, they would really startle.
“I kept saying to my wife, ‘I don’t know if she hears everything.’ A lot of times she would look you right in the face when you spoke to her. It’s hard to determine whether there’s hearing loss with babies because they don’t talk.
“Eventually, we figured it out. We took her to a hearing specialist, and it’s what they call a low tone hearing. If you’re in a place like a gymnasium and there’s a lot of noise, she doesn’t filter out the noise.”
Her father goes on to recount a story that occurred shortly after Krewson received an FM system.
“You would wear a microphone and she can hear directly in her ear what you’re saying,” he said. “I’m on the sidelines of her biddy soccer game, and I’m telling her what to do.
“I’m giving her all these directions, and she turns around and gives me the wave off, like ‘knock it off’ and turned them off and just kept playing soccer.”
It’s a moment that effectively captured Krewson’s spirit and also her unwillingness to allow the hearing loss to define her.
“I was born with it, and I don’t like to be treated differently than anybody else,” she said. “I was never angry. I just accepted it because it’s who I am.
“No one treats me differently because they know I have it, which makes it a lot easier.
“I think about it every day, but I don’t think about it like, ‘Oh my god, I have to deal with this.’ I think about it – ‘Okay, this is what I have to do because I have this,’ so I just do it.”
Krewson, who has already been accepted at La Salle and Cabrini, hopes to use what she has learned along the way to help others,
“I would like to do something like nursing or speech pathology,” she said. “If kids have hearing loss like me or anyone who gets in some kind of accident and loses their hearing, they need to go through speech therapy to learn how to talk and speak.”
Krewson, who herself went to speech therapy until sixth grade, also plans to continue playing sports at some level.
Interestingly, basketball is the favorite sport of the 5-5 Krewson.
“I don’t know why, but I feel the best playing basketball,” she said. “When I play it, I literally feel natural. I know what I’m doing at all moments. In other sports, there will be times when I’m like – I don’t really know what to do, but in basketball, I always just know what to do.”
Although basketball may be at the top of her list, Krewson brings the same intangibles to every sport she plays.
“She has the ability to take what any coach says and do it right away,” Canavan said. “She’ll take positive feedback negative feedback, and she will turn it into something great.
“She’s a great leader, she gets along with everyone. She supports her teammates 100 percent. The work ethic she brings every day – it’s kind of hard as her teammates and coaches to not be positive around her. She’s the kind of athlete every coach wants on their team.”
Krewson, who also plays volleyball for her CYO team, enjoys volunteering in what little spare time she has. She is a coach for the Springfield Girls’ Lacrosse club, and she helps run basketball clinics for young girls in her township.
She is involved at Holy Martyrs Parish and has volunteered her time at Cradles to Crayons and Treats for Troops. She also works at Flourtown Country Club.
Quite a resume for a student-athlete who is passionate about sports.
